Contents

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:07 - Marseille is famous for...
• 5:30 - Tarpin
• 6:53 - Spoiled
• 7:05 - Degrun
• 7:56 - A colleague
• 4:26 PM - "A little girl or a little boy": a little girl or a little boy
• 9:44 - Getting into trouble
• 10:37 - A cagole
• 12:07 - One or the other crazy person
• 12:53 - Maronner
• 1:59 PM - The dungeon

Transcript of the video

Hello everyone, I hope you are well.

I find you today for a new video. Today, we are going to talk about Marseille.

Marseille is a city in the South of France, but we are going to talk more specifically about the language of Marseille, vocabulary words that are specific to the city of Marseille and its region.

This video may be of interest to you if you plan to go on vacation to Marseille or if you want to live in Marseille.

Of course, in Marseille, you can speak like anywhere else in France. Of course, we will understand you. The idea is to see some specificities, some particular words that are used only there.

Before we start, let's talk a little about this city of Marseille. Marseille is a city where there is a lot of sun. It is a city where there is a port. This city is located on the Mediterranean Sea and it is very famous all over the world for its Marseille soap.

It is also very well known for its soccer club, the OM, Olympique de Marseille. The people of Marseille are very proud of their city and very proud of their soccer club. Marseille is also known for its culinary specialties, notably the bouillabaisse, which is a fish soup, but also for the panisses. This is chickpea flour. We make a paste with it and we fry it. Marseille is also known for the pastis, which is a... which is an anise-based alcohol.

Throughout the world, Marseille is also known for its creeks. They are magnificent places where, in fact, you have to make a small hike and you arrive on small beaches, small creeks and it is really magnificent.

Marseille is also known in France for its very famous rappers, for example the group IAM or the rapper Soprano and Jul. Maybe you know some of these rappers. Marseille is also known for its beautiful architecture. There is the MuCEM, which is an art museum.

There is the old port, where it is very pleasant to walk, the small streets, but also the Good Mother. A church on top of a hill with a statue of the Virgin Mary.

There is also a series that is shot in Marseille, which you may know. This series is called Plus belle la vie. It started almost 20 years ago and it is quite interesting, especially for you if you are looking for series to watch in French.

Because it's a short 20-minute format and this series is on every day. So it's, it's happening in real time. If it's Christmas Day, it's going to be Christmas Day in the series. It's interesting to learn vocabulary related to current events. This series is inspired by a neighborhood in Marseille called Le Panier. It's a neighborhood where it's very pleasant to walk around. You can buy Marseille soap, there are small streets with plants.

It's very, very nice to walk around there. Let's move on to the language part.

Marseille is also very well known for its Marseille accent. In France, there are obviously many accents, but often, we talk about the Marseille accent, which is a very singing accent.

There are specificities to this accent. I'll show you an excerpt where you can hear people from Marseilles talking.

Oh no, no, ma'am, I'm not in this. You know, I'll tell you in two words, I'll vote for anybody, but make it clean.

Olala, it's like a bouillabaisse without fish. No, you need an accent, and you need a Marseillais in Marseilles.

If you go to Marseille, you may have difficulty understanding certain words because of this accent. For example, the Marseillais, on words that end in "hein", will add a "g" when speaking.

They will accentuate a little. For example, instead of saying bread and "paing".

I don't do accents very well but I think you get the idea that it's a little bit different. They will also accentuate the R's very strongly.

They're going to do them in a slightly more prolonged way. As I said, the rhythm of the phrases is also different, it's a little bit more singing.

Let's move on to vocabulary specifically used in Marseille. There are many words that are used in Marseille. We will look at 10 of them together.

To help you understand these words. As usual, I'm going to give you some context, but here in this video, I've done it a little bit differently.

I went searching on Twitter for tweets that use these words. That way, you'll see real Marseillais using these words in sentences. The first word that is used all the time in Marseille is the word "tarpin".

Tarpin simply means "very" or "a lot" depending on the sentence, for example, I can say: there is a lot of people at the Velodrome. The Velodrome is the soccer stadium of the city of Marseille. As I said, the people of Marseille are very proud of their soccer team.

And the Velodrome is the stadium. If I say that there are a lot of people at the Velodrome, it means that there are a lot of people at the stadium.

Let's move on to the tweets with contextualizations by Marseillais themselves.

The green jogging suit from Zara, it is tarpin ugly. It means that this garment is very ugly. It is tarpin ugly, it is very ugly, very ugly.

This week went by so fast. That means the week went by very fast. We quickly got to the weekend.

A date at the skating rink, it's tarpin stylish. "Date" is a date, we also say that in French. This person thinks that a date at the ice rink, where there is ice, where you have ice skates, is tarpin stylish, it's very nice, it's very stylish.

Let's move on to the second word. It's un gâté, a spoiled one. It's a synonym for a hug in the Marseilles language.

If I say give your grandma a treat, that means give her a hug.

Bummer. Degun simply means nobody. There's a gut here. It means there's nobody. Again, it's a word that is used constantly by Marseillaise. Let's get to the tweets with some context.

Since I've been redoing my room, I've become a handyman. I need some help, I'm doing pretty good.

That means I don't need anyone to do any DIY. Is it just me or is degun in a good mood today?

That means it's me or no one is in a good mood today, everyone is in a bad mood. I just want to sleep for a week without waking up.

So I just want to sleep for a week without anyone waking me up. A colleague, a colleague all over France, it's very simple. It's a person you work with.

A work colleague. In the South and in Marseille, a colleague means both a person with whom you work. But it is also used to talk about a friend. I went to see the soccer with my colleagues.

It means that you went to see a soccer game with your friends. It is according to the context that you will be able to see, that you will be able to understand if they are his friends or his colleagues of work.

A minot. A minot in Marseille is simply a child.

If I'm talking about a kitty, I'm talking about a child. If I'm talking about my kitty, I'm talking about my child. There, you see, in this tweet, we see a child drawing on a couch.

And the person puts... Imagine, you come home from work - work is work - and you see this, what do you do? And there, the person answers I leave him at the side of the road, the kid, so I leave him at the side of the highway my child.

And here, you see, a father is playing ping-pong with his son and he writes mini ping-pong with the kiddo while waiting for the game, so he must be waiting for a game on TV. Certainly ping-pong. In the meantime, he says he's playing ping-pong with his son, with the kid, the child.

And the last tweet, a kid disappeared in Marseille. So, again, it's a child has disappeared, it's a little less happy example.

To get into a fight. To get into an argument means to argue with someone. You get into a fight with someone, you argue with someone.

I'm getting into trouble with you. You can also say "to get into trouble", it means that you are looking for trouble, you are looking for problems with someone, you are trying to create a conflict.

I'm going to freak out. I'm pissed off. My neighbors getting into a fight at 8 a.m. on a Sunday drives me crazy. Here, he says that his neighbors argue at 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning. Here we see an example in pictures.

It's a tik tok when you're in the car with your buddy's parents and they get stuck.

We see a dog who is a little embarrassed. It's to say when you're in a car and your friend's parents are arguing, you're a little embarrassed. So they get into a jam.

A cagole. When we say that a girl is a cagole, we mean that she is a girl who is a little... a little vulgar. So, for example, she will wear a lot of make-up, she will have very long and colored nails or she will wear very short skirts.

It's a girl that we find a little... a little vulgar. I show you examples with pictures. So there, you see, there is a young girl who made very long nails and who writes "your cagole pref".

Pref means favorite. So it's self-deprecating. She makes fun of herself a little. She says "ah look, I made nails of cagole".

Here we see a pair of shoes with a leopard print. And the girl, again, says I sorted out and found my favorite shoes. Yes, I wear them, so she really puts them on.

Yes, I like them. And yes, I'm a big girl.

Again, she laughs at herself a little bit by saying Ah yes, these shoes are a bit of a drag, but I like them.

Recently, the fashion brand Balenciaga launched a collection of handbags that it called Cagole, certainly in reference to this Marseilles word.

The next word is the word crazy. If I say you're completely crazy, it just means you're completely crazy.

So you are not well in your head. In Marseille, we say fada.

Let's move on to examples found on Twitter.

I watch channel 24, it's a channel on television. The guy, so the man, is too crazy with his brain, he wants to disguise himself as a crocodile to approach one. The crocodile, you see, it's a very dangerous animal and so she says that he is crazy because to approach the crocodile, he also wants to dress up as a crocodile.

Second example is the one I was giving you. You want to drive me crazy today? You want to drive me crazy today?

Let's move on to the second to last word which is "maronner".

If I say I'm mumbling, it means I'm grumbling, I'm sulking, I'm a bit like that. I'm not happy.

Something bothered me, that I'm marooning, I often grumble, it's a bit for nothing.

My sister is in Zanzibar, I'm having a blast.

It is in young language, serious, it means a lot, but it is used by young people everywhere in France.

So, my sister is in Zanzibar, I'm grumbling. That means I'm a little jealous, I grumble, I sulk.

The people behind the wheel, they make me lose my mind. Afterwards, I'm here, I'm marooned all alone in my car.

This sentence is a bit complex because it's a very, very colloquial sentence, with a lot of little expressions that have been added. But if you get the gist, it's when people don't drive well.

So, this young lady is in her car. She's grumbling about it, so she's grumbling in her car, she's tired of people driving badly.

And now to the last word, which is the dungeon.

When we talk about the doldrums, we are talking about a place in the sun. If I say I'm in the doldrums, it means there's a lot of sun on me and I might get sunburned.

We can say don't put yourself in the middle of the heat, come to the shade. So, where you are protected from the sun.

Let's take a look at two tweets to put the word kettle in context.

Hiking in the middle of the heat is unpleasant, even dangerous. If you leave earlier, you can reach the summit when it's sunny and you're in your car before the heat hits.

So you see this person says it's not good to hike at the time when the sun is beating down the hardest, so when you're in the middle of the doldrums, there's no shade.

And finally, we see someone here who has put a hat on her dog. So she's putting on, I swear, my poppy darling, that's probably the name of the dog poppy, that you have a hat face. And with this hot weather, it's safer to put it on.

She means that in view of the sun, the sun that is very strong, it is safer for her dog to go out with a hat on his head.

Here we are, we have just seen ten expressions from Marseille, if you know others, do not hesitate to put them in comments.

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