Archive for March, 2018
Using An Chair To Understand The Importance Of Les Genres In French Posted by John Bauer on Mar 28, 2018
Learning des nouveaux mots (new words) in French means remembering a word’s definition, pronunciation, and le genre du mot (the gender of the word). For many people including myself, remembering les genres des mots is the hardest part of learning the language! Malheureusement (unfortunately), as un anglophone (an English speaker) the idea of every word…
French Grammar – Back to the future Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 27, 2018
Last week I kicked off a short series of posts on useful French grammar topics that sometimes get ignored. This week we head back to the future* with a look at a way to talk about upcoming actions and events that is as easy as the passé récent that we looked at last week. Le…
Travel in France: A Palace Made of Pebbles? Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 26, 2018
There are lots of famous sites in France, from the iconic French Riviera to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. But there are also some interesting attractions off the beaten path … like a gigantic palace made almost entirely of pebbles in Hauterives, France. Known as Le Palais idéal, or the Ideal Palace, this strange…
Spice up Your Life! Herbs and Spices in French Posted by Josh Dougherty on Mar 25, 2018
It’s amazing how a little salt and pepper can enhance the flavor of a dish, but it’s generally a blend of other épices (spices; feminine) that bring a dish’s full flavor profile to the surface. Ces aromates (seasonings; masculine) can transport you to an exotic land, remind you of home-cooked meals from your childhood, or…
Amercian Stereotypes and Traditional Cuisine – Hamburger Vocabulary in French Posted by John Bauer on Mar 21, 2018
Living in France as un américain (an American) sometimes means hearing the same jokes over and over again. Most of the time it’s all meant in good fun so it never bothers me and sometimes I even learn about les stéréotypes américains (American stereotypes) that I never knew existed! The most common stéréotype américain that…
French Grammar – The Recent Past Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 20, 2018
This week I’m starting a mini-series to address some useful ways for talking about actions and events in time that don’t always gets as much attention as other tenses. First up, an easy way to talk about things that happened in the past without resorting to the passé composé or the more literary passé simple…
French Pronunciation and…Squirrels? Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 19, 2018
We all know that French pronunciation can be difficult (but not impossible!) for English speakers to master. The French “r” is particularly difficult, for example. But, according to legend, there is one word that the French themselves used during World War II to discover non-French spies…écureuil, which means “squirrel.” The word écureuil (nm) rhymes with the…