AIKB Radio Project Programme 6 Cri de Coeur

AIKB Radio Project
Programme 6
Cri de Coeur – 2.01
The heart rules the head we say, in the figurative sense of emotion having
more influence than intellect, and the heart is at the centre of many words and
phrases we use both in French and English.
But sometimes the sense is quite different in the two languages.
The first time I heard the phrase ‘faire mal au cœur’ I understood it as a
physical ailment along the lines of ‘j'ai mal à la tête’ but unlike headache
the ‘mal au cœur’ is not an indication to rush to the phone to call for medical
assistance.
A friend recently told me how she'd seen a young person begging on the
streets and how it had upset her ‘ça me fait mal au cœur’ she explained ‘ça
me peinée’.
Rather more urgent medical assistance might be required however if you
were subject to an ‘haut la cœur’, that's ‘haut’ as in high or top by the way, in
case you thing it sounds like something else.
But there's nothing elevated about this little phrase ‘avoir un haut-le-cœur’
simply means to feel sick or to retch!
And moving swiftly on...
There's a little expression ‘avoir le cœur sur le main’ which literally means to
have your heart in your hand but actually means something far more pleasant
because it expresses a generous nature and an open hearted approach.
Not quire the same as the English idiom ‘to wear your heart on your sleeve’
perhaps, but the concept and meaning to have something in common.
And by the way, the French language is as straightforward as English in its
description of a real medical emergency: ‘une crise cardiaque’ or ‘une attaque
cardiaque’ would be the two most common ways of describing a heart
attack. But I hope that's vocabulary you'll never need to know.
Thanks for listening.
A bientôt.