AnglaisPod Forum

between:
Do you know that? ???

I'm gonna try to enlighten you :
A spouse stands for "une épouse", "un conjoint" ou "un ou une partenaire"
A wife (wives) stands for "une femme" like in the sentence "la femme de monsieur Dupont"
Holiday is the British word to say "les vacances", in America it doesn't mean it but in the late december festivities.
Vacation is the right word in America to say "les vacances"
But If you want to get complete explanation and further help I just can advise you to go through this very good web dictionnary which is called Wordreference.com, you'll even have vocal pronunciation of many common words. That's the best dictionnary I found so far (thank to Thomas, whom I give thanks by the way). :)

Thank you Freddyben for all these information. ;)

Not a problem

WordReference really is the best! I use their site pretty much every day :)

And yeah, "on vacation" is what we say in America. A "holiday" is a specific day such as Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day, the 4th of July, Thanksgiving -- those are all holidays.

Another useful word is the word "break" -- this refers to the period of time that you get off (from school or from work). Usually, in the States, for example, there is a break of two or three weeks for Christmas time, and it's often called Christmas Break or Winter Break. And there is always the infamous Spring Break, which is not for a specific holiday, but just to give students a break in the middle of the Spring semester.

 Thanks Thomas,
French people also say:  "faire un break"! That's cool!  The origin of this word is probably English. I have     
never thought about it but it doesn't matter.

I find it funny, because I encounter several English words in French all the time (faire du shopping, le feedback, and apparently faire un break, too!), and I always hear how lots of French people don't like this happening, and they think the French language should be kept "purely French". But to tell the truth, we use a lot of French words in English! For example...

in lieu of (au lieu de)
armoire
coup d'état
en route
idiot-savant

Of course, our pronunciations are different (I cringe when I hear an American say "in lieu of"), but we still have the words. And in fact, I don't know what you guys all know about the history of English, but the English language was heavily influenced by French when the French took over England at the battle of Hastings in 1066 during the period afterwards. And plus, both English and French have hundreds, if not thousands of words that come from Latin.

I already heard in the movies "déjà vu" they say deja vou!!it's cute!!

I even heard some people say that English comes from German and before of course it was latine as any latine language. I heard that and it may be true, adding to this German people speaks far better than French or Italian maybe because of this or since they are more keen from learning foreign language or because the educational system is better to it. Who knows ? ???
Don't hesitate to correct me Thomas if you will to :)

I know,there are some similtaries between english and germany such as good night and goodnart(je ne sais comment cela s'écrit en allemand)!!

You guys are right, English does have German origins. Old English developed primarily from the Anglo-Saxon language, which was a Germanic language in the same family as Old German. There are definitely large amounts of German words in English, and if you speak both, it's easy to see the similarities. Unfortunately, I speak no German whatsoever :P The connections between English and German are older than the ones between English and French, though.

Mamour, you write " good night" like this in german: "gute Nacht" ;)
You're right, Thomas. That's good for me.

Bretons and English have same words for example "school"...

Hi Thomas,

You often use "You guys are right", what means guy in this context ? I don't find a logical translation in Wordreference.

Thanks for your help.

???

Ca veut tout simplement dire "vous avez raison les gars".

Yeah, you guys is a way of saying "you" but making sure that it's plural. Even though we don't have the tu and vous of French, sometimes there is a need to indicate a plural "you". So we say...

you guys
you all
y'all (not used everywhere, only in certain dialects -- thought of as Southern by most people, but it is found outside the South, too)

Typically, "a guy" is "un mec" or as Freddyben put it, "un gar", -- however, in this case, it simply indicates a plural. It can even be used to a group of people that is entirely female (I just used it maybe 20 minutes ago to two girls to ask "You guys having fun?")

Merci à Freddyben et Thomas pour ces précisions...