Who taught: Brian

When Brian taught me, he used, “excuse my french!” But, about two days ago, I said this one to my other friends and they all said, “It should be pardon my french!” Hmm… I thought American people do not use “pardon.” Don’t you prefer “excuse”? People in UK use “pardon” a lot, aren’t they?

Anyways, this expression might be very useful if you can use it in a good context. I mean… I don’t know… Maybe, you do not want to use this too often. I researched about the definition of this expression but was not able to find a real easy one. The easiest one I found is “excuse my bad language or forgive me for swearing.” Here is an simple example from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Pardon my French, but you’re an asshole!

I am not totally convinced about the origin of the expression, though. Here is what I found.

The word for “seal” (the animal) in french is “phoque,” which is pronounced the same as the word “fuck” in english. This is how the phrase originated.

This one does not make sense at all. Here is another one.

It in fact originates from the constant warfare between England and France many years ago, at that time “French” was associated with indecent things and activies (Swearing, kissing etc).

This might be possibly correct. My guess is basically that English people decided to use this one long time ago when they did have animosity toward French people. (Maybe they still have it???) Do French people also say, “Pardon my English” as the same meaning? Very curious…. Hmm.. Well, maybe I should not use this one in front of the real French people. They would not like it. Am I right?

Korean equivalent : 미안하지만 (Mi-An-Ha-Ji-Man) This might not be the perfect equivalent. But, you can use it in a similar context. I would translate this like, “Sorry for saying this… But!”

From today, I would like also to go through injuries in English, one per day, taught by Andrew. (So called, Andrew’s injuries in English series!!)

Today’s one is “jammed finger.” About three weeks ago, I played basketball and, during the game, the ball hits the tip of my index finger and my finger get swollen due to the impact of the hit. This case you can use “My finger is jammed!” If I heard this one without any context, I would have thought a finger covered with jam, like strawberry jam. Sounds yummy!