Does this seem impossible to you? These words are however widely used and completely French but you probably don’t know them.
French is in 5th place in the ranking of the most spoken languages in the world. It is found on five continents, used in 106 countries around the world, for a total of almost 300 million speakers. A legacy of the 17th century, when French was considered the universal language, before being dethroned by English a few centuries later.
Given the very wide spread of French throughout the world, it sometimes happens that certain words do not have the same use depending on the country. For example, when in France we talk about “candy”, it is the word “boule” which is used in Belgium to talk about confectionery. Still among our Belgian neighbors, a child who asks his parents for “a dringuelle” is in fact asking them for pocket money. The word “pistol” no longer has anything dangerous since it refers to a type of crusty round bread. Same thing if you hear the expression “no perhaps” once you cross the Belgian border: it is in fact an equivalent of our “yes surely”.
Let’s take other examples: on the other side of the Atlantic, in Quebec, the word used to talk about one’s “girlfriend” is “the blonde”. And this, regardless of hair color. Other Quebec terms will be more or less known to the French such as “rags”, corresponding to clothes or rags, “char”, designating a car, “boucane”, which is synonymous with smoke, or “champelure” less known, which evokes a faucet.
But that’s not all. Beyond words which can create situations of misunderstanding, there are also those which are completely foreign to mainland France. In the Pacific, in New Caledonia, women do not wear bras, but “papaya covers”. Likewise, in French-speaking Africa, we tend to open our bottles with a “ziboulateur” rather than a bottle opener. In Senegal, “the chocolate bar” is no longer a dream when you know that it is in fact a road in poor condition.
“Motamoter”, in Cameroon, is synonymous with “rehashing” or “rambling”, the act of repeating a text without thinking. Another verb is completely unknown to the French in France: aller “to nocer”, which in Mali, is synonymous with having a good time, because it is in reality about going to party or “partying” to be still closer to the original idea.
In the same genre, but against all expectations, the word “s’enjailler”, well known to young people who use it as a synonym for “to have fun”, is in fact an Ivorian invention which simply takes the English verb “enjoy ” which means “to enjoy”.