Transcript

Hi everyone, welcome to this new French video.

I hope you are well and that you are comfortable. Don't forget that if you need it, you can activate the French or English subtitles.

Today, we're going to see a French expression in a few minutes. This expression is être à l'ouest.

West, you heard right, it refers to the cardinal point. North, south, east, west. The cardinal points.

When you say you are in the west, you are not physically facing west, you don't need to take a compass to verify that you are in the west.

It is an expression that means that we are a little in the moon. We are a little in our thoughts, we are not in phase with reality.

If you are physically present, in your head you are a little elsewhere. It is therefore a familiar expression. It is mainly used in two contexts. The first one, as I was saying, is when you are in your thoughts, you are not focused on the situation you are experiencing.

We're awake, but we're kind of dreaming. For example, if you're in a meeting at work and I'm sure it's already happened to you. It used to happen to me all the time. You're in that meeting and you start to go off into your thoughts and you don't pay attention to what's going on.

And someone will ask you "ah and you, what do you think?" Then you'll be forced to say that you weren't paying attention, that you weren't paying attention, and ask to repeat yourself. And your colleague might say you're completely out of it or you look a little out of it.

Of course, as I said, it's a pretty colloquial expression, so it also depends on your work context, but in any case, you were out of it. That's for sure.

Like I said, you weren't focused. You weren't paying attention.

This expression can also be used to talk about someone who is off the mark, to use another very familiar expression.

When someone is out of touch or out of the loop, it can be used to say that someone is out of touch. So it's not necessarily a specific time. As I was saying, someone who is in his or her own thoughts is usually someone who is not very aware of realities.

For example, if someone says to me I would like to buy a 100 square meter apartment in Paris, I have a budget of 200,000 euros, so I could tell him or her that you are completely out of touch. These prices are not at all consistent with reality.

He is out of touch with reality.

That's it for this expression. I hope you liked it, that you understood it well. Let me know in the comments if there are any other French expressions that you would like me to explain.

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I'll see you very, very soon.