So I realized that I could actually learn a lot more French if I simply wrote about what I looked up while playing Watch Dogs.

First, I’ll say that part of my motivation in simply playing Watch Dogs was that I was looking for some fresh French material. Though it’s not like I understand every French line in Tomb Raider, unfortunately, it does not challenge me like it once did. Plus, as a speedrunner, I’m not getting exposed to the cutscenes anymore. Except of course for those unskippable cutscenes, which tend to be few and far between enough that those cutscenes are reserved for other things such as taking time to recoup your composure or taking a drink or even rushing to the loo if you’re feeling brave.

quitter (fr) vs quitar (esp)

So I guess I ran into my first false friend between Spanish and French last night.

And first, I have to go off on a tangent and say that I just learned that I’ve been calling these false cognates incorrectly. Let’s let wikipedia explain it:

False cognates are pairs of words in the same or different languages that are similar in form and meaning but have different roots. That is, they appear to be, or are sometimes considered, cognates, when in fact they are unrelated. This is different from a false friend, which two words may have similar roots but have diverged in meaning.

So now you know, words like Spanish’s embarazada are a false friend to English’s embarrassed, not a false cognate. And for additional geek cred, here’s “false friend” in other languages:

Basically, in all of the above, it’s still literally “false friend”. I say this as sometimes you run into really fascinating literal translation differences. Here, no.

So aside from that, I found out after last night’s playthrough that French’s quitter is not quite like Spanish’s quitar.

First, both of them are mostly a false friend to English’s to quit. However, with the right/wrong frame of mind, you can see all of them as linked.

  • Spanish’s quitar is basically to remove. So you can “quit” your clothes and “quit” your makeup.
  • French’s quitter is basically to leave. So you can “quit” a place. Though I haven’t encountered it yet, apparently you can also “quit” a person. In Tomb Raider, you really really would like to “quit” the island.

So, on some bizarre level, I see all 3 words as linked, because it doesn’t sound completely wrong to use English’s “quit” in the above examples; it’s just something that a native would never say. Actually, I take that back, I’ve now remembered a famous line: “I wish I knew how to quit you.” I looked it up, and it’s from Brokeback Mountain. To me, though, that’s in the context of a person being an addiction that you wish to quit, whereas my guess is that when you quit a person in French, you’re just leaving them; there’s no addiction connotations.

other random words

This is my random list of things pulled from my Google Translate window. And yes, I make sure to have easy access to Google Translate when I play in a foreign language. Sometimes it delivers; sometimes no.

Also, almost all of these are one or two words because, without pausing the game, I simply don’t have the brain capacity to retain more than one or two words at a time.

  • sketch - still don’t know what this means, GT just said “sketch”, and I don’t remember the context

  • sale fouine - now you know how to say “dirty weasel” in French

  • racontes - “talking”? Without the context, it’s kind of useless, but I would guess it’s somewhat like to “recount” a tale

  • fac - I think it was that a character had kids in “college” apparently

  • fric - money

  • accro au tabac - this chick was “addicted to tobacco”; though given the circumstances, I’m pretty sure her bigger problem was being an alcoholic as she was drunk on the streets singing along (poorly) to a street musician

  • voisin - “neighbor” and pretty close to Spanish’s vecino

  • parent proche suicidé - seriously no clue, GT was no help, but here’s my random guess “parent is close to suiciding himself/herself”? Still makes no sense though

  • gameuse - apparently what Aisha Tyler is in the game; a “gamer”

  • ancienne enfant prodige - “former child prodigy”, ancienne seems to be both “old” and “former”

  • ben voyons - so apparently ben is a shortening of bien. GT was no help, but given what I know now, I’ll make a guess that it’s “well, let’s see”

  • t'es foutue - I believe Stromae’s “Papaoutai” was the first time I learned that French people are making contractions out of pronouns and verbs. “Papaoutai” is just another way to spell “Papa où t’es”. That said, t'es foutue is really tu es foutue which is really “you’re screwed”. One thing I don’t know is how strong this phrase is. Like, “you’re screwed” is far less strong than “you’re f*cked” in English. So where does this fall on the French vulgarity scale, eh? Also, foutue is the feminine form, so il est vraiment foutu, elle est foutue, les hommes sont foutus, and les femmes sont foutues. Um, the more you know?

  • vrac - “bulk” and don’t remember the context
  • responsable des ventes - “Sales Manager”, more so maybe literally “responsible for sales”. And not to be confused with “responsible for winds” which I think would be a thing if the word had been vents
  • cloison - “partition”. Okay, confession, this was a woo-hoo moment for me in that I figured out that the game was saying the person was born with a deviated septum (since I don’t remember, GT says it’s né avec une déviation de la cloison). That woohoo moment didn’t compare at all to the following…
  • chasseur de tornades - OMG, I totally lost my mind when I saw this. Literally, it’s a “chaser of tornadoes”. When I saw this text initially, it was from someone who was part of a big crowd of people, so I freaked out when I couldn’t figure out who it was and thought I was going to lose them. I finally found the guy again and wanted to chat about today’s convective outlooks, but alas, this mec didn’t want to talk back
  • bourré - “stuffed” and don’t remember the context
  • sait tirer les cartes - GT says “knows how to make cards” but that makes no sense to me; “knows how to shoot cards” I think would be the literal translation but that makes even less sense. “Knows how to shuffle cards” might be my best guess
  • tenue légère - “scantily clad”, literally “light suit” or “suit light” in the literal order. I think légère is equivalent to the sexual connotations of English’s “easy”. If so, that would be my best guess as to why a literal “light suit” would mean “scantily clad”
  • gueule - I was hearing this all over the place, but never in a bit with subtitles. I finally figured out how to spell it and apparently it means “mouth”. I think I’ve been hearing it in cases where it was probably being used as “shut your mouth”
  • nettoyeur - “cleaner”. To me, the Spanish word limpiador and French’s nettoyeur make similar levels of sense. Which is to say, they make none
  • violeur multirécidiviste - GT was no help here as it was throwing English words at me that I didn’t even know, specifically, “recidivist”. The term apparently means “recidivist rapist” and “recidivist” (which I still can’t figure out how to pronounce) is “a convicted criminal who reoffends, especially repeatedly”. Spanish has the similar word violador. English has the word “violate” of course, but it does not automatically mean rape. However, in Spanish/French, its meaning seems to default to rape. Leaving me to question song lyrics such as Papa, ils ont violé mon coeur.
  • lié - “bound”. I believe a guy in prison had binds/ties to a Mexican cartel
  • andouillettes - “chitterlings”? What the F is that? Ah gross. Some people eat the strangest things
  • réseau - “network”. Don’t remember the context
  • gymnophobie - GT just gave the French word back to me (thanks GT). But French wikipedia is here to rescue me and apparently it’s someone who has a “fear of nudity”
  • soupçonné - one of the most bizarre French words I have encountered as my English brain always reads it as “soup cone” and WTF is that? Apparently it means “suspected”
  • quiche lorraine - apparently I just need to get out more as it means “quiche lorraine” in English.
  • dépêche-toi - “hurry up” maybe better thought as “hurry yourself”
  • chope-moi - “mug me” which I’m guessing isn’t quite right. There was some dude on a bench talking some sh*t about the ctOS and he said something along the lines of “if they don’t like it, they can mug me”. See? It makes no sense when translated that way
  • fous? - “crazy” and don’t remember the context
  • copain - GT defaults to “boyfriend” but I think its more common translation would be “friend” or “buddy”
  • deuil - “mourning”
  • en retard sur son crédit a la consommation - “behind its consumer credit”. Yeah, thanks GT because that makes perfect sense. So I think the guy was behind on his consumer loan. I’m not sure if crédit a la consommation would be credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, or all of the above
  • mettez la cible au sol - “put the target on the ground”. Perhaps without my Spanish background, I could’ve seen sol as “soil”, but no, all I see is “sun”, so putting the target to the sun didn’t make much sense to me. And frankly, I still have no idea what the game really wanted from me. Is a murder implied here, or was I simply supposed to neutralize the guy?

Watch Dogs in French

As a side note, one of the things that really annoys me about foreign language dubs is simply that it seems to be impossible to find the cast list. I have a vague sense that whoever voices Aiden Pearce in French Watch Dogs is one of the major French voices from Assassin’s Creed, but good luck verifying that.

I’m still undecided on how fun Watch Dogs is as a game, but as a language tool, it’s been freaking awesome so far. Being able to run around town with the profiler is kind of amazing because you get exposed to so many random words. And unlike the dialogue in a cutscene that is so transient…. nah, since I have no idea if I used transient correctly, let’s just say instead: And unlike the dialogue in a cutscene that only lasts for a short time, with the profiler, you get however long you want to go look up the words in Google Translate. So handy.

There’s also the awesome amount of random street conversations. Also amusing to me is that you’ll catch bits of Spanish in there too. And far too amusing to me is the fact that it’s Castilian Spanish. In Chicago. To date, Uncharted is the only game I know of that has a Latin American Spanish dub. It’s pretty good (if only Claudia Black were the Spanish Chloe Frazer). More awesome is the fact that the Latin American Spanish Nathan Drake actually sounds like Nolan North to me, to the point that I actually wondered if it was. Of course, again, good luck trying to find the cast list for the Latin American Spanish dub.

I think Watch Dogs is the third game I’m playing in French, though it’s sort of the fourth. Tomb Raider 2013 was the first (though I had already played it in Spanish so I was familiar with the storyline), and then there was Splinter Cell Blacklist that I only played one mission of (so I don’t really count it). And then I replayed Far Cry 3 in French (previously completed in Spanish). And now Watch Dogs.

[ed. note: I later remembered that I played half of Assassin’s Creed IV in French (did not finish the game) and replayed parts of one of the ACs in French (Revelations I think). It’s sort of funny that I forgot given that I even mentioned the French voice actor in Watch Dogs sounding similar to AC.]

Oh yeah, technically, I play Uncharted 3 coop in French too. However, I’ve only ever played the main storyline in English because U3 came out way before I started studying Spanish. If Claudia Black is in U4, I’ll probably break my rule about only ever playing in foreign languages.

If I finish Watch Dogs, it will be the first game I’ve played only in French. Which is a milestone of some sort surely.

I still remember the first game I finished in Spanish: Spec Ops: The Line.

I missed out on so much simply because most of the dialogue was going over my head. Since I can’t deliberately give myself amnesia, I’ll never get to know how I would’ve reacted to the game had I actually fully understood what was going on. Instead, it was basically just a run-of-the-mill shooter to me.

But later on, I got my Spanish victory: Bioshock Infinite. I was shocked that I was actually able to understand what was going on in the ending.

And some day I will have a similar victory of understanding in French. Using subtitles, it will probably take 6 months.

Without subtitles? 6 years.