In this video, I explain the vocabulary words related to the Covid-19 pandemic. This vocabulary is not the happiest, but it will be useful if you want to learn to speak French.

Transcript of the video "Learning French with the Coronavirus

Hello to all of you. I hope that you are well and that your learning of French is going well. Today, I'm going to propose a video theme that is not very joyful, that is not very happy. I am going to make a video on the coronavirus, COVID-19. In France, we have just been re-controlled. So this is a topic that you hear about very, very often on the news or on the radio, on online media, in articles if you buy newspapers. I think it's important for you, it can be good to understand all the vocabulary words and expressions related to this global pandemic, to COVID-19. Before you start, please remember to activate the subtitles, it will be easier for you to understand the video. If you are not yet a subscriber, please do not miss any video. I will put on hellofrench.com a vocabulary list with the words we will see today.

Let's start right away with the expression "the health situation". If you have listened to or watched the news in French recently about Covid-19, you have probably heard the expression "la situation sanitaire". It is an expression used to talk about the situation, the moment we are living. Sanitary comes from health. When we talk about the sanitary situation, we are talking about the situation in which our health is in danger. We also often hear the word virus. A virus in French is a disease that will spread, spread through the population. For example, I can say "I have a little virus, I cough". When you have a virus or a disease, you say that you are sick. I can say "I am sick, I have a disease".

It means that we are not in good health and that something is not working well, we do not feel well, we are sick. We also often hear the words epidemics and pandemics. In the beginning, we were talking about an epidemic. It is a disease that will spread, spread over a limited territory, in a zone. Later, we talked about a worldwide pandemic. So a pandemic is an epidemic that will spread, spread more widely, more extensively.

We used the verb to spread. To propagate means to spread, to spread out. It is also called propagation. It is the common noun when we want to say that something spreads, we can for example say "the spread of the virus is all over the world" to say that it spreads everywhere. The expression "to be infected" or "to be contaminated" is also used a lot. It means that you have had, or are sick with Covid-19. I have been infected or I have been contaminated with Covid-19.

It means that I have or have had this disease. You can be contaminated, but you can also contaminate someone. I can say "I contaminated Nathalie". That means I made her sick, I gave her my disease. We also hear a lot that Covid-19 is a very contagious disease. You can also say for people that they are contagious, for girls. For a boy, he is contagious. There are diseases that are not contagious, for example cancer.

This means that if I hug or kiss someone who has cancer, I won't get sick. On the other hand, the coronavirus is a very contagious disease. That means that if I kiss someone who has this disease I could get it too because it is a contagious disease. There is also a lot of talk about symptoms. So what is a symptom? It is when you have a disease, you feel things, the disease will manifest itself in different ways. For example, with the coronavirus, we often say that we have a fever. Fever is a symptom of Covid-19. Fever is when our body temperature rises very high. For example, I can say "I have a high fever, I have a temperature of 40 degrees". Another symptom that we often hear about is coughing. When we cough, we go like this, we expel air from our lungs.

Another symptom that we hear about in the media or around us is the loss of smell. So, what is the sense of smell? It is the fact of smelling with one's nose the odors. So, when you lose your sense of smell, it means that you don't smell the odors anymore. There is another expression related to the symptoms which is being asymptomatic. When we say that someone who has Covid-19 and is asymptomatic, it means that they have the disease inside them, so the person has Covid-19, but they don't feel the symptoms, they don't have any symptoms. So it's good for them because they don't feel sick, but on the other hand, it also means that they can give the disease to other people who will feel the symptoms and will really feel sick. So when you are asymptomatic, it means you don't feel sick. Another expression is "testing positive". When you test positive for coronavirus, it means that you have been tested and the result is that you have the disease.

In France, you can be tested with a PCR test. The PCR test is what we call the test where we put a kind of cotton swab in the nose. There is another test in France called the serological test. It's a blood test that will determine whether or not you have had Covid-19 in the past. It allows to see if, potentially, if maybe, one can be immune, protected, so that one will not have the disease again.

This test allows us to see if we have antibodies in our blood. What are antibodies? It is what our body will develop to fight against a disease, against an aggression. It will develop antibodies which will try to drive out, to fight against a disease. We also talk a lot about contact cases. What is a contact case? It is an expression used to talk about a person who has been in contact with someone who has the disease, who has been in the same room as him, who has eaten with him or who has seen a person who had the coronavirus.

It doesn't mean that the person is sick, it just means that they have been in contact. So, often, this person will be asked to isolate themselves and stay home so that if they have been infected with the disease, they don't transmit it to someone else. We also talk a lot about first and second waves.

So today, we say in France that we are in the second wave. The first wave was in March and today, in October, we are in the second wave. This means that it is the second time that we are very strongly hit by the disease. So, the next word is the word mask. It is simply this. We also talk a lot about mandatory masks. The word mandatory means that you have to wear a mask, either in the street or in the stores.

If we don't wear it, we can be asked to leave the store, or we can be fined by the police. We talked about masks, but we also talk about visors, visors are the front of caps, so the hats that we put on to protect ourselves from the sun.

What has gone before is the visor. Today, we also talk about visors to talk about protective equipment. Sometimes, you see people who have this on the street or in the hospital, it's transparent, it's a visor, it's another way to protect yourself. Let's now look at three words that are very close and that can be complicated for you to differentiate because they are very close. There is containment, decontainment and recontainment. Each of these words also has an associated verb, so contain, decontain and recontain. Containment, or confining, is when you are forced to stay in your home that you are not allowed to leave. We are in confinement. This is to prevent the disease from spreading. Then, there is the decontainment. In France, we were decontained in May. Then, there is the reconfinement, which is the fact of confining again. It means that we were confined, we were no longer confined and again, we are asked to stay at home and not to go out.

For example, one could say "France confined its population for the first time in March, it deconfined the French in May and it is reconfining its population again in October". This may not be the case in your country, but France requires its population to fill out exit certificates. This is a document that you have to fill out when you want to go out. Officially, it's called an attestation de déplacement dérogatoire. It's a bit of a complicated expression, between us we say exit attestation. So, as I was saying, it's the document that you have to fill out if you want to go out to prove that this outing is important, that it's not to go and see friends, you have to check off boxes, for example, if it's to go shopping, to take your child to school or to go to the doctor. France has also imposed a curfew. What is a curfew?

It is when the state forbids going out after a certain time. In France, we are not allowed to go out after 9pm. It's a curfew. We also hear the word quarantine very often. A quarantine is when we isolate people or a person from the rest of the population to prevent a disease from spreading. For example, England quarantines all French people who come to its territory. We also talk about quarantine.

Fourteen days, this term is used to refer to a 14 day quarantine.

Now let's look at words that are still related to the spread of Covid-19. But these are also words that you may find useful when talking about illness in general, anything related to medical situations. Maybe you already know this word, but it's a term that we hear a lot right now, it's hospital and hospitals. The plural of the word hospital which becomes hospitals. It's the place where you go to be treated when you're sick, where you go to be operated on, where women can give birth if they're pregnant. We also use the expression to be hospitalized. When you are hospitalized, it means that you are in the hospital, that you have to sleep there because you have either had an operation or you need to be treated. We also hear a lot about intensive care and we also hear a lot about being in intensive care. Intensive care and the resuscitation service is the place in the hospital where you have to be monitored very, very regularly, either because your health condition may deteriorate or because, for example, you may be in a coma.

There was also a lot of talk about respirators. During the first wave, there was a great shortage of respirators. This is a device that allows you to breathe in place of a sick person. So to breathe in an artificial way because our lungs are too sick and we have difficulties to breathe by ourselves. In the hospital, we find the nursing staff. The caregivers are the people who will take care of the sick people. It can be a nurse or a doctor.

A doctor is a doctor. I was talking to you a few moments ago about the expression "in intensive care". We hear a lot in the media about the expression "there are so many beds left in intensive care". When we talk about available intensive care beds, we are talking about the number of places in hospitals that can accommodate new patients. It is very important to count the number of places that remain to be able to evaluate the people who can be received and treated in hospitals.

Hospitals have been mentioned, but there is also a lot of talk about EHPADs. EHPAD. These are retirement homes, nursing homes. In France, we talked about them a lot, because the elderly are very fragile and therefore can be sicker if they have Covid-19. We talked about it a lot in France because these were places where the situation was very complicated. Another word can be useful, by the way, even if you come to France on vacation or if you currently live in France, it is the pharmacy. The pharmacy is the place where you can buy medicines to treat yourself, but also you can buy skin creams, sun creams.

The next words are deaths and fatalities. Every day, in the media, we count the number of deaths, the number of deaths related to Covid-19. These are the people who have lost their lives. Let's end now with a slightly happier word which is the word "healing". Healing is the fact of being cured of a disease, when you are cured, it means that you are cured, that you are no longer sick, that the disease goes away.

That's it for today. I hope that you could learn some things in this video, even if as I said, it's not a very happy topic, it's still interesting vocabulary to know, to learn for yourself to talk about the world pandemic or to understand if you want to read media, watch TV or listen to the radio in French at this time. If you liked the video, think to put a like and I will put you, as I told you, the vocabulary list of this video on the site www.hellofrench.com. See you soon and take care of yourself.