THE FRENCH TRANSCRIPTION CAN BE FOUND BELOW THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Hi everyone,

Welcome to “Learn French, Become Français” with Ruben! Welcome, almost-French . Before we begin, I want to thank all my listeners. Thank you!

The transcript for this episode is in the description.

In this episode, we're going to talk about money! Well, mainly about different ways of saying money in French! I won't be able to cover every single way of saying money, but after this episode you'll know the most popular ones.

First, I'll explain a few words that are used to say “money,” and then you'll hear a dialogue in which these words are used!

Are you ready? Let's go!

In rap/hip hop songs, you often hear the words “l'oseille” or “le blé”.

L'oseille is a medicinal plant, a plant used to treat people, but almost no one uses (the word) l'oseille; this word is more commonly used in its slang sense. Slang is like slang in English.

In rapper Hamza's song Fade Up, he says, “I spent all night counting my oseille.” If you like rap, you can go listen to it.

I think you know what blé is. It's used to make flour, and flour is used to make bread. In PLK's song featuring Hamza, he says in the chorus: “You're just like the others, you want my dough.”

Before you go and listen to the songs, be warned, there's a lot of bad language haha.

The words “cash” and “dough” are widely used by young people, especially hip-hop listeners. I very rarely use these words myself!

In any case, we can say that famous rappers like PLK and Hamza are loaded, they're rich.

Another very common word for money is “balle,” like a soccer ball, a tennis ball, or even a bullet.

For example: this bottle of champagne costs 30 balles, I only have 20 balles in my bank account, it's complicated... And you can't say I have one balle, you can say I have 2 balles, 3 balles, 4 balles, but not 1 balle haha.

If you talk to people who are 50 or older, they may use the word “le flouze.” Often people who are 50 or older have a lot of “flouze,” haha. People of a certain age, older people, will also say “pognon.”

POGNON: Typically, a very popular expression is “ça coûte un pognon de dingue” (it costs a crazy amount of money). It's a bit like saying, this price is crazy, it's crazy how expensive it is, it costs a lot.

Two words that are widely used by everyone, by older people, by young people, and by middle-aged people, are “le fric” and “la thune.” You can have a lot of money, you can have money problems, you can have a lot of cash, or you can have more than a little cash. For example: I don't have a penny left.