First example, someone can say: "Don't buy these slimming products online. It's really a load of magic." The person who says this indicates that the slimming products that we find on the internet and that we can easily buy to lose weight, eh, they don't work. We are sold miracles on the website, we are told that we will lose weight, become slim without effort, but it doesn't work. It's a load of magic.
Another example: but I think it's all magic. I don't trust him." So here, the person who says that is questioning, casting doubt on a person. He is saying that this person makes a lot of promises but that he doesn't trust him, that these promises that seem miraculous are probably not true. By saying that it's magic, he is indicating that the promises are probably not true and they will not be kept.
Third example: "He thinks that homeopathy is magic powder, but I find it very effective." So homeopathy is a kind of... so it's not really a medicine, but it's a part of science in which we are interested in products that we offer in very small doses. Often, these are products that can be dangerous if taken in large doses, but switzerland whatsapp number data we prescribe them in the form of very small doses, they are very small balls that we are asked to take and which are supposed to have scientific virtues or in any case which have the power to cure certain diseases. We call that homeopathy.
And in our example, there is one person who finds that homeopathy works, and the other person who finds that it is a load of magic. That means that this other person finds that it does not actually work. It is supposed to be miraculous, to be effective, but it does not work. He finds that it is a load of magic.
I promised to talk to you about President Macron in this episode. And in fact, he used this expression at a very important and very critical moment. It was during the debate that took place between the two rounds of the 2017 presidential election. We had elections in 2022. Before that, it was in 2017. And Emmanuel Macron was elected in 2022 and in 2017. In 2017, he was not yet very well known. He had been a minister for a while, but even though he was very popular in the media, he was not very well known.
And the French presidential election is made up of two rounds. First, we have all the candidates, so I think that it's 10-12 candidates, maybe a little more, a little less sometimes, who present themselves for a first round. So each citizen can choose among all these candidates. And on the evening of this first round, we look at the two candidates who had the most votes and these two candidates face off in the second round. And then, in the second round, citizens must choose between one and the other. This is our French electoral system.
And so in 2017, there was Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the National Rally. And during the debate, Marine Le Pen, who was really, she wasn't very very good in this debate, she was completely overwhelmed by the intelligence of Emmanuel Macron, who was facing her without any notes, who knew his files, and she, she had lots of pieces of paper and she got mixed up, she said a lot of nonsense, really, a lot of false things.
And at one point, he said to her: "What you're saying is magic powder." And that caused a reaction because it's an expression that a politician rarely uses, especially not during a high-profile presidential debate like this to become President of the Republic. And he used it to say that in fact what Mrs. Le Pen was proposing was supposedly a miraculous thing, a magic thing, but that in fact it wouldn't work, it would be completely ineffective. So if you want to talk like Emmanuel Macron, you can say that something you don't believe in is magic powder.
What I suggest you do now in terms of pronunciation is to work a little on the word "perlimpinpin" precisely, because it is not very easy to pronounce. And we are going to break it down into syllables, per-lim-pin-pin. I am going to help you practice the word "per" and you can, for that, repeat after me.