"Pourquoi on fait des poissons d'avril ?" has been shared to the blog from the French reading practice section of the learning library where you can find a large selection of interactive texts to help you with your reading skills.
Ever wondered why French people talk about “poissons d’avril” for April Fool’s? Learn about the origin of this fishy tradition in this cute little video and its bilingual transcript.
After watching the video, scroll down for the transcript in our bilingual reader, where you can click any French phrase for the English translation and related grammar lessons.
Note: The tenses in this French article and its English translation don’t match! In French, we use the present and future tenses to describe historical stories like this to evoke a sense of immediacy, whereas in English, we commonly use the past tense – learn more about historical French tenses.
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Author info
Aurélie is our resident French Expert. She has created most of the wonderful content you see on the site and is usually the person answering your tricky help questions. She comes from a small village near Chartres in Central France, country of cereal fields and not much else. She left (in a hurry) to study English at the world-famous Sorbonne in Paris, before leaving France in 2007 to experience the “London lifestyle” - and never looked back! She's worked as a professional French teacher, translator and linguist in the UK since. She loves to share her love of languages and is a self-professed cinema and literature geek!