Time Travel: Tarare, France, 2009 – Arrested Comedy

It’s obviously very hard to translate any wordplay-based humor into another language because it relies on a certain level of language fluency, but this is especially a challenge when the play involves idioms, figurative expressions that may or may not have an equivalent term. I had an experience that highlighted this challenge one day while a German roommate and I watched an episode of a comedy series that loves a bit of wordplay: “Arrested Development.”

Jolly Good: 5 British Expressions I Love (and 3 I Hate)

OK, so I laugh derisively whenever one of my coworkers, who’s basically an old Englishman trapped inside a young Englishman’s body, says “jolly good”… but secretly I find it a little endearing. British expressions are excellent day-to-day entertainment for this expat, and I’ve even adopted a few of them (with mixed results).

Here are just five of my favorites, with a more complete running list I’ll keep at the bottom of the page.

Parlez-you Franglais?

the most bizarre and amazing brain trick of all is a feature of conversation with fellow Anglophone expats, in which French seamlessly infiltrates English.

I’ll have a breu-nee, please.

One of the funniest things I do on an almost daily basis is pronounce English words with a French accent so that French people will understand me.

Parlez-vous Netflix?

If you’ve already got a firm grasp on a second language, I have an enrichment activity for you.