In the latest segment of Le Jour où tout a basculé, Frédéric and Anne-Sophie meet Laetitia at a café to deliver some shocking news: their daughters were switched at birth. Upon hearing this, Laetitia is in a state of total disbelief. She says to the couple: 

Mais qu'est-ce que c'est que cette histoire?

But what is this all about?

Caption 38, Le Jour où tout a basculé - Nos bébés ont été échangés...

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Histoire is related to two English words, "history" and "story," and can mean either one depending on context:

Ici, donc une ville riche en culture et riche en histoire...

So here a town rich in culture and rich in history...

Caption 8, Lionel - à Wissembourg

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C'est vraiment une histoire d'amour,

It's really a love story,

c'est parti d'une histoire d'amour.

it started out as a love story.

Caption 4, Annie Chartrand - Sa musique

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But in informal expressions like qu'est-ce que c'est que cette histoire, the word means something more along the lines of "business" or "matter." It often has this meaning in the construction histoire de + noun: 

Ici tout est histoire de récup' [récupération],

Here it's all a matter [or question] of recycling,

de quoi créer un beau Noël.

enough to create a beautiful Christmas.

Caption 58, Alsace 20 - Alsace: les plus belles déco de Noël!

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When histoire de follows an infinitive, it means "in order to," "just to," or "so as to": 

Bats le beurre de citron, histoire de bien mélanger le tout.

Whisk the lemon butter, it's a matter of mixing it all well.

Caption 47, 4 Mains pour 1 Piano - Médaillon de Homard

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Two other, less familiar ways of saying "in order to" are pour + infinitive and afin de + infinitive.

Be careful with the expression raconter des histoires. It can either mean "to tell stories" or "to tell lies":

La mère raconte des histoires aux enfants chaque soir. 
The mother tells stories to the children every night. 

Arrête de me raconter des histoires!
Stop telling me lies!

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That's the story with histoire! If you have any questions or comments, please write to us at newsletter@yabla.com or tweet us @yabla.

Take a look at the following captions and see if you notice anything unusual:

Et si vous regardez bien au deuxième étage,

And if you look closely at the second ["third" in the US] floor,

il y a une magnifique frise.

there is a splendid frieze.

Caption 14, Voyage dans Paris - Butte Montmartre

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Donc vous voyez la petite lumière rouge en...

So do you see the little red light in...

au premier étage?

on the first ["second" in the US] floor?

Caption 32, Mon Lieu Préféré - Rue des Rosiers

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Although it might seem like we’ve made some errors in our translations, the number discrepancy you see is actually completely accurate. This is because the floors of French buildings are not numbered in the same way that American floors are.

As you can see, a given French floor is always one number lower than a given American floor: le deuxième étage corresponds to the third floor, not the second, and le dix-huitième étage corresponds to the nineteenth floor, not the eighteenth.

The explanation for this is simple: the French (and most other Europeans) don’t count the ground floor of a building when numbering its stories, whereas Americans do. The French word for "ground floor" is rez-de-chaussée, and the floor above le rez-de-chaussée is le premier étage (the second floor). In American English, "ground floor" and "first floor" are generally synonymous and thus can both be used for rez-de-chaussée. So when you’re in a French elevator, instead of seeing a button marked "G" for "ground floor," you’ll see one marked "RC" for rez-de-chaussée.

Note, however, that French-Canadian speakers have adopted the US system, so you won't have to worry about subtracting floor numbers when you're in Quebec (you can learn some more about Canadian French in this lesson). You'll notice this when listening to Annie Chartrand, a French-Canadian musician, describe her childhood home:

J'habitais au deuxième étage avec mes parents

I lived on the second floor with my parents

et au premier étage, c'était un bar taverne...

and on the first floor, there was a bar-tavern with...

Captions 24-25, Annie Chartrand - Sa musique

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Here is a little table to review:

Therefore, a three-story house in the US (first floor + second floor + third floor) is the same as une maison à deux étages in France (rez-de-chaussée + premier étage + deuxième étage) and une maison à trois étages in Quebec (rez-de-chaussée/premier étage + deuxième étage + troisième étage).

To make this a bit easier, you could take the word étage to mean specifically an upstairs floor in France. Indeed, one way of saying "upstairs" in French is à l’étage (the other way is en haut, while "downstairs" is en bas). In that case, le premier étage could be translated more precisely as "the first upstairs floor," i.e., the second floor.

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A side note: To remember the word rez-de-chaussée, a bit of etymology might be useful. Une chaussée is another word for "road," and rez is Old French for ras, meaning "flat" or "level" (think of the word "razor"). The ground floor is called le rez-de-chaussée in French because it is level with the road.

And for an in-depth discussion of floor numbering around the world, see this Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storey#Numbering