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« No double dipping! 3 usages in French heard on Québécois television (#1031)
Do you know how EN PLUS DE ÇA might be pronounced informally? (#1033) »

4 French expressions used by Québécois TV chef Ricardo (#1032)

8 October 2015 by OffQc

Here’s more French as spoken by Ricardo.

As he was preparing a dish before his televised audience, he said to go easy on the salt when adding it to his preparation. His exact words were:

Mollo sur le sel.
Easy on the salt.

Use normal French stress when pronouncing mollo (i.e., on final syllable). Mollo means gently, with moderation.

At the same time that he said mollo sur le sel, he also said:

On se garde une p’tite gêne.
We’ll hold off, we’ll hold back, let’s show some restraint, etc.

This was Ricardo’s way of insisting further on not using too much salt.

You’ve seen the expression se garder une petite gêne before when a TELUS advertising campaign linked it to pulling out one’s penis at inopportune moments.

Ricardo also uses this expression a lot:

Grosso modo.
More or less.

Use normal French stress when pronouncing grosso modo (i.e., on final syllables). Grosso modo means more or less, approximately.

Ricardo uses this expression when the amount of an ingredient to be added doesn’t need to be exact, just approximate. For example: une cuillère à soupe, grosso modo, a tablespoon, more or less.

The expression grosso modo can be used in any kind of conversation where you want to say more or less, not just when talking about cooking.

Whenever Ricardo wants to stress that preparing something in a certain way is very important, he often says:

C’est ben important.
It’s really important.

Ben is an informal, spoken contraction of bien; it sounds like the French word bain. Ben important sounds like bain n’important.

1. Mollo sur le sel.
2. On se garde une p’tite gêne.
3. Grosso modo.
4. C’est ben important.

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Posted in Entries #1001-1050 | Tagged ben, ben important, français québécois, grosso modo, mollo, Québécois French, Ricardo, se garder une petite gêne, TELUS | 6 Comments

6 Responses

  1. on 9 October 2015 at 11:46 Grammar.Consulting

    I see you translate cuillère à soupe as ‘tablespoon’.


  2. on 9 October 2015 at 11:57 Grammar.Consulting

    I’m sorry, hit the Enter key by mistake too soon above. I was going to ask about the ways to refer to different kinds of spoons in Québécois. Now, I assume that Ricardo as a chef was talking about a specific measurement, which we would also call a tablespoon in English, or at least in my U.S. English. And I noted in your post #1019 that cuillère is apparently the generic way to refer to a spoon in Québec. So would cuillère à soupe, which I recognize means literally ‘soup spoon’, be the way a Québécois would designate the larger of the two spoons that are generally made available for eating? As opposed to une petite cuillère, the smaller kind of spoon which we south of the border would normally call a teaspoon.


    • on 9 October 2015 at 12:09 OffQc

      The terms to know are cuillère à thé (teaspoon, the little one) and cuillère à table or cuillère à soupe (tablespoon, the big one).

      Cuillère à table and cuillère à soupe are the same thing (in general usage, anyway).

      If you’re curious, Termium here says: Cuillère à table (ou cuiller à table) est considéré tantôt comme un anglicisme qu’il faut remplacer par cuillère à soupe, cuillerée à soupe, tantôt comme un canadianisme de bon aloi, i.e., it says that cuillère à table is sometimes considerered an anglicism, and sometimes a perfectly acceptable Canadianism. The Granddictionnaire, on the other hand, says here that cuillère à table is integrated into French and is perfectly acceptable. Anyway, for general conversation, you needn’t worry about this. Either term is just fine.

      I could’ve just as equally used the term cuillère à table above in the post.


  3. on 13 October 2015 at 21:14 Kim

    Hello Felix,

    In case you had anymore doubts, I just wanted to say that I am québécoise and people here indeed use “cuillère à soupe” or “cuillère à table” indisctinctively when talking about a tablespoon (the mesure). On dit “cuillère à thé” pour “teaspoon”. C’est tout 🙂


    • on 13 October 2015 at 21:46 OffQc

      Yes, that’s right, Kim!

      cuillère à table
      cuillère à soupe

      tablespoon

      cuillère à thé
      teaspoon


  4. on 14 October 2015 at 10:18 Grammar.Consulting

    Mille fois merci to both Kim and Felix. Felix, especially, my apologies for taking so long to return here and thank you for your initial comprehensive response to my query, as well as for the existence of this whole site in the first place. What a treasure-house it is for those of us interested in Canadian French.



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