In our previous lesson, we learned that rester is a false cognate meaning "to stay/to remain." In this lesson, we will continue to explore the various uses of rester and focus on the impersonal verb il reste (there remains). We will also look at the meaning of le reste (the rest) as a noun.
The phrase il reste is a bit tricky as it does not necessarily mean "he/it stays." Indeed, the construction il reste is what we call an impersonal verb, as the subject of the sentence (il) doesn’t stand for anything or anyone in particular. Hence the translation of il reste is open to interpretation and will vary. The impersonal pronoun il can be equivalent to "there" in English. In the example below, the construction il reste + noun means "there’s also" in the context of the video:
Et ensuite il reste un dessert en supplément à deux euros soixante
And afterward there's also a dessert for an additional two euros sixty
Caption 10, Alsace 20 - Grain de Sel: Au Caveau de l'étable à Niederbronn-les-Bains
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In another example, we have the expression ce qu’il en reste, which simply means "what’s left of it." Il is omitted in the translation as it only has a grammatical function in French and is therefore not needed in English:
Ce qu'il en reste.
What remains of it.
Caption 14, Arles - Un Petit Tour d'Arles
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Il reste (there remains) often comes in a negative form, such as il ne reste que... This is a very useful expression to convey that "only x remains":
Maintenant il ne reste que le cadre.
Now only the frame remains.
Another variation of il ne reste que is il ne reste plus que, which means "there remains only":
Du fait de nombreuses fusions,
Because of many mergers,
il ne reste plus qu'une société anonyme de cartes de crédit
there remains only one limited liability credit card company
Caption 15, Patricia - Pas de crédit dans le monde des clones
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Il ne reste plus que can also translate as "all that’s left":
Aujourd'hui, derrière, malheureusement,
Today, behind it, unfortunately,
il ne reste plus qu'un parking.
all that's left is a parking lot.
Caption 25, Voyage en France - Fontainebleau
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And there is yet another way to interpret il ne reste plus que. It can also mean "there is only x left":
Il ne reste plus que cette porte
There is only this door left
Caption 22, Voyage en France - Fontainebleau
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We also have the negative expression il ne reste plus rien, which means "there’s nothing left":
Donne-moi tout, même quand il [ne] reste plus rien
Give it all to me, even when there's nothing left
Caption 1, Corneille - Comme un fils
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What’s more, you can even throw a personal pronoun such as me in the mix. In the example below, we have il ne me reste plus qu’à, which is a complex turn of phrase best translated as "all that remains for me":
Il [ne] me reste plus qu'à vous souhaiter un très bon appétit
All that remains for me to do is wish you a very good appetite
Caption 114, 4 Mains pour 1 Piano - Médaillon de Homard - Part 3
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Indeed, French speakers often insert a personal pronoun in between il reste, as in il nous reste (we still have). The personal pronoun nous becomes the subject pronoun "we":
Il nous reste encore quelques minutes de cuisson pour le homard.
We still have a few minutes of cooking time left for the lobster.
Caption 15, 4 Mains pour 1 Piano - Médaillon de Homard - Part 2
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In another video, il ne nous reste plus que translates as "we only have x remaining":
Et là, il [ne] nous reste plus que deux colonnes de marbre
And here we only have two marble columns remaining
Caption 16, Arles - Un Petit Tour d'Arles
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The expression il ne vous reste plus grand-chose (you don’t have much left) works in a similar way. Once again, the personal pronoun (vous) becomes the subject in English:
Et ça a bien marché puisqu'il [ne] vous reste plus grand-chose.
And business has been good since you don't have that much left.
Caption 52, Arles - Le marché d'Arles
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There are many other ways of using il reste, which you can explore here. All this may seem a bit complicated, but fortunately, when reste is used as a noun, it's much simpler! Le reste is a direct cognate that simply means "the rest":
Tout le reste du temps, je dors là où je suis assise
The rest of the time, I sleep right where I'm sitting
Caption 15, Le Journal - Les navigateurs du Vendée Globe
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However, the plural les restes takes on a new meaning. Now we're talking about "leftovers" or "leftover food":
Bon, souvent parce qu'il y a des restes,
Well, often because there are leftovers,
donc il faut éliminer les restes.
so it's necessary to eliminate the leftovers.
Caption 9, TV Vendée - Fêtes de fin d’année : manger léger et équilibré
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Finally, to be clear, "to rest" in English is NOT rester but se reposer or reposer:
Tu peux admirer le paysage et te reposer.
You can admire the scenery and rest.
Caption 45, Le saviez-vous? - Comment voyager?
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Maintenant, on va la laisser reposer
Now we are going to let it rest
Caption 32, Alsace 20 - Grain de Sel: le Lycée hôtelier Alexandre Dumas
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Now that you have worked so hard, il ne vous reste plus qu’à vous reposer (there is nothing left for you to do but rest)!
Coffee… For many, it’s more than a drink: it’s a pastime, it’s a passion. France is indeed a coffee-drinking nation, and for French people there is no greater pleasure than sipping on une tasse de café (a cup of coffee) on the terrasse (terrace) of a local café while watching the world go by. Do you know how to order a cup of coffee in a French café? The French have their own distinctive habits and ways of enjoying their café. Let's find out what they are and explore some coffee-related vocabulary.
French people enjoy prendre le café (having coffee, literally "taking coffee") in un café:
Il y a un café pas loin d'ici.
There's a café not far from here.
Caption 73, Conversations au parc - Ep. 3: C'est à qui ce sac à dos ?
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Après on va prendre le café,
Afterward we go for coffee,
après on va... cuisiner les produits du marché.
afterward we go... cook the products from the market.
Caption 34, Arles - Le marché d'Arles
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On a nice day, people like to drink their coffee sur la terrasse (on the terrace), even if they have to pay a little more for the privilege. In some cafés or restaurants, coffee is often plus cher en terrasse (more expensive on the terrace) than at le comptoir (the counter):
Je prendrai mon café sur la terrasse.
I will take my coffee on the terrace.
Caption 21, Le saviez-vous? - La conjugaison au présent, au passé et au futur
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Le comptoir (the counter) is the place where you can order and pay for your coffee:
Tu t'es levée et t'as payé au comptoir
You stood up and you paid at the counter
Caption 20, Oldelaf - Les mains froides
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But before we pay for our coffee, let's find out how to order it. If you simply ask for un café, you'll get an espresso, typically served in a small china cup with two sugar cubes on the saucer and often with a glass of water. It’s a coffee that is similar to what Sacha serves her boss Barbarella at work, un café noir et sans sucre (black, no sugar):
Apporte-moi un café, noir, sans sucre.
Bring me a coffee, black, no sugar.
Caption 28, Extr@ - Ep. 10 - Annie proteste
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If you want milk in your coffee, you will have to specify. You may opt for un café noisette, espresso topped with a splash of milk, which gives it a rich noisette (hazelnut) color, NOT a hazelnut flavor:
Un café noisette, s’il vous plaît.
A coffee with a splash of milk, please.
If you want cream or a bit more milk in your coffee, you should ask for un café crème or un crème (strictly speaking, this is coffee with a cream foam, though sometimes milk is used):
Un café crème, s'il vous plaît.
A coffee with cream foam, please.
There is also what we call un café au lait (coffee with milk). This usually isn't available in cafés, as it is a breakfast beverage consumed at home. Indeed, many French people start their day with un bol ("a bowl," or a large cup held with both hands) de café au lait. Joanna shows us where she keeps her bols (bowls) and her tasses (cups) in her apartment:
Et ici un petit buffet avec des assiettes,
And here, a small cabinet with plates,
des bols, des verres, des tasses...
bowls, glasses, cups...
Caption 33, Joanna - Son nouvel appartement
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Instead of a café au lait, you may prefer a weaker coffee with extra water, in which case you'll ask for un café allongé (a long/diluted coffee) or un café américain (an americano, or espresso with hot water). Since it's espresso-based, French coffee is stronger and comes in smaller cups than American drip coffee. The coffee roaster in the video below sells all kinds of coffees best suited for making café allongé and américain:
C'est vraiment pour les gens qui aiment... le genre... café américain.
It's really for people who like... americano-style coffee.
Justement, on dit ça, café très allongé.
Indeed, that's what we say, a very diluted coffee.
Captions 39-40, Joanna - Torréfaction du faubourg
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Other coffee varieties have a very mild flavor better suited for une cafetière à piston (a French press):
Donc c'est un café assez doux
So it's a coffee that is quite mild,
qui est très bien dans la cafetière à piston.
that is very good in a French press.
Caption 33, Joanna - Torréfaction du faubourg
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At the other end of the spectrum, there are much stronger coffees to help you kickstart your day. You can order un café serré (a strong coffee), which comes in a tiny cup. There is even a special word to describe a super strong coffee: un café corsé, or alternately un café bien fort (“very strong coffee”). That is exactly how coffee-addict Oldelaf likes it in his tongue-in-cheek song "Le Café":
Pour bien commencer / Ma petite journée / Et me réveiller /
To get a good start / To my nice day / And to wake myself up /
Moi j'ai pris un café / Un arabica / Noir et bien corsé
Me, I had a coffee / An arabica / Black and quite strong
Captions 1-6, Oldelaf et Monsieur D - Le Café
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He also occasionally likes un déca (decaf)...as long as it’s re-caféiné (recaffeinated)!
Je commande un déca / Mais en re-caféiné
I order a decaf / But recaffeinated
Captions 47-48, Oldelaf et Monsieur D - Le Café
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At home, you may prefer instant coffee, un café en poudre (powdered coffee), which you can also use for flavoring desserts:
Mais on peut la parfumer avec des gousses de vanille,
But we can flavor it with vanilla pods,
avec du café en poudre...
with coffee powder...
Captions 45-46, Le Monde - Astuce de chef : comment préparer et décorer des biscuits pour Noël ?
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As you can see, there are many options for different tastes. You can find a more comprehensive list of types of coffees available in France on this page. Here is a summary for you:
un café noir - black coffee (espresso)
un café crème - coffee with cream foam
un café noisette - coffee with a splash of milk
un café allongé - coffee with hot water
un café serré - very strong coffee
un décafféiné/un déca - decaf coffee
un café en poudre - instant/powdered coffee
One more thing. Le pourboire (tipping) is not required in France, but it is good form to leave a little something. A few coins on the table will suffice.
That’s it for our aroma-filled tour. Now you can confidently order une tasse de café (a cup of coffee) in a French café. Enjoy!
In the latest installment of Le Jour où tout a basculé, we find two very different uses of the verb passer. The first is a direct cognate of the English verb "to pass," referring to time passing:
Quatre mois ont passé.
Four months have passed.
Caption 30, Le Jour où tout a basculé - Mon père s'oppose à ma passion - Part 6
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The second, referring to taking an exam, is a false cognate. You might assume that passer son bac means "to pass one's baccalaureate exam." But that's wrong! Passer in this context actually means "to take":
J'ai passé mon bac.
I took my baccalaureate.
Caption 41, Le Jour où tout a basculé - Mon père s'oppose à ma passion - Part 6
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If you want to talk about passing an exam, use the verb réussir (to succeed):
Demain il réussira son examen.
Tomorrow he will pass his exam.
Caption 27, Le saviez-vous? - Conjugaison des verbes du 2ème groupe au futur simple
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Passer's other meanings are more predictable. You can use it transitively (i.e., with an object) to to talk about passing something to someone:
Passe le micro.
Pass the mic.
Caption 54, Arles - Le marché d'Arles
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Or you can use it intransitively (without an object) to describe someone passing by or passing from one place to another:
Tous les ans, effectivement, nous demandons à Saint-Nicolas de passer.
Every year, in fact, we ask Saint Nicholas to pass by.
Caption 44, Grand Lille TV - Focus: la tradition de Saint-Nicolas
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Et maintenant on va passer en cuisine avec le chef.
And now we'll go into the kitchen with the chef.
Caption 33, Parigot - Le bistrot
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Just as you can "pass time" (or "spend time") in English, you can passer du temps in French:
Et puis ça permet de passer un bon petit moment ensemble.
And then it allows us to spend a good bit of time together.
Caption 47, Actus Quartier - Fête de quartier Python-Duvernois - Part 2
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The expression passer pour means "to pass for," as in "to be taken for" or "seem like":
La maîtrise des synonymes vous permettra donc d'élargir votre vocabulaire, mais aussi, de ne pas passer pour un psychopathe.
Mastering synonyms will therefore allow you to broaden your vocabulary, but also to not be taken for a psychopath.
Captions 23-24, Le saviez-vous? - Les synonymes
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As passer is such a versatile verb, it's no surprise that it's used in many, many common expressions. We'll pass along a handful of them to you:
passer à autre chose - to move on to something else
passer à l'acte - to take action
passer à la caisse - to pay/checkout
passer à la télévision - to be on TV
passer à table - to sit down for a meal (also has the figurative meaning "to snitch" or "spill the beans")
passer un coup de fil - to make a phone call
passer de la musique - to put on some music
passer au bloc - to go under the knife/have surgery
passer au peigne fin - to go over with a fine-tooth comb
passer à côté de - to miss/miss out on
laisser passer sa chance - to miss one's chance
You can find even more expressions on this WordReference page.
And to learn about the reflexive form of passer, se passer, check out our lesson Se Passer: To Bypass and Pass By.
In French, there are two different verbs meaning “to find”: trouver and retrouver. Although the two verbs are often interchangeable, the major difference between them has to do with the difference between discovering and retrieving: while trouver usually refers to finding something new, retrouver (which is related to “retrieve”) usually refers to finding something you’ve lost.
If you go to the fantastic food market in Arles, you’ll be overwhelmed by the incredible amount of fresh cheeses you’ll find there:
On trouve les meilleurs fromages de toutes les régions.
We find the best cheeses from all the regions.
Caption 17, Arles - Le marché d'Arles
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On a more emotional note, you might be determined to find a lost love, like the subject of this music video:
Elle a juré de vous retrouver vite
She swore to find you again fast
Caption 11, Yaaz - La place des anges
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“To find” doesn’t only refer to finding a person or a thing. You can also find something intangible, like a concept, feeling, or physical state:
Comme il trouve pas la solution
Since he can't find a solution
Caption 26, Oldelaf - Le monde est beau
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J'ai fait un cauchemar et ne pouvais pas retrouver le sommeil.
I had a nightmare and could not get back to sleep.
In English, "to find" can also be a synonym for “to think,” when expressing an opinion. Likewise, trouver can be a synonym for the standard French words for "to think," penser and croire. Like the person in this video, we at Yabla find foreign language learning to be very important:
Je trouve que c'est très important de...
I think it's very important to...
étudier les langues étrangères.
study foreign languages.
Caption 1, Allons en France - Pourquoi apprendre le français?
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When you make trouver and retrouver reflexive, their meanings become less straightforward. Take a look at this sentence, in which the explorer James Bruce expresses his certainty about the location of the source of the Nile:
Et elle se trouve sûrement là-bas!
And it is certainly over there!
Caption 10, Il était une fois: les Explorateurs - 15. Bruce et les sources du Nil
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Elle se trouve literally means “it is found,” but se trouver can also be translated as “to be located” or simply “to be.” Don’t confuse this with the set expression il se trouve que..., which means “it just so happens that…” or “it turns out that…”:
Il se trouve que j’ai une autre paire de gants.
It just so happens that I have another pair of gloves.
When you make retrouver reflexive, it has the sense of being somewhere again or meeting again:
Les Marseillais
The Marseille residents
ne cachent pas le plaisir de se retrouver.
are not hiding the pleasure of getting together again.
Caption 32, Alsace 20 - Rencontre avec les membres d'IAM
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On se retrouve au café après l'école?
Shall we meet at the café after school?
Se retrouver can also refer to finding oneself in a particular situation:
Je me suis retrouvé le bec dans l'eau.
I found myself with my beak in the water. [I was left high and dry.]
We hope you’ve found this lesson helpful and that you find everything you may have lost!
Voilà is a very common word in French, and depending on the context, it can take a number of different meanings, the most general of which is "there/here it is." In grammatical terms, voilà is categorized as a presentative, or a word that is used to introduce something. Voilà comes from the imperative phrase vois là (see there), which makes the presentative nature of the word even more apparent. At its most basic, voilà is used to present a specific object or person
Donc voilà mon super falafel, avec de l'aubergine grillée...
So here is my super falafel, with grilled eggplant...
Caption 9, Mon Lieu Préféré - Rue des Rosiers
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Ah! Ben tiens, voilà Socrate.
Oh! Well look, here comes Socrates.
Caption 9, Il était une fois: l’Homme - 6. Le siècle de Périclès
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In these two examples, we see how voilà can be used to direct our attention to both an object (Caroline's "super falafel") and a person (Socrates). But when voilà isn't literally presenting us with something, it is often used as a way of emphasizing a statement:
La poésie c'est comme l'amour:
Poetry is like love:
c'est le plus court chemin entre deux êtres. Voilà.
it's the shortest path between two people. There.
Caption 39, Marché de la Poésie - Des poètes en tout genre
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In a sense, you could say that voilà is "presenting" us here with the metaphor on poetry that precedes it. But on a slightly less articulate note, when voilà is used for emphasis, it often acts as a sort of filler word, used when someone wants to end one topic and move on to another:
Euh... voilà. Après, l'inspiration, elle...
Uh... there you are. Well, inspiration, it...
elle vient de plein de sources diverses et variées.
it comes from a lot of different and varied sources.
Caption 48, Niko de La Faye - "Visages"
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You can also use voilà to affirm another person's statement:
Voilà, vous pouvez même voir le petit bateau en photo, euh, ici.
That's right, you can even see the little boat in the photo, uh, here.
Caption 50, Arles - Le marché d'Arles
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Or you can use it to express a period of time:
Voilà près de sept ans que les professionnels du bois attendaient ça.
For nearly seven years, the lumber business has been waiting for this.
Caption 5, Le Journal - Firewood
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Because voilà can be used in so many different situations, it is often tricky to translate ("there," "here," "there you go," "there you have it," "that's it," "there you are," and so on). And since no English word can really capture voilà's breadth of meaning, sometimes it's best not to translate it at all. In fact, the difficulty of translating voilà might be why it's become an (often humorous) English exclamation as well.
Now let's take a look at voilà's sister word, voici (from vois ici, "see here"). Like voilà, voici is also a presentative, but whereas voilà can either mean "there it is" or "here it is," voici usually just means "here it is." And unlike voilà, voici isn't used for emphatic or filler purposes, but almost exclusively for introducing or presenting a specific person or thing:
Nous voici devant une des quatre Statues de la Liberté
Here we are in front of one of the four Statues of Liberty
que l'on peut trouver dans la ville de Paris.
that you can find in the city of Paris.
Captions 24-25, Voyage dans Paris - Jardin du Luxembourg
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You can get a better sense of the difference between voici and voilà when they are both used in the same sentence:
Voici ma maison et voilà celle de mon ami.
Here is my house and there is my friend's.
As you can see, voilà is used to point out something at a distance, whereas voici indicates something close by. The difference between voici and voilà is similar to the difference between ceci (this) and cela (that). In fact, another way of translating the sentence above would be, "this is my house and that is my friend's."
You've probably heard voilà used in English before, but voici hasn't really managed to make the crossover. Besides the fact that voilà is often hard to translate (voici is much more straightforward), this could also be because voilà often acts as a standalone phrase (Voilà!), whereas voici generally doesn't. But don't underestimate a good voici when speaking French: if you want people to notice something that's right in front of them, it's the word to use!
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