OffQc | Québécois French Guide

On page 33 of her book Ah shit, j’ai pogné le cancer (tome 1), Maude Schiltz uses these three interesting and useful features of French that we’ll look at in this entry:

• dealer avec quelque chose
• c’est en masse
• gagner à la 6/49

Remember, Maude’s book is an account of her experience with breast cancer written in the form of emails sent to a group of her friends.

In email #5, she tells her friends that there may be a problem with her bone marrow, in addition to already having cancer.

She says the bone marrow problem can be worried about later though; dealing with just the cancer is more than enough for the moment:

On dealera avec ça plus tard ; une bataille à la fois, c’est en masse !
We’ll deal with [the bone marrow] later; one battle at a time is more than enough!

If you know the English expression “to deal with something,” then I don’t think dealer avec quelque chose needs too much explanation. 😀

The deal part of dealer sounds like its English equivalent.

But what about the expression c’est en masse? If you’ve got something en masse, you’ve got a lot of it. For example, j’ai en masse de temps libre means “I’ve got tons of free time.”

Maude is telling us that dealing with the battle of cancer is a lot to deal with already, without having to add other problems. Une bataille à la fois, c’est en masse. “One battle at a time is already a lot.” “One battle at a time is more than enough.”

C’est en masse sounds like cé t’en masse.

Still, Maude is very happy because she’s learned that her cancer hasn’t spread throughout her body; the cancer has limited itself to her breasts. She feels very lucky and relieved to learn this:

Vous pouvez pas savoir le soulagement… J’ai l’impression d’avoir gagné à la 6/49, je me sens riche-riche-riche!
You can’t imagine the relief… I feel like I’ve won the 6/49, I feel rich-rich-rich!

The 6/49 is a lottery where you can win millions of dollars. It’s pronounced six-quarante-neuf. A lottery ticket is un billet de loterie or un billet de loto.

There’s a funny video with transcription in entry #576 related to the 6/49 that you can check out or review here.

You’ll notice in the video that 6/49 is masculine, but in Maude’s quote above it’s feminine. In the video, they’ve used the official name, which is le Lotto 6/49 or just le 6/49. Maude on the other hand has used a generic way with loto, which is feminine: la loto 6/49 or just la 6/49.

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French quotes written by Maude Schiltz in Ah shit, j’ai pogné le cancer (tome 1), Éditions de Mortagne, Boucherville (Québec), 2013, p.33.