#langage language

[team-council-two]

Question for Alpha: any advice for making up French names for Spy ocs? Or French names in general? Thank you!

i find it difficult to be honest- i am *horrid* at naming characters and part of why i highly dislike making OCs is having to name them. here is what guidelines i would use though, mostly common sense/quite generic-

-actors, singers and shit often have "catchy" names/pseudonyms that fare well for this purpose, + it will be easier for you to find a pronounciation for these, nicknames and so on. you however do have to check around whether it is a name at all or a made up thing for the case of scene names, and be careful about 1:1 copy pastes because if a bitch named spy jean dujardin i dont think id survive it. if you dont know any im sure shit like le festival de cannes, the wikipedia pages on french actors/singers n shit and so on will have these easy to find

-just... pick up the french calendar with the assigned saints days. the names on here are strikingly common and you wont fuck it up like that. works the same as above minus checking if its a name at all

-be weary of "french baby names" sites. as in. sites that target english speaking audiences. just drag the baby names sites that are in french instead, theyll do the work heaps better than their american counterparts. dont forget to google anything you like ! and similarly, google the pronounciation. as a french person i can guarantee you most american medias do not know what a real french accent or french pronounciation is like, they likely mix that up with quebequois but im not sure.

-i would try to cross check info between how common a name was at a given time for babies born around whenever your oc was, its meaning, its social connotations and so on, while still remaining conscious of how it is perceived nowadays. bc ill be honest with you. do i think the name jacques for example is time relevant ? yes ! do i however inevitably think of my grandfather (+90 y/o) due to how i do not know a single person of spy's age (40-50) to have such a name ? yyyyeah.

-i would pay peculiar attention to whether a name is pompous or, on the countary, known to be brutish and unrefined, given who spy is. i would be vigilant about names that grew in popularity due to americans, as those are the ones with the worst reputation by far. If the name you picked for the bitch starts with a K, i urge you to please reconsider for example because odds are you are going Right for this (for those confused : there was a surge of children named kevin and the like after the success of home alone. this... was seen as quite lacking elegance by many, as if nowadays meeting a child named naruto in a sense.)

-check if there are jokes about said names. the name marcel for example is commonly used for jokes about truck drivers/people lacking delicateness

-the more religious the name (specifically catholic) the more spy will seem upper class, stuck up and overall shitty. i cannot speak on the matter of jewish names however for i do not know the topic, but i promise you naming that bitch melchior, balthazar or gaspard absolutely would fit if you want him to be perfectly slappable in the most refined way. remember, the french are not religious !

-please do not venture down the path of composed names unless copying those exactly. you will lack the french instinct of what can be put together and what cannot. paul-clément is gonna look like you pulled out a list from google of names and decided just putting them together would work. i also would like for bitches to not name him jean-marie due to how the french brain unfortunately has been fed with enough political drama lately to immediately follow this with le pen, and i would assume that most fanfiction writers out here would rather avoid naming spy after our local trump.

-nothing replaces simply asking for a french bitch's opinion on the matter, except for perhaps asking several french bitches. this would be better, given the regional bias and the varying experiences of every of us. pretty sure my one-hour-away-from-paris ass sure dont be crossing paths with people of names similar to the ones of bourgogne where cows lay happy in the grass and actual cool food is available locally like tasty wine and cheese

so this would summarize it, i think. i am afraid i seldom pick names for my ocs, for i am the kind of boy who just asks for his moms opinion.

[team-council-two]

So how is Spy a special case?

*is excited*

(for context, in a previous post, i added the tags " i could write an entire book on how unfamiliar french people in medias seem to actual french people, spy is an odd case; ask me about him")

aiight, you know what you signed up for, get ready for one hell of a presentation, ft terminal verbosis frenchosis ! this will be in three parts, of course, because three is a good number and the mere concept of having 3 parts should give you all a headache (look ray i didnt add a n this time)

wait shit im not even sure mistral is a spy, hold on,

aw fck thats for real ones

anyways femme fatale trope, next question

HA gotcha, you didnt think id let yall go with just one sentence huh ? so. our fella is french. our fella is a spy. our fella is a huge piece of shit. extremely common, alright ? outright overused archetype. eeeexcept that the combo's execution here REALLY stands out. how so ?

well, let me ask you a quick question. do you think the fact that he is french, and the fact that he is an evil bastard, and the fact that he is a spy are linked ?

well ill answer that for you. nope. valve treated these three traits remarkably separately. the way he speaks french in game is relatively polite, and the insults he throws around are, i checked, exclusively in english. he is surprisingly free of the usual way medias make "being evil" and "being french" be a hand in hand thing, and similarly free of the one that seems to indicate that Because you are french Of Course you are a spy. in other words, rather than being a walking glamour stereotype of sorts or an obnoxious asshole the likes of which we have seen hundreds of, this is a godawful guy that also happens to be a french snob, and that also happens to be a spy.

compare with, say, our lady mistral above who has a shitton of taunts in french, who embraces that whole sexy lady deal, deliberately plays on it and so on. difference is miles.

and now if you followed you did catch i said french snob rather than just french, there is a reason behind this, so allow me to get on part 2, which i promise will be WAY more verbose-

so

im not sure why but american medias love to have peppy rich french fashionistas in their shit. theyre cute, hyper, sheltered as fuck, and the entire deal is weird bc these people seem like aliens to actual french people who tend to care about fashion in pretty normal amounts and definitely do not have that many grands to bust into it. *yes* we pride ourselves in having a pretty neat fashion industry, but in a similar way as the american and the german boast about their cars. we are NOT obsessed with it okay. anyways, sometimes writers have the decency of making these characters cunts, but not always. but what doesnt vary is the trope seems to play out like ah yes, your average french- which is fucking baffling. and is the part taking us aback.

see, we HAVE the evil breed of those characters too in our shit. comedic shit, to be precise. a rundown of our humor is it often is situational humor - stupid outlandish situations with equally stupid archetypal characters, their personality equally pushed into the absurd, all of that more often than not thinly veiling some pretty heavy social commentary. in other words, you often laugh at the evil cop/rich factory/big restaurant owner/politician/etc getting karma'd in mind boggingly bizzare and hilarious ways, while clearly showing them as evil for mistreating subordinates (and often getting shit for it sooner or later) and as simpering cowards towards literally anyone who has any kind of superior position to them whatsoever.

in other words, context matters. where in american shit they are often allies or friends or comedic relief of sorts through being french/annoying or just villains, in french shit they more often than not are *targets* of some kind of events and shown to be ridiculous through other means than their obsession for fashion or whatever.

am i saying that valve did this ?

...yeah. thats a very bold statement, but yes. i mean, cmon,

see, i am overall basing this on the fact that ingame spy is so fucking similar to many, many, many of Louis de Funès' roles, and even his face, it outright had me searching around the wiki for some kind, any kind of claim of inspiration from valve-

he reads exactly as one of them ! rich cunt obsessed with money, constantly mocking people, constantly complaining about everything ever, fakely polite, not opposed to doing vile acts to have his way, extremely menacing face, *the same fucking laugh*, and the fact that characters played by this guy have remarkably often have what we call a couillon de fils, a dumbfuck of a loser ass son, if you will.

the only differences really are from comic spy, who reads far less like this. he's still well executed mind you, but he (especially @miss pauling) reads as far kinder than this dude's characters usually are, and he is a bit more... stretched, both physically and in behaviour, than the actor's goblin build and attitude, as game spy seems to be unable to stand straight whereas the comic one seems to have no difficulty with this, and the similar range of expressiveness that also ports 1:1 is game exclusive as well. and finally, comic spy also was not given the occasion to cuss people out, so.

anyways my point mostly amounts to, if you manage to make french people think of an emblematic actor beloved by many, rather than just make us go through the usual whiplash of "how is that a normal french person to american people ???", you are probably doing something right.

in addition to this wall of text, i am begging you all to watch this, it should help understand what i meant by our breed of humor, and what i mean by "spy could have been played by this dude no problem"

now, onto part 3,

well once you said he is a pathetic wet cat man you summed it up really.

for all the class he has, for all the money he has, for all the. everything ? he still is pathetic. he still is simply seen as a mean as fuck loser either trying to drown his failures as a father with expensive tastes, or simply amoral and unsympathetic because of his concerns being about money rather than about humans. he still is headcanoned as stinking by most of the fandom. nobody respects the fucken spy. he comes across as haughty and it only makes people want to shit on him some more.

really, it is pretty much everything I explained in the two points above. the patheticness helps with making it so he is not a stereotype, and it helps making it clear he is supposed to be representative of rich pretentious cunts rather than of french people.

so, he is a huge bitch, and ironically, this makes him a blorbo to us, bc who doesnt love a good ole flawed character ?

his whole french deal is not shown as eccentric or what makes him a loser but just a coincidence, in a sense. and you'd be surprised by how much of a breath of fresh air this is to french people. shitty in a realistic way rather than a made up clown, and in a way we can recognize in our own medias. it also is neat from the, err, fandom pov ? because you get to develop his frenchness and assholeness and spyness separately, since they are elements implemented for the sake of themselves rather than as a stereotypical whole. you get to have *fun* with him.

SO i think i ran out of things to blabber about. hope it makes sense tho. but i guess it really is about. not *quite* representation because we do not see ourselves in spy, of course, but way more about our culture not being bastardized and being turned into a joke about eccentrics at best, or hatred about seductive women and effeminate/homosexual men at worst, + having a fresh execution on tropes that else usually would get our eyes rolling.

alpha, over and out

[team-council-two]

follow up to my previous ask to Alphameter- more context; Scout and Spy are talking, Spy just explained a thing that’s basic knowledge to the people who’ve been in the situation/setting longer, and now he has to do it a second time with a second thing

excerpt; The Frenchman pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “[French interjection]…On every (speech continues etc.)

I think just mon Dieu would work best ? ty for all the info !!

so- short answer ?

yes it fits

long answer ? I do not know if you will like this but here is a very dad answer to this.

when an exhausted parent explains several times something to their neurodivergent kid, they start "counting" the times they gave the explanation. they just naturally do it.

my parents call this "éditions" (lit : publication). Première édition (when they already expect my ass to just not understand shit), seconde édition, tho past that they may just say troisième or troisième fois (third, third time), and theyll also say shit like dernière édition/dernière fois (last time, warning they will not repeat).

So. you could have mon Dieu (or bon sang), or you could have, seconde édition, because lets be real spy aint having no fuckin patience with this brat

[team-council-two]

hi hello :D hope y’all are having a wonderful day-

thank you so much for making this blog because holy shit it’s gonna be so helpful <3

how do you say “Jesus Christ” in French ? context being it’s an exasperated exclamation

1. Many thanks - Aschen

Always happy to help! Now shower us with prompts and questions :) - Ray

Aw hey, thanks a ton - Cosmas

alpha here !! have a nice day too ! Personally, I'm glad you think this'll be useful. I just hope you and other people alike will be ready for how fuckin utterly disgustingly verbose I am, as expected of the person of this blog assuming authority on questions regarding spy (and perhaps what little scout could hope to have of french), and I am wishing you to manage to extract some glimpses of useful informations from my endless blabber still. (i also would like to apologise for my... sporadic use of ' and caps. i unfortunately have spent a good part of my life imitating dave strider's typing style, for i am the mandatory homestuck fan per project.)

onto the point !

well, what a simple yet interesting question, which yet easily unfolds into quite the lot of considerations to ponder !

so see, i am already forced to explain a little french thing known as our special relationship with religion, or as i fondly call it, our hellbentness on loudly frothing at the mouth whenever the church and catholicism is mentionned and our tendency to enjoy concepts such as the guillautine and the séparation de l'état et de l'église (chuch state separation for you English speaking friends)

This love for our république and révolution influenced us culturally a lot. In short; we do not refer to god for much or anything, including for the use religion based cusses, simply because we were hellbent on removing the catholic church from as much of our life as possible. It wasnt just royalty ! (we had a toast in the honor of the english queens death btw). But, because there always is a but, these cusses and the like still exist in french, and Spy is still someone who lives around americans a lot. so im assuming hed do the same as me, aka pick up a lot of language habits that youd usually not develop as much. this DOES include using religious based speech despite it all. A common consequence is, even if you don't say oh mon dieu/mon dieu a lot usually, well… Live long enough in America, and you will. But, because of course, there's always a but ! we do this because they have strikingly similar connotations ! Both can be used for surprise, fear and exhaustion alike. So. Let me actually answer this.

First, Jésus Christ is how you say it in french but it's pronounced completely different, like jeh-zus creest. Second, that said its not one i'd quite use interchangeably, at least for this case. You see, not only it sounds awkward as fuck in French and would be a real tongue twister to say in the middle of an English sentence (Ray's post on switching from Russian to English being hard also applies to French), it also would be that French uses this one a bit more restrictively : it's a thing you say more for surprising situations rather than quite exhaustion. We can but it's not our first choice. (also, on a side note, doux Jésus, lit. sweet jesus, is precisely for pleasant surprises too, as well as fear bound surprise. On a similar vein, the exclamation "Jesus !" will more often than not be better translated by "Christ !", but it really is. um. a nun/old time thing. It really is not common.)

Ironically mon dieu/bon dieu would likely be more fitting, bon sang (bloody hell ? Except that it's just. literally good blood.) but only if you follow it with a full mocking sentence like "bon sang, you are so fucking stupid it baffles me !…" or something like "bon sang, mais c'est quoi ce bordel ?" for full on, jesus christ what is this shit ? yknow. you even can use bon sang de bon soir. This whole thing reads as much more firm and almost angry compared to what you want, likely, tho. The absolute fucking peak of tired exhaustion, which is what I assume you're going for ? a standalone "mon Dieu mon Dieu mon Dieu mon Dieu…" Complete with head shaking and rubbing your temples. Bonus for being a classic movie reference (le grand restaurant, any Louis de Funès fan here ? he might pop up a lot in what i refer to). "Doux Jésus de doux Jésus de doux Jésus…" also works the same, minus the cool reference. A good ole "oh putain" for when you realize sth is going fucky is good too, the classic "merde/et merde" also is commonly adviseable.

There are many options because despite Ray's insistance that French cussing is weak compared to Russian one, we do have an entire art of cussing a lot, cussing in specific ways and cussing in stupid and artful ways. please do not hesitate to provide more context and/or the paragraph in which this pops up. but overall ? since your audience will be in its majority either american, or french people used enough to american english, i wouldnt worry too much about jésus christ not being understood or noticed as an "error" despite its use being a tiny tiny bit different. This is overall nitpick. but hey ! Guess that's what we are here for.

[team-council-two]

Hello, small question for Alphameter, what's something a French speaker would explain if caught off guard?

To be clear it's when you're thinking in your native lang so when you get spooked you often loudly exclaim in it

Sorry for incoherency, hope everyone has a great day! :)

good question. we are more prone to using noises ? like AH (alternatively BAH) or OH and things like that. I would also refer to curses like oh putain, merde, and so on, but im not sure. might be because we lack those precious very short words americans have like FUCK or DAMN that are easy to exclaim without a thought. maybe QUOI ? or sth like that ?

ngl ive been thinking about this for the past two hours and im genuinely just. i have no idea. my dad and i troll a lot my mom by like, turning the lights off when shes a room or things like that, shes v easy to spook, and she always just screams yknow ? so im just. yeah. genuinely got no idea.

what i can tell you tho is that its usually followed by, bah tu m'as fait peur ! (oh you scared me), ah je t'avais pas vu (didnt see ya) or things like that.

i will sit here and cry and hope other french people will have ideas

[team-council-two]

question for alpha:

what do you make of the stereotype that the french are cowards?

do you believe that people are straying away from this stereotype?

ive been getting into fandoms where french people are written like this and i would like to hear some perspective.

thanks

oh boy, *cracks knuckles*

so. i will be honest with you. i do not know where this stereotype comes from. or well i have a very vague guess but im not sure. i asked people around and they too just went big shrug. my only source of confirmation has been wikipedia.

see my closest guess here is that americans consider our surrender against the nazis in WWII to have been a cowardly thing or something, i dunno. weird takes on europe going on here and they seem to think we didn't fight before said surrender just cos only 46 days or sth bc apparently, blizkrieg who ? never heard of her or the absolute devastation they laid on my people. it also strikes me as a not particularly international take bc i genuinely never had heard it before being on socmedias used by americans. hell, the wikipedia page on french stereotypes lists it as exclusively american. this would match up with americans' tendency to equate cowardice and bravery as something the domain of war, which they care a lot about, whereas we just simply have other concerns, no offense.

anyways, see the stereotype we french people have about ourselves (and that actually is kinda relevant about reality), and a lot of people too, including americans, is closer to this-

thats french for we yell all the fuckin time and make a ruckus about everything ever. les gueuleurs quoi.

although support of unions is lessening due to the current political crisis we have been stuck in for god only knows how long, the french has a large culture about revolution, unionizing, human rights, left wings politics and shit like this. it may or may not be war every fuckin day at my home actually because of the union stuff (not shitting on unions shitting on my dad's terrible work homelife separation and his tendency to yell at the TV every night, bc apparently the TV is a conversation partner but your kid asking you to stop screaming isnt).

we just are known to protest a lot and backtalk to politicians and shit like that. and it seems that the cowardly stereotype is lessening because people on social medias are starting to point out, hey ! this isnt being lazy actually. the french is actively fuckin. blocking roads and burning shit and all that and being cunts to their politicians, and they have universal healthcare and a decent retirement system which we are realizing we fuckin wish we had in this dystopia of a life. maybe theyre doing sth right. (and well theyre right unfortunately the french itself is slowly forgetting that.) this aside yeah recognizing that making a fuss about your rights is a good thing the french do is kind of incompatible with the idea that the french are cowards, especially with the recent crisis of the gilets jaunes where people protested tirelessly despite actively getting wounded and arrested and disabled for life and killed by cops. and it really has been like this for a good while too, since industrialization or so, when capitalism became widespread.

so in other words. subjectively ? i do think the stereotype is unbased/pretty darn recent and mostly a cultural difference, and nor can i really explain it besides blaming Capitalist Propaganda. i also do not know if objectively such stereotype is getting less support, but subjectively, from what ive read around and so on, people seem to be a bit catching up, and seem to be accepting that unionizing and strikes are NOT a laziness thing but genuine bravery when facing a system that is strikingly inegalitarian and running well oiled with the blood of the people.

take this as you want. i have to admit this is a bit personal because americans' agressiveness towards the french have genuinely made me feel like i was unwelcome online, ive seen people wish that france would sink under the sea or specifically would get nuked, with no single hint of irony whatsoever. and among the animosity found here, ive always keenly felt the difference between what was considered hardworking and invested for the french, and what was considered lazy and cowardly for americans and the faint smell of capitalist propaganda hiding behind it all

Addendum: So yeah that stereotype about the french being cowards who surrender immediately, of course it exists in Germany too. And it's also most likely due to WW2 and propaganda related to that.

- Aschen

True to the post-Soviet world as well.

- Ray.

[team-council-two]

ok this needs context, bc ill be blunt, this is a joke lol

this word doesnt exist, its a nickname my mom made up for one of my birds, but that said anyone who is french could understand it in theory ? bc its structure is p simple : bisou (kiss) + net (suffix that approximatively means means small one) = small kissable one

you find this suffix in words like fripounet (fripon/little rascal), crapounet (frog-like little one, same meaning as previous word basically) and other things like that, whiiiich. arent in the dictionary but are more of a casual speech thing.

words of advice though : do not think you can just add -net (the t is silent btw but modifies how the e is said) to any word to turn it into a nickname, its not how it works unfortunately.

anyways i just think itd be hilarious ok

[team-council-two]

There is this French, uh, not tongue twister but close enough about six saws sawing six cypress trees, I think? But I’ve heard it long time ago and have no idea how it goes exactly.

six scies scient six cyprès ? yeah that would be it. little to never heard it but it is a thing. thank you for bringing it to me !

the full version seems to be "Si ces six scies ci scient sans soucis ces six cyprès ci, ces six cent six scies ci scient sans soucis ces six cent six cyprès ci."

if these six saws saw with no trouble these six cypress trees, those six hundred saws saw with no trouble those six hundred cypress trees

they seem to be classified a slightly different category- trompe oreille, literally ear misleaders. it is because unlike tongue twisters that are somewhat easy to understand, those sound like gibberish and are hard to understand, usually due to repeats of the same syllaber. this is distinct, because if youre willing to count to get the right number of repeats, this is pretty easy to pronounce ! it wont particularly lead you to tumble over words.