Dubious French Phrase

Hello, yes another one - I asked a French person, who has lived in England for many years, the French equivalent of 'Am I bovered' ( am I bothered ) - a well known phrase from an English comedy show. The phrase I was given was 'Je m'en fou' well that's my attempt at spelling it. Would love to know what it means and when and where \i can use it, if at all. Thanks Sue Jones

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Permalink Reply by Marc Vonhalmen on October 10, 2009 at 2:10pm

"Je m'en fous."

It's an informal way of saying "I don't care". The verb is "s'en foutre". The verb "foutre" has many meanings (and some bad ones...) but most of the time it means either to put ("mettre") or to do ("faire").
Qu'est-ce que tu fous ? What (the hell) are you doing?
Va foutre ça ailleurs. Put this somewhere else.
And some bad examples too...
Va te faire foutre ! F*** you!

Nevertheless, "je m'en fous" is clearly informal, but not coarse. So you can just use it whenever you would say "I don't care" in English, when you're talking to friends or relatives. But if you want to say that in a more formal way, you can say: "Je m'en moque" or "ça m'est égal".

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Permalink Reply by susan jones on October 11, 2009 at 2:34pm

Hi Marc, Many thanks for that.Sue Jones

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Permalink Reply by Frank on October 14, 2009 at 12:24pm

By the way, something you are likely to stumble upon in chat rooms or read on funny t-shirts is "OSEF", which means "On s'en fout" (we don't give a shit).

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Permalink Reply by adel on October 14, 2009 at 1:12pm

langage, language, the forum is here to help with french and french manners

On s'en fout really means we don't care