Hurt yourself! (French/English)
I teach French to adults. When one of them sneezed, I challenged the group to tell me the French for "Bless you!".
One enthusiastic student immediately said, "Blessez-vous !" ("Hurt yourself!").
Full marks for imagination, but not quite the thing that I would like wished upon me!?
Sent by: Louis
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Bless you wasn't started during the plague. It began a long time before. It was once common belief that sneezing was an attempt at ridding the body of demons and so people said bless you in hope that they would not reenter the body...
"Bless you" originated during the Plague, since sneezing was the first symptom. I can't help wondering where "tes amours" comes from :-)
Yes, after the first sneeze, we usually say:
"á tes souhaits !" (literally 'to your wishes')
Then after the second sneeze: "á tes amours !" ('to your loves')
To which the other person is meant to reply:
"Que les tiennes durent toujours !" ('may yours last forever')
Note that 'amour' is masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural.
Va savoir pourquoi !
Bless you: á tes souhaits.
I would've never imagined "blessez-vous" because my French teacher taught us by speaking to us in French at all times and at all occasions (and punishment for speaking English at the expense of our grade), and thus, forcing us to do so as well and to look up words in the dictionary. She also said á tes amour after we sneezed, and we never found out why she does that.
These little things make me laugh while learning French, such as "un smoking" meaning a tuxedo, and that "grosses bises" sounds a lot like roast beef.
To Agnès @ french for all...
Could this be the origin of our English rhyme -
Once...a wish
Twice...a kiss
[Three times...a letter
Four times...something better]
which is said to anyone who sneezes multiple times in England. Can anyone find a French equivalent for the bracketed last two lines?
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