Our weekly blog is back to deliver another French word to add to your vocabulary! This time, we’re looking at plan.
You can listen to its pronunciation in the audio clip below:
This is of course a great example of a potential false friend. When it comes to translating from French into English, we often fall into the trap of assuming the exact same meaning when we recognise the word. However, while plan does indeed mean ‘plan’ sometimes, its other translations include ‘map’, ‘idea’ and ‘shot’, plus it can be used to describe something as ‘flat’.
With two different grammatical functions, an adjective and a masculine noun, you might see plan in various contexts. Most French adjectives need to agree with the noun they’re describing, which means there are two possible spellings of plan to describe something as ‘flat’:
- Masculine – plan
- Feminine – plane (yet another false friend!)
We’ll start with a couple of examples using the adjective, which is less common in everyday speech than the noun:
C’est une surface tout à fait plane. It’s a completely flat / level surface.
Je ne crois pas que notre parquet soit plan. I don’t believe that our parquet flooring is level / flat.
When you use plan as a masculine noun, its translations and uses are extremely versatile. You can also add an -s to create its plural form, plans. Let’s get into the examples:
On devrait regarder le plan de la ville. We should look at the street map.
Est-ce que vous avez un plan de métro ? Do you have a metro map?
mettre quelque chose au premier plan to bring something to the forefront (this can work literally or metaphorically)
sur le plan de quelque chose as far as something is concerned
Sur le plan des vacances, nous n’avons pas encore choisi les dates. As far as holidays are concerned, we still haven’t chosen the dates.
Il va créer un plan de table mariage. He’s going to create a table plan / seating arrangements for the wedding.
Mets-le sur le plan de travail. Put it on the kitchen counter / worktop.
Il faut que nous rédigions un plan d’action. We need to write up a plan of action.
avoir un plan B to have a plan B
« On se fait un plan resto, ce soir ? » « Ça me va ! » “Shall we eat out at a restaurant tonight?” “I’m up for that!”
au premier plan in the foreground (for the next few examples, the context might be photography or cinema – plan usually translates as ‘shot’ in these cases)
au second plan in the middle distance
à l’arrière-plan in the background
prendre un gros plan to take a close-up
Thanks for reading this week’s edition. We hope you found it interesting to see how many translations come from this small word – so much so that you might have already made plans to come back and read our blog again next week!
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
