“Floor pants”, “going to strawberries”… The French language is rich in many expressions. Some are even specifically associated with certain regions of France. Test your knowledge of regional expressions in our slideshow below.
There are so many syntactic turns that some are integrated into the dictionary. Indeed, Edouard Trouillez, lexicographer who produced the little Robert 2022, mentioned the appearance of a new formulation in this edition.
For French regional expressions, there is also a site and an application listing these expressions.
The French site of our regions carries out several surveys on regional expressions available on their mobile application. Thus, the objective of these studies is to understand the extent of the use of these idioms, but also to know the trends of these uses.
Thus, “going mussel fishing” is said in the regions of south-east France, but also in the north-west of the territory. On the contrary, this expression is translated by “to have the fire on the floor” in the north of France, in New Aquitaine, as well as in Occitania. Nevertheless, there seems to be a decline in the use of this formulation.
The French site of our regions has carried out a study on the question and finds a “logistic regression” which is greater among “younger than [among] those who declared knowing at least one specific expression”. If some expressions are less used, many others still appear. Consult our slideshow below to find out how well you know the expressions of the different regions of France.
