The C’est ça Mug: All That’s Left of GCSE French

Five years of French at school, and this is what survived: C’est ça. Ça va. Comme ci, comme ça.

Roughly: That’s it. All right? So-so. And on the back: Je ne sais pas – I don’t know.

For everything after that, there is the back of the mug.

Four lines of French, one confession

The front reads like page one of a textbook. Four lines in a black serif, partly in italics: C’est ça, Ça va, Comme ci, comme ça. Enough to get through any conversation in France, as long as it is over after three sentences.

Then the mug turns and the act drops. On the back, in small letters: Je ne sais pas. I don’t know. The answer to every question longer than “ça va?”.

Comme ci, comme ça means so-so, by the way. French has few better ways of saying you haven’t made up your mind.

A gift for French teachers, exchange students and francophiles

For a French teacher at the end of term or on retirement. Anyone who has spent years testing vocabulary knows exactly how much of it stuck. Now it is on a mug.

As a thank-you for the host family on a French exchange: they will get the joke straight away. For the exchange student heading home, whose English is now better than your French. For a friend moving to France, or off on holiday there, where every café order ends in pointing. For francophiles, Paris lovers and anyone planning to brush up their French. Some day.

White, or with colour inside

The mug comes in plain white or with a coloured inside and matching handle: yellow, pink, green, red, blue or black.

C’est ça mug, ceramic, 330 ml, printed on both sides, dishwasher and microwave safe, 96 mm tall, 80 mm across the base. Shipped by a small business in Germany; current delivery times are shown in the Etsy shop. As a rule the mugs reach you a few days later.

€ 14.90 – 16.90

White € 14.90, with a coloured inside € 16.90.

Order on Etsy

Prefer to be clueless in English? All 23 designs are here – perhaps “I Don’t Know Shit About Fuck” fits better.