OffQc | Québécois French Guide

I went digging around the online version of Urbania for some expressions that you might like to learn. I’ve picked 7 and included some notes below.

1. On n’a pas besoin de gars pour se faire du fun!

= We don’t need guys to have ourselves some fun!

The author of this quote joked that girls who are secretly sad about being single say this to each other during girls’ night out on Valentine’s Day.

Gars is pronounced gâ. The final rs is not pronounced in gars. If you pronounce the rs, you’ll end up saying garce, which means “bitch” in French.

Other examples using le fun: j’ai eu du fun (I had fun), c’est le fun (it’s fun), une journée le fun (a fun day).

2. Avec le recul, j’ai honte en taaaaaa…

= Looking back, I’m embarrassed as hellllll…

The author of this sentence was talking about the embarrassment he felt when thinking back to something silly he had posted on Facebook.

The expression en ta is a shortened version of en tabarnak.

Another example: ça va mal en ta (things are damn awful).

3. à chaque fois qu’on voit une pitoune dans une pub de char

= every time there’s some hot chick in a car ad

Even though une pitoune is a very attractive girl, this word won’t be taken as a compliment by females. It’s similar to referring to a female as “a (hot) chick.”

The word pub is short for publicité. It can refer to ads on television or in print.

Words you’ll come across for “car” in Québec include: une auto, un char, une voiture.

Rather than just chaque fois (every time), you’ll hear people say à chaque fois very frequently.

4. Tu te flattes la bedaine.

= You pat your belly.

If you’ve got a belly, tu as de la bedaine. If it’s a really big one, tu as une grosse bedaine!

If someone’s got no shirt on, you can use the expression être en bedaine to describe what he’s wearing (nothing but his belly!).

Flatter means to pat, stroke.

5. Té crissment épuisée.

= Yer goddamn exhausted.

In entry #727 about two vulgar words for penis and vagina in Québécois French, you read an example of the verb s’en crisser (to not give a fuck, to not give a shit, etc.), which was je m’en crisse. In today’s example, we discover the related word crissment (or crissement).

Té is an informal reduction of tu es. This informal pronunciation is probably more often spelled t’es, but here we discover té, which means the same thing.

Épuisée is the feminine form of this adjective.

6. quelqu’un qui fourre le système

= someone who screws the system, who fucks the system

The author of this expression was putting forth his opinion about the difference between people who receive welfare out of a genuine need and those who milk the system for all it’s worth:

[…] il y a une GROSSE différence entre quelqu’un qui a besoin d’aide et quelqu’un qui fourre le système.

There’s a HUGE difference between someone in need and someone who fucks the system.

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Références

1-2. Jordan Dupuis, « Le monde selon J : La Saint-Valentin sur Facebook », Urbania, 17 février 2014.

3. Pascal Henrard, « Y a-t-il trop de féministes dans Urbania? », Urbania, 12 février 2014.

4-5. Véronique Grenier, « Amour », Urbania, 12 février 2014.

6. Jonathan Roberge, « Enlève ta banane de sur ma face », Urbania, 7 février 2014.