With Julien Colliat’s “L’art de moucher les fâcheux”, we are going to move away from the “new” vocabulary that many of us now use, especially in our text messages or on social networks, such as “mdr”, “ptdr”, “chui deg” or even “lol”.
The author suggests that we play frankly with the words of the French language and certain expressions, rather than annoy us and respond in a humorous way, to play down a situation whose words could very quickly overtake our thoughts…
From examples of repartee who play with our language, there is this one “my words have exceeded my thought”. To someone who says this sentence to you, you answer: “well… they couldn’t have gone very far!”. Or, “oh you’re breaking my ears!”…. Answer: “Well, you can change it that way!”. The most perfidious is undoubtedly this one: “my wife is pregnant! “… “Oh good ? And from whom?”. Or again, to the clumsy, to the painful flirts who play the pretty hearts with this sentence, “How do you manage to be so beautiful?”, you will be able to say, ladies: “I have certainly been given your share…”.
From each of these examples, Julien Colliat develops and plays with the richness of our language. The aim, of course, is to systematically de-dramatize each of the somewhat tense situations. So it’s a book to “peck” just to smile and relax, while immersing yourself in expressions that, although antiquated and outdated for some, can still be useful to relieve tension.
If you don’t know Julien Collait, know that he is someone who has a lot of ideas. In 2019, he had already published “The repartee anthology”. And don’t think it’s from another time! Julien Colliat animates a Twitter account followed by more than 150,000 subscribers! We are therefore the opposite of a dusty scholar as we might imagine him to be, quite the contrary. He knows and practices all languages!
And hey, one last for the road… Don’t say “I have an idea running through my head”, because you might be told… “she must be bored by herself!”.