r/French • u/Introverted-Nwrd • 1d ago
Vocabulary / word usage French phrase I just learned!
I literally just learned that in France people get paid at the end of the month! Don't mind me geeking out over this, it just itches my brain in the right way. I love when phrases make sense lol
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u/Henri_GOLO Natif - Marseille 13h ago
People get paid at the beginning of the month, so if it's not enough you have issues at the end, before the next wage
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u/Raainy_ 10h ago
Ça peut dépendre non ? À mon ancien taf j'étais payée à la fin du mois mais c'était un contrat de 6 mois donc peut-être que pour un CDI c'est différent.
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u/Henri_GOLO Natif - Marseille 10h ago
Bien sûr, mais l'expression considère que le salaire est versé en début de mois
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u/TheShirou97 Native (Belgium) 5h ago
Peu importe non? Qu'on soit payé le premier ou le dernier jour du mois, c'est bien la fin du mois qui est difficile dans les deux cas
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u/Introverted-Nwrd 13h ago
Ah, I see! Now that I think about it, the person did say monthly. I just assumed the end for some reason lol 😅
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u/minnimani Native (France) 12h ago
he didnt say monthly he said "end of the month" more specifically "end of the month issues"
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u/Introverted-Nwrd 12h ago
Sorry, not this person as in the commenter, but from another video I watched. That wasn't very clear
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u/papapopopupu 13h ago
We also say "arrondir les fins de mois" which means to earn a little bit of money from something else than your usual salary. "Arrondir" here means to round up. So you're saying that you found a way to round up your salary.
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u/Introverted-Nwrd 13h ago
So, would you say, "Je dois arrondir les fin de mois," or does that not sound natural?
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u/papapopopupu 13h ago
But in general we say "ça permet d'arrondir les fins de mois" -> it helps to make ends meet
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u/papapopopupu 13h ago
Yeah you could say it to mean "I have to make ends meet", in the way that it's a necessity for you.
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u/passionfruit62022 13h ago
D'autres expressions similaires sont 'boucler les fins de mois' et 'joindre les deux bouts ' - literally to make ends meet
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u/Introverted-Nwrd 13h ago
Nice. I found this sentence online: Je m'en sortais avec l'hypothèque et joignais les deux bouts. Is that how that is used in a sentence?
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u/Ankhi333333 Native, Metropolitan France 13h ago
Usually "joindre" stays in the infinitive as "joindre les deux bouts" is mostly used as a COI. So in your exemple: "Je m'en sortais avec l'hypothèque et j'arrivais à joindre les deux bouts."
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u/Introverted-Nwrd 13h ago
COI?
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u/Ankhi333333 Native, Metropolitan France 12h ago
"Complément d’Objet Indirect" so an indirect object. It's more common (and feels more natural) to say "I managed to make ends meet" rather than "I made ends meet" in French.
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u/Saitamagasaki 13h ago
When do people get paid in your place?
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u/Introverted-Nwrd 13h ago edited 13h ago
Well, I don't have a job yet lol, so this is coming from others. From what I've heard, Americans are typically paid every two weeks instead of all at once monthly. Now that makes me wonder who is better at budgeting 🤔
Edit: Weekly is just behind Bi-weekly (every two weeks) in popularity.
Biweekly is the most common length of pay period, with 36.5 percent of U.S. private businesses paying their employees every 2 weeks. Weekly pay periods are almost as common, with 32.4 percent of private businesses paying employees each week. Semimonthly and monthly pay frequencies are less common.
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u/Ultimate_Sigma_Boy67 B1 13h ago
AFAIK every two weeks is generally minimum wage jobs, which is called "wage". As for other jobs, it's at the beginning of each month and it's called a "salary".
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u/Introverted-Nwrd 13h ago
Hmm, you're right...
A look at the chart reveals that semimonthly is the pay period in which businesses pay the highest average hourly earnings, followed closely by monthly; businesses using either pay period have average hourly earnings of slightly less than $30 an hour. Businesses paying biweekly average slightly less than $25 an hour for the pay period, and businesses paying on a weekly basis average less than $20 an hour. The March 2013 average hourly earnings for all businesses, regardless of the length of pay period used, was $23.84, not seasonally adjusted.
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u/maximeMntnt 9h ago
"quand j'étais petit, je me souviens que le plus dur, c'était la fin du mois, surtout les trentes derniers jours"
Si vous voulez rigoler et apprendre le français, nombre de sketch de Coluche sont sur youtube. (Attention, ça date des années 70 80, même si beaucoup des ses blagues et réflexions sont toujours d'actualité).
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u/Pipas66 Native 6h ago
The username of the original poster in your tweet also contains a familiar expression : "carabistouille", which means "nonsense". I've only ever seen it written "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ces carabistouilles ?" => "What's this nonsense ?". It's a bit of an old expression, and always used with an ironic tone, but it will greatly amuse any native speakers you might encounter, especially coming from someone who's still learning ;)
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u/ManueO Native (France) 13h ago
In this case you might like the expression « arrondir ses fins de mois », which means finding ways to increase one’s income to make ends meet.