Susan Thomas Springer

Il ne faut jamais dire “fontaine, je ne boirai pas de ton eau.”

In America, we’ve heard the saying “never say never” so I had to laugh when my French language calendar showed how the French would say it. This sentence literally means, “You must never say ‘fountain, I won’t drink your water’.” Of course it’s not any sillier than some of our sayings such as “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” “spill the beans,” or “tongue-in-cheek.” We’ve used idioms without thinking about them until we had kids – now we see how silly their literal meanings can be. Au revoir!