Six oranges, check. Five tomatoes, check. One locally grown child, check.
Last week, I went to a supermarket called Maxi.
At Maxi, you have to put une piasse (1 $) into a device on le panier (shopping cart) to release it from the other ones. The panier only accepts one-dollar coins.
When I had finished shopping and returned my panier, two women approached me. One of them asked if she could take my piasse in exchange for four quarters so that she could take a panier.
She asked:
Est-ce que je peux prendre ta piasse pour quatre vingt-cinq sous?
Can I take your loonie [one-dollar coin] for four quarters?
At Maxi, there’s a large sign posted at the spot where customers return their paniers in the parking lot, le stationnement.
I took a photo of the sign so that you could see it and learn French vocabulary from it.
Some of the vocabulary on the sign includes: dépôt, se procurer un panier, retourner le panier, magasiner, passer à la caisse, déverrouiller un panier, monnaie, jeton réutilisable.
The word panier doesn’t just refer to shopping carts with wheels, though.
I found another sign that uses the word panier on it at the entrance to a store called Dollarama.
On this sign, shoppers are told to use a panier (basket) when shopping in the store, and not one of their own sacs réutilisables, reusable bags.
Felix, hi
Piasse: not certain if you have previously mentioned it’s origin; anyway, here goes.
The word come from the coinage used in Quebec in the late 1800s and was the equivalent of a dollar. These names were short-lived and the country then started using the dollar – so people just used piasse interchangeably with dollar.
We have some family Wills dated in the late 1800s where there are phrases such as (in French, naturally) “I leave 2,000 piasse to my son”.
Really enjoy reading your website.
Peter
Thanks for commenting, Peter! Very interesting. We can also mention that piasse is an informal pronunciation of piastre.
Is chariot ok to use for shopping carts or is panier preferred? I sure wish I had known about your blog before now, but better late than never! 🙂
Yes, you can use chariot if you like, but panier is the usual word used by the Québécois.