What does the French expression à l'étage mean? Click the link above to learn all about it, and then come back here to share your thoughts.
More: French expressions
More: French expressions
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Just to expand on this :
I am an English property developer based in France. The front of my house with garages is on one level and the back of the house which leads to the garden is at a higher level . I am currently renovating this house and myself and the architect were getting very confused when referring to the various floor levels. Thus we use the formal french system i.e. what we call the ground floor in British English he refers to as the ‘rez de jardin’ What we would call the ‘lower ground floor’ he refers to as the ‘rez de chaussée’(as it leads onto the road)
These 2 floors are then used as a reference for the other floors e.g. what we would call the first floor he refers to the ‘rez de jardin plus 1′ (i.e. 1 floor above the garden level and 2 floors above the garage level on the ‘rez de chaussée’. Simple but elegant solution.
I would guess in formal French ‘un’ is used instead of 1 ?
Hope that is useful to somebody
Regards
Adrian
It is the last … floor.
le 2 octobre,2009
Man! I am “exhausted” from going up and down all these ETAGES” LOL! Thanks for the list of ETAGES expressions. In the phrase “Le Premier Etage”, how can it mean the 2nd floor when “premier” means “First”?
I think I learned this in my 1st year in french way back in my high school days, but I forgot. Please explain de nouveau. Merci!
Thanks for this article. When I saw it I was hoping you would address something I see in apartment ads. Can you please tell me what floor they are referring to when they say “noble etage”?
Thanks
Robert – Europeans walk through the door onto the ground floor (rez de chaussee) and then up the stairs to the 1st floor (le premier etage)
Americans walk through the door to the 1st floor then up the stairs to the 2nd floor. Therefore to an American le premier etage = 2nd floor.. clear as mud!!
I believe ‘étage noble’ means 1st or 2nd (french) floor.
Christina -
I’ve never seen noble étage. My French-English dictionary says “piano nobile (second floor)” – I’ve never heard that term either, and I don’t know whether second floor is the US or UK meaning. Some Googling revealed that it refers to the main floor of a house, so the actual floor number varies depending on the house.
Laura K. Lawless
Learn French at About
I like your lesson on the floors but maybe you could include pronunciations for the french words for upstairs and downstairs, since the endings are different but the words look similar.
Dianna – The difference in pronunciation for dessus and dessous seems very subtle to me and yet one is completely the opposite to the other. I think somewhere on laura’s site it does explain the pronunciation but i find that in spoken french it’s still not easy to tell the difference.
thank you so much for this lesson . It is really useful .
Dianna – see http://french.about.com/library/weekly/bl-dessusdessous.htm
Laura K. Lawless
Learn French at About
How would one refer to a multi-level apartment. For instance, we have three level town homes, but are there townhouses in France?
So in short, à l’étage alone = à l’étage du dessus
meaning upstairs, right?
BonVivant – Yes, it can mean upstairs. Or it can mean le premier étage, as I explained in the lesson.
Laura K. Lawless
Learn French at About