Learning French: unravelling popular shortcuts and contractions

French is – and I say this full of admiration – a verbose language that has a penchant for long words. 

Native speakers get drilled with an inordinate number of mouthfuls during their umpteen years of schooling. No wonder that as soon as they can get out of the classroom they go to work on these polysyllables with a pair of scissors. 

Why utter a mouthful when the first sound or two will carry the same message? 

Listen to almost any conversation and you will hear examples of this process, which is technically known as apocope: the dropping of the last syllables of a word as if they never existed. 

In English we do this a little (sax for saxophone, gym for gymnasium, uni, pram and so on) but to nothing like the same extent as the French.

Read more: Learning French: the origins and meaning of vendre la mèche

Speak like a native

When you first hear sawn-off French it can be difficult to follow a conversation. However, you soon get used to it and if you can bring yourself to ape them it can make it easier to join in a conversation.

As a plus, these clipped words are also used in texting and social media along with abbreviations. 

It is fairly easy to guess at the meaning of some of these short forms: 

• resto (restaurant)
• petit déj’ (petit déjeuner: breakfast)
• appart (appartement or flat)
• ado (adolescent ie a teenager)
• Catho (Catholique: Catholic)
• dac (d’accord: okay)
•  fac (faculté ie university)
• hélico (hélicoptère)
• impec (impeccable: perfect)
• manif (manifestation: demonstration)
• ordi (ordinateur: computer)
• bio (biologique – organic)
• philo (philosophy)
• sympa (sympatique)... and so on.

Others are more impenetrable to various degrees: 

• éduc is éducateur (ie a teacher) 
• deuxch is a Citroen 2CV (deux-chevaux)
• une occase stands for d’occasion (secondhand opportunity) 
• hebdo for hebdomadaire (weekly newspaper or magazine)
• mytho for mythomane (that is, to be blunt, a liar)
• mon beauf (mon beau frère – my brother-in-law)
• prépa (a year of preparation for a university application)
• psy (a psychiatrist or psychologist)
• pub publicité (advertising; as in “Pas de pub” frequently seen on domestic letter boxes)
• la Sécu refers to La Securité Sociale (the national health service) 
• un dico (a dictionary)
• the périf is the boulevard périphérique (the ring road around a city) 

A few have more than one meaning depending on the context: sup can mean supérieur (as in éducation supérieure ie higher education) or supplémentaire (as in heures supplémentaires: overtime)

Another, phrasal contraction is not obvious to translate when you first meet it and has particular historical resonance. La der des ders means la dernière des dernières; literally “the last of the last”). It was coined during World War One to mean, expressed with hope, the very last war. It has since been adopted to mean the very last of anything and can be a synonym for “la toute dernière fois”.

Some words are shaped more radically. Gratuit, for instance, becomes gratos – no charge. 

Read more: Learning French: se gaver and other terms to describe overeating

Hidden meanings

Some carry a pejorative connotation, depending on the speaker: écolo means an ecologist or environmentalist but it can be spat out as an insulting name for someone who wants to ban hunting and pesticides. 

A facho is a fascist – anyone you want to pour scorn on. 

An intello (intellectual) is usually an expression of admiration but in some contexts, eg in a school playground, it can be a term of mockery (the equivalent to a nerd).

I say this practice of mutilation is a form of informal French but, as in English, some shortened words have become accepted, even in refined speech. 

No one says vélocipede any more when vélo serves the purpose. La méteo is the weather forecast. Pneu is a tyre. Télé has replaced télévision. Kilo is the same as a kilogram and a pen is always a stylo, never any more a stylographe.

And that is the story of French in short.