Absurd French 978 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Armand, watch out behind you, there's a teddy bear attacking!

Un nounours is a teddy bear. A nursemaid or babysitter is often called the nounou for short for nourrice. Originally that was used for a wet-nurse, then when that profession went out of style with bottle feeding, the name was used for the childcare person. Un ours is a bear, and un ours grizzly is a grizzly bear.

Answer: Come see how fast the postman runs when I put the sprinkler on!

Viens voir = come see, come look. Fais voir, means let me take a look, let me see. If you're looking into a spyglass or binoculars, you'd say, 'fais voir'.
Le facteur is the mailman, in France the female equivalent isn't used as often despite the large number of women postal carriers. Sprinklers aren't as common either and as most people know, in France you don't get to walk on the lawns as often as elsewhere in the world.
La facture is the bill or invoice. Les rosiers are rosebushes. Une rose is a rose.
Arroser is to water plants.

Answer: Kids, you wouldn't have happened to have seen my fishing pole, the car tires, my slippers, my motorcycle helmet, the axe, and my lipstick by any chance?

La canne is the cane or the pole in this case. The city of Cannes is named for the reeds or rushes that grew nearby. La canne á sucre is sugar cane. Les pneumatiques is the full name of tires, but it's very rare to hear the whole word pronounced these days. Les pantoufles are slippers of course. A pantouflard is a gentleman who spends a bit too much time around the house doing nothing. Le casque is the helmet. Le port de casque est obligatoire en France. Wearing a helmet is mandatory in France.

Answer: Could you take your fox off of my neck, please?

Le renard is of course the fox. Le cou is the neck. Le coude is the elbow. La vache is the cow. Le plafond is the ceiling. This is dedicated to all those ladies who still wear those fox stoles that have the head biting the tail.

Answer: My neighbor's monkey saw a beautiful angel on my roof.

Le singe is monkey, un ange is an angel. Un angle is an angle. Le toit is the roof.
The adjective beau before a vowel becomes bel in the masculine, which gives us bel ange.

Answer: This morning a rabbit killed a hunter. It was a rabbit with a gun.

Ce matin is this morning. Hier matin would be yesterday morning. Hier soir is last night. Demain matin is tomorrow morning. This is from the singer Chantal Goya who has had a long career on stage and in recordings. This particular song is enjoying a comeback on stage as oldies parties request her to come and sing it. Kids just loved her lyrics and you had to admit, for once the rabbit kills the hunter.

By the way, if you've ever wondered, 'Lapin chasseur' is hunter's rabbit, as is 'poulet chasseur' though the latter, chickens don't really need to be hunted, do they?

Answer: Aunt Antoinette's tent is full of ants.

La tente = tent. La tante= Aunt. La fourmi=ant.
Formidable=something terrific rather than the English sense of someone difficult to approach.
En pleine forme means in good shape, feeling fine. One of the trendy ways to say hello or good morning is 'la forme?' I don't advocate this method, it will probably go out of style like yesterday's potato salad.

Answer: Barbie was getting dressed carefully for her date with...Lance. Yes indeed, it was over with Ken. To console himself, Ken left on a worldwide tour in a hot air balloon.

Une Montgolfière is a hot air balloon as it bears the name of the brothers born in the 1740s who first popularized it and as the story goes, the one brother imprudently held his shirt over the hot air of the fire. Un ballon is a ball, and a balloon too. Un rendezvous may be used for a date as well as any appointment.

Answer: When I was a child, I used to go to Mr MacGregor's garden to pick turnips.

Lorsque is a more literary way of saying when, it's rare to hear it spoken though not unheard of. J'allais is the imperfect, I would or I used to are pretty close to the sense in this instance. Les navets= un navet, turnip(s), it also means a film that is a dud or a bomb (US version). Les framboises would be raspberries. Les navires are big ships.

Answer: Be careful not to trample the dandelions.

Though the original name for dandelions means dents de lions, or lion's teeth for their appearance, their diuretic properties give them their common name in French, or wet the bed. Piétiner is to trample. Patiner or faire du patin is to skate. As anyone who has visited France knows, the grass in France must be more fragile as it is normally forbidden to walk on it. Now things have changed and some areas make it possible, but for many, it goes against the grain to walk on the grass without the fear of an angry attendant yelling at them.

This sentence is absurd however as no one would object to you trampling dandelions, though many people eat them as greens.