# Question about franglais: "une conversations fluente"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 27, 2016, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031 "2016-07-27T15:21:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2016, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031/1 "2016-07-27T15:21:53Z")
Hi
This phrase appears to be more franglais: “une conversations fluente”. I see it on French websites/blogs. How do you pronounce it. Is is more like the the “u” in “glue” or the “u” in the German “ü”? I could not find “fluent” as a French word in Larousse.
I look forward to your feedback.
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### Author:  [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2016, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031/2 "2016-07-27T16:15:52Z")
Google finds only one website with this phrase in, for an organisation based in Romania offering language courses (but they can’t specify who’s teaching). Small wonder that it’s such a bizarre concoction - even if you assume “conversations” is just a typo where they meant to have the singular form (which would at least make it consistent), someone whose first language was French would say it completely differently, not as a word for word translation of the English idiom (which does rather give the game away as to how they got there). It would be much more likely to be something like “causer couramment comme un autochtone”.
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### Author:  [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2016, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031/3 "2016-07-27T20:40:09Z")
Google Translate offers ‘fluent conversations’ as the meaning of ‘conversations fluente’ in Romanian, so that seems to be a legitimate business name separate to any franglais type usage, unless Brexit has opened up opportunities for Fromanian to develop.
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### Author:  [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2016, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031/4 "2016-07-27T22:25:49Z")
Sorry, that should have read “conversation fluent”. I saw quite a few websites using “fluent” to mean fluent.
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### Author:  [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2016, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031/5 "2016-07-27T22:28:52Z")
> [@davidmich](#):
>
> Sorry, that should have read “conversation fluent”. I saw quite a few websites using “fluent” to mean fluent.
> **[SCDMED\_MORT\_2011\_KIEFFER\_EMILIE.pdf](https://docnum.univ-lorraine.fr/public/SCDMED_MORT_2011_KIEFFER_EMILIE.pdf)**
>
> 1143.81 KB
“Les participants ont été choisis parce qu’ils ont retrouvé un haut niveau fonctionnel de langage, qu’ils ont une conversation fluente, et qu’ils ne présentent aucun déficit aux tests de langage traditionnels. Ils devaient produire deux types de discours narratif”
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### Author:  [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2016, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031/6 "2016-07-28T06:44:13Z")
> [@davidmich](#):
>
> qu’ils ont une conversation fluente
Interesting. That usage carries a different sense of “conversation” from the standard English - in that sense, we’d say something like “are able to converse”. But “fluent” isn’t recognised as a French word in my Robert dictionary (which is quite new and contains a lot of modern idioms), so I can only assume it’s been taken up, in this case by the language teaching profession, as yet another import from English, the Académie notwithstanding.
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### Author:  [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2016, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031/7 "2016-07-28T21:59:24Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#):
>
> Interesting. That usage carries a different sense of “conversation” from the standard English - in that sense, we’d say something like “are able to converse”. But “fluent” isn’t recognised as a French word in my Robert dictionary (which is quite new and contains a lot of modern idioms), so I can only assume it’s been taken up, in this case by the language teaching profession, as yet another import from English, the Académie notwithstanding.
Thanks Patrick London. When I showed my Robert dictionary to some French in their mid-20s, they didn’t recognize many of the idioms, so I’m wondering is it their limited reading of French or are these idioms obsolete. I’m inclined to think many of them are obsolete.
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### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2016, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031/8 "2016-07-29T00:28:15Z")
> [@davidmich](#):
>
> How do you pronounce it. Is is more like the the “u” in “glue” or the “u” in the German “ü”? I could not find “fluent” as a French word in Larousse.
> I look forward to your feedback.
[Larousse has it here](http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/fluent/34261?q=fluent#34198). The speaker plays the masculine and feminine pronunciations. It’s the ü sound (/y/ in IPA), if you speak that [this site](http://easypronunciation.com/en/french-phonetic-transcription-converter) should give you IPA. Other than that, the “n” sound is a French nasal N.
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### Author:  [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2016, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-franglais-une-conversations-fluente/761031/9 "2016-07-29T00:49:53Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#):
>
> [Larousse has it here](http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/fluent/34261?q=fluent#34198). The speaker plays the masculine and feminine pronunciations. It’s the ü sound (/y/ in IPA), if you speak that [this site](http://easypronunciation.com/en/french-phonetic-transcription-converter) should give you IPA. Other than that, the “n” sound is a French nasal N.
Thanks for that thelurkinghorror. Very helpful.