Learning French: words around parking can be confusing

You will have noticed that the French language often includes English words with ‘ing’ on the end that do not necessarily relate to the real translation.

However, using un parking to mean ‘car park’ is a whole other concern. 

In English, ‘a car park’ makes sense because it is connected to our verb ‘to park’.

The French verb for ‘to park’ is se garer, and logically this ought to lead to la gare for a car park; but no, la gare is the train station, as you no doubt remember from school. The train station is, more literally for us, the train park.

During the festive season when shoppers crowd the town centres, you might hear, j’avais du mal à me garer, which means ‘I had a lot of trouble parking’. 

However logical it might seem, you cannot say j’avais du mal à me parker, because no one will understand, though it might raise a smile. 

Read more: Sales of small, no-licence, cars are booming in rural France

What does il s’est mal garé mean?

As you are walking through the car park, you might also hear il s’est mal garé, which refers to someone who has parked badly.

So far, we have un parking and se garer, two terms that seem unrelated. We can now add a third: stationner. This is one you’ll see on signs that forbid you from parking in a certain place (stationnement interdit) and also if you use one of those blue discs for limited-time parking, known as a disque de stationnement. 

In Canada, apparently, un stationnement is a car park, which at least makes more sense than the franglais creation of un parking. 

To sum up, then: ‘a car park’ is un parking, ‘to park’ is se garer, and objects relating to parking a vehicle in a stationary position use stationner or stationnement. Hopefully there will now be no further confusion on this issue.