A Yorkshireman in London

Last week I decided that enough was enough: my hair was ridiculously long, and it couldn’t wait until I next go back to England to be cut. It was time to visit the coiffeur.

Now, there is surprisinlgy little to found on the subject of helping foreigners to get their hair cut - be it online, in guidebooks or phrasebooks. So, with the power of Collins Robert behind me, I set out into the unknown, and I will share with you some useful words phrases, should you ever be caught in such a pickle.

• Coiffeur - the haidressing establishment itself
• les cheveux - hair. note it’s always referred to in the plural.
• une coupe - a cut, costs around 20 €. The implication here is no shampoo beforehand, but don’t be surprised if they usher you to a sink for a quick wash, all-inclusive.
• la frange - fringe
• la raie au milieu - a center parting
• un peu plus court - a bit shorter
• en dégradé - layered
• frisé - curly
• raide - staright

And here’s some useful default responses to complicated questions, if things start to get tricky:

• Ca m’est égal - I don’t mind
• Je ne sais pas - I don’t know

And there you have it. It worked for me - in fact, she seemed suitably impressed that I’d managed to brave having my hair cut in a foreign country. Another tip - if you are chatty enough to let slip that you are a poor student …

• Je suis étudiant

… you might even get a few euros off the price. Bargain!

Update: Friday, 17th March, 2006

Having braved the hairdressing salon once more, I was this time greeted with slightly knowing smiles from the three people that work there - and I’m happy to report another successful experience. I even managed to pick up a few more lingual gems, words that had always caused me some confusion:

• le Coiffeur or la Coiffeuse - the hairdresser, the person that does the chopping
• la coiffure - hairdressing, the profession. It also means a hairstyle, and can refer to the salon, too.
• coiffer - to do someone’s hair, the verb.

The latter they are likely to use to ask you what you would like doing after they’ve done the cutting and stuff. Well, if ever you were wondering, now you know …

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 12:07 am and is filed under France. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.