No extended pinkies here

Here's a surprise I've encountered recently: some of the most common informal phraseologies in colloquial French have a word-for-word mapping to very formal English.

I have already written about Est-ce que, the unbelievably helpful phrase that introduces a yes-or-no question. Literally, it means "Is it that...?" For example, Est-ce que vous voulez manger ce soir? means "Is it that you wish to dine this evening in the solarium, Your Lordship?" Okay, I made most of that up.

Here's another. In English, using "one" as a pronoun ("one cannot fathom one's dismay!") often sounds either lawyerly or frumpy. But in French, the pronoun on works the same way, but its connotations are downright matey. A shopclerk might call out On arrive! to an incoming customer. "I'm coming, okay?"

Right now in our little town, there's a banner over the main street advertising an upcoming youth biathlon. It shows a picture of two kids in ski-bum attire with the caption On est vos champions! The intended sense is not so much "One is your champions!" [sic] as "We're the champions, doodz!"

So if you were wondering how dudespeak works in French, there's a glimpse.