Hello everyone! I hope everything is going well for you. I am super happy to be back with you today for a new episode of the Français Authentique podcast. Last week, we looked at the expression " all roads lead to Rome " together. So, if you didn't have time to listen to the episode, I invite you to listen to it as soon as you have a moment. Today, we are going to look at the following expression together: "tend la perche à quelqu'un".
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Here we go! We're starting again with our expression of the day, "tender la perche à quelqu'un". We'll start, as usual, with the explanation of the words.
So the first word is the word "tend," which is a verb and means to present an object to someone so that they can take it in their hand.
And finally, "pole". Well, a pole is a long wooden rod, for example, that we use when we pole vault.
As for the meaning of the expression, well, originally, literally, we extend a helping hand to someone to help them, for example, if they have fallen into water or a hole. We find this expression in the 19th century in Balzac's novel, Modeste Mignon . Today, this notion of help is still present but rather to express the idea of coming to someone's aid in a conversation. So, this expression actually means coming to someone's aid in a conversation, helping them out of a difficult situation by giving them a clue, and it also means giving someone the opportunity to do something. So, for example, broaching a subject, making a joke, etc.
So, I'll give you three examples so you can contextualize the expression.
First example: The manager had taken a week off. All the colleagues understood that it was for a serious reason except Aurélie who insisted on knowing the reason. I gave her the opportunity by saying: "It's his personal life, Aurélie."
So, here, we can clearly see that the person gave Aurélie the opportunity to make her understand that she had to stop and that she could not continue in this conversation.
Second example: I could see that my student had not understood something, so I offered him the opportunity by saying: "Do you have any questions?"
So, here, we see that the teacher is extending the helping hand, that is to say, is going to help his student, is going to try to help him, he is going to try in fact to make him say his questions, to italy whatsapp number data make him say what is wrong, because he has seen that his student has not understood something.
And finally, third example, therefore, in the form of a dialogue:
– Laurent keeps making fun of my new hairstyle.
– Yeah. Well he's not the only one. Sorry, but you gave me the lead.
So, there, it's a bit in the form of mockery, of a joke. We understand in fact that the person gave the opportunity to the other person to make fun of them, to make a remark about their new hairstyle.
Now let's move on to a little pronunciation exercise. So, the past participle of the verb "tender" is "tense". So, I'm going to conjugate the expression in the passé composé and I'm going to give you time to repeat afte .