That’s it, you’ve made it. You finally live in France, and now that you’re properly settled, you want to dig into the local culture. And what better place for that than the café on the corner? Right after ordering your coffee, you ask the owner: « Vous avez le journal du jour ? » Do you have today’s paper?
He nods and says: « Oui, j’ai le canard local qui traîne sur une table. »
A duck? Two seconds of hesitation. You follow his finger and realise he means the newspaper lying on the table by the window, on the street side. Just as you’re about to head over, a regular propped up at the bar calls out: « Ne lisez pas cette feuille de chou, c’est un vrai torchon. »
A cabbage leaf. A tea towel. What is this obsession with renaming everything all the time? It’s hard enough as it is.
Welcome to the wonderful world of French media.
Le journal, un café crème et un croissant aux amandes.
You sit down anyway.
So, the duck. Un canard is simply the familiar word for a newspaper, nothing rude about it. France’s most famous duck is Le Canard enchaîné, a satirical weekly that comes out on Wednesdays and has been making ministers nervous for over a century. The cabbage leaf and the tea towel, on the other hand, are insults: une feuille de chou is a worthless little paper, and un torchon is a rag. The regular has opinions.
In fact, here he comes, coffee in hand, clearly with nothing better to do. He taps the front page: « Vous avez vu la une ? »
La une is the front page. And the paper on your table is your local daily, part of what the French call la PQR, la presse quotidienne régionale. Not to be confused with le PQ, short for papier cul, the very familiar word for toilet paper. Similar letters, very different reading.
You want to show you’re in the loop. « Oui, oui, j’ai lu les nouvelles ce matin. »
He gives you a look. « Les infos, vous voulez dire ! »
In Quebec, les nouvelles is exactly what people say. In France, it mostly means news from people you know: Tu as des nouvelles de ta sœur ? For the news, the French say les infos or l’actu.
He scans the headlines and sighs: « Les soldes, encore. Quel marronnier ! »
