What does 'se prendre à rêver' mean in French?
Aventures extrêmes en Namibie entre désert et océan
B1 French listening practice · French from France · Picked for people who know some
Se prendre à rêver is a French construction with a quiet poetic charge: literally to take oneself to dreaming. It captures the moment when reverie sneaks up on you, when a thought you weren’t supposed to entertain starts to take shape. Pair it with other verbs (se prendre à pleurer, se prendre à espérer); rêver is the sweetest fit.
In this Thalassa trailer, the narrator frames the Namib coast and says: « Je me suis pris à rêver de sauver ces lions du désert » (I caught myself dreaming of saving these desert lions). The construction is the show’s whole emotional pitch: a documentary that lets you imagine more than the harsh frame suggests.
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · Lexique 3.83 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸On French nature documentaries like Thalassa on France 5 and La France sauvage on Arte where narrators slip into reverie over wildlife shots
- ▸In French literature, works by Sylvain Tesson, Erik Orsenna and Andreï Makine use se prendre à + infinitif freely
- ▸In French cinema voiceovers on films like Le Renard et l’enfant by Luc Jacquet and Microcosmos aired on Arte when nature triggers an emotional shift
- ▸In long-form French journalism in Le Monde, Libération, and XXI magazine when writers reflect on a journey