{"id":2975,"date":"2022-08-05T12:42:38","date_gmt":"2022-08-05T16:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/?p=2975"},"modified":"2022-08-05T12:42:40","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T16:42:40","slug":"hopla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/2022\/08\/05\/hopla\/","title":{"rendered":"Hopla!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hopla! This has to be one of my favorite French sayings so far. It sounds so enthusiastic and whimsical. It\u2019s a phrase I hear everyday, whether from my French teachers, the hostel owners, or the woman who works in the boulangerie I regularly frequent. From conversations with my French friends, I have found that \u201chop la!\u201d can essentially be used to express a change in conversation, exasperation, or just make noise in response to practically anything (I especially hear it when people accidentally trip). Put simply, “hopla” essentially brings attention to something that is happening. For instance, while I am cooking in the hostel I often will drop something, so I will quickly be met with \u201chopla!,\u201d almost like a French version of \u201cOpa!\u201d with a similar sound and a similar meaning.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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At the F\u00eates de Bayonne, there are many traditional Basque events on display, including karrikaldi, and my friends and I were able to catch the opening of the dances where the local youth baton throw in traditional Basque wear. When a baton would slip through someone’s hand, throughout the crowd you could hear a lot of “hopla!”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Another one of my favorites has to be \u201couf!\u201d which I initially related to the English \u201coof!\u201d to express that something unfortunate might have happened. However, \u201couf\u201d is the inverse of \u201cfou\u201d to express the same meaning \u2013 crazy. When I surf with my French friends, I\u2019ll often hear \u201cles vagues sont ouf,\u201d indicating that the waves are \u201ccrazy\u201d good. From discussing with my French friends, \u201couf\u201d is essentially the equivalent of the positive connotation of \u201csick.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOuf\u201d and \u201chop la\u201d have been some interesting sayings that I haven\u2019t heard in my previous French classes, until I started noticing my French teacher saying \u201chopla!\u201d very frequently, along with \u201cdu coup\u201d and “en fait.” \u201cDu coup\u201d is intended to mean \u201calso\u201d or \u201cso\u201d but is often used as a filler word, similar to the usefulness of the interjection of \u201clike\u201d into the middle of sentences.\u00a0“En fait” is another phrase I try to weave into my conversations with French speakers to sound more French, because it is heavily used by the French as well, meaning “actually.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a similar vein to \u201chopla!,\u201d I often hear the utterances of \u201ctak tak tak\u201d when my French friends or cashiers are completing certain tasks. As I was writing this blog post, I was working in a caf\u00e9 by my school as I heard the cashier ringing someone up, and as he was typing in their order, it was accompanied by \u201ctak tak tak.\u201d I have loved living in France to really start noticing the certain French sayings that often don’t directly translate into English, such as “tak tak tak.” I have started noticing myself absentmindedly muttering \u201ctak tak tak,\u201d along with \u201chopla,\u201d which really helps me see the benefits of fully immersing myself in the French language and culture. While constantly speaking in French has certainly been mentally strenuous at times, it is certainly exciting to see the brain fatigue pay off by absorbing French habits.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hopla! This has to be one of my favorite French sayings so far. It sounds so enthusiastic and whimsical. It\u2019s a phrase I hear everyday, whether from my French teachers, the hostel owners, or the woman who works in the boulangerie I regularly frequent. From conversations with my French friends, I have found that \u201chop … Continue reading Hopla!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4242,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73607,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-france","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2975"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2987,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975\/revisions\/2987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}