Hello everyone! I hope you are well. Welcome to this new episode of the Français Authentique podcast. This is the podcast in which we discover together, each week, a French idiomatic expression. Moreover, last week, we saw the meaning of the expression " à bâtons cassés ". I invite you to go listen to it as soon as you have a moment. Today, the expression that we are going to see is an expression very used by the French and that we use particularly with children, it is "mon petit doigt m'a dit".
Before we find out what it means, I would like to ask you for a little help by giving the podcast a 5-star rating on your favorite podcast app. It only takes a few seconds, which are absolutely precious to us, because it allows the podcast to become more known and therefore allows Français Authentique to help people like you iraq whatsapp number data who want to learn French. So, I thank you in advance for your support.
Let's go back to our expression "my little finger told me" and start with the explanation of the words of the expression.
The word "my" is a possessive adjective, masculine, singular.
"Little finger" is the little finger, it is the fifth finger of the hand.
"M'" means "to me", it is the personal pronoun COI.
And "a dit" is "to say" in the past tense.
As for the meaning of the expression, then originally, when we hear a rumor and we want to put our words into action, we put our little finger in our ear. Why the little finger? Because it is the only finger that slips easily into the ear. The little finger would therefore be used to transmit secrets to our ears. Moreover, the little finger comes from the Latin word "auricula", which means "ear".
So, actually, it means "to have suspicions." It means "to know information without wanting to reveal the source." So, it's often used, as I was telling you in the introduction, with children. So, actually, it's a fun way to show that you know something without specifying who told you or how you found out. So, it's really intriguing for children.
I'm going to give you three examples, three different contexts, so that you can understand a little better the meaning of this expression and how we use it.
First example: "My little finger told me that you didn't do your homework yesterday." So, here, we see that it's an assumption, we have suspicions and we make the child in front of us believe that we know the information, that we know that he didn't do his homework and that it's our little finger that told us.
Second example:
- How do you know I have a girlfriend?
– My little finger told me so.
So, here, the same, the person pretends that it was their little finger that told them. In fact, it is because they have suspicions, that they knew the information in some way and that suddenly they tell the child opposite that it was their little finger that told them.
Third example: "My little finger told me that you were hiding a secret from me." So, here, it's the same thing, we see that the person has suspicions, that they know the information, but that they don't want to reveal the source.
Now let's do a little pronunciation exercise with the two words "petit" and "finger", "petit" which has the silent "e" between the "p" and the "t", and "finger" which has the two silent letters, the "g" and the "t". So, I'm going to pronounce these two words and I'll let you repeat after me.