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I watch The Simpsons in French and I often hear some informal expression, but I can't figure out how one writes them.

  1. What is an informal word for a tv set in French (like telly) ? Homer (main character) calls it like "téléch". How this word is written?

  2. From time to time characters express their agreement with an expression that sounds like "ok, dack".

For example https://youtu.be/ohI1X6ynKH8

4:09

What he pronounces exactly?

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    For the ch you heard at the end of télé, see french.stackexchange.com/questions/16320/… Jun 6, 2020 at 13:24
  • Welcome to French SE and thanks for the question! Note: It's allowed, and even preferred, to post more than one question if you have two things to ask. One question could be about "TV" and one question could be about "OK, dack".
    – Luke Sawczak
    Jun 6, 2020 at 16:54
  • Hi. The YouTube video you link to is no longer available.
    – Tsundoku
    Nov 3, 2020 at 15:54

4 Answers 4

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For your first question: the most common informal word is télé, a colloquial contraction of the word télévision (no need to define this one).

Erratum: the word is actually probably téloche, many thanks to @Laurent S. who pointed this out in his answer. This indeed seems like a French Homer Simpson thing to say, from what I remember from when I was watching the Simpsons.

For your second question, he is saying "dacodac", which is taken from "d'accord" . This expression is a rather childish way of expressing an agreement, and is only to be used in a colloquial way.

Note that even if you understood it wrong, the expression "ok d'ac" does exist and is also a colloquial contraction of d'accord.

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I'm a big Simpson fan and I'm quite sure Homer uses the word "téloche", which is a bit outdated but some episodes are almost 30 years old so that's not entirely surprising.

Please note I'm talking about French version in France or Belgium. The French-Canadian version might be different.

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    Oh yeah you're right, that's very likely that this is the word OP was mentioning. Nice!
    – Reyedy
    Jun 6, 2020 at 19:51
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Besides Reyedy's good answer, a TV can also be called a TV (té vé). This might be a Canadianism.

I thought this worth mentioning since the question made me think of a song with this variant by Daniel Lavoie called "Allume la TV". You can find the video here, and here are the lyrics:

Je t'ai demandé ton appui pis je l'ai eu
Ta chaleur dans la nuit pis je l'ai eu
J'ai désiré ton corps pis je l'ai eu
La note et tout l'accord pis je l'ai eu

Mais chaque fois que je te parle d'amour
Tu dis que je suis bête et que j'ai rien compris
Tu me ris dans la face et t'allumes la TV

Interestingly, I see the TV variant was more common than télé till around 1970. It peaked around 1980, which is when the above song was written (1979), but by then it was already only 2/3 as common as the rapidly rising téle. Since then the latter has surpassed it astronomically, which likely explains why The Simpsons prefers it.

enter image description here

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    I think tévé is making a bit of a comeback in France, but it's still rather an anglicisme or a québécisme. Google Ngrams is based on written texts, but this is primarily spoken language, so it isn't very representative and written texts tend to be a little behind. By 1980, I don't think tévé was used much in France anymore. I didn't even know it had been a thing in France, but Wiktionaire does have a 1965 citation by Raymond Queneau. Jun 6, 2020 at 19:28
  • Note that the current logo of France télévisions is showing france.tv...
    – Laurent S.
    Jun 6, 2020 at 19:43
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"A la télé" is almost always used. You may sometimes hear "dans le poste", ie "in the TV device":

"J'ai entendu son discours dans le poste hier soir" => "I heard his speech on TV yesterday evening".

Very rarely used, but everyone understands it.

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