Say Hello To My Little Friend

One bit of common French vocabulary which has always struck me as funny is the word for girlfriend or boyfriend. The translation is "petit ami" (for a boy) or "petite amie" (for a girl), which is literally translated as "little friend."

I also learned recently that the term "petit ami" is often being replaced by another word for friend: "copain" (probably related to the English word "companion", though its meaning depends on the context. For example, if you say, "J'ai un copain qui habite pres de l'hopital", it means "I have a friend who lives close to the hospital." However, if you change the sentence to "Mon copain habite pres de l'hopital", it means, "My boyfriend lives close to the hospital."

Tour du Croissant Pic of the Day: our evening visit to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur. This photo was especially challenging to obtain because the flash on our crappy camera had completely stopped working. Fortunately, Sacre Coeur is lit up brightly at night and my wife took several angles of me using lighting from a nearby cafe to illuminate my face and the dessert.