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French Phonetics (Part II) Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 16, 2015
Last week, we talked about how stressing syllables in French is different from the stresses you put on certain syllables in English. This week, we will continue our discussion of la phonétique with l’intonation. Intonation is not very complicated in French because it follows French accentuation. Intonation refers to the “melody” of a language…
An Introduction to French Phonetics Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 9, 2015
One of the hardest things for advanced French language learners to grasp is how to sound like a native speaker. Your accent largely depends on the age at which you first learned a language. But what can be even trickier than working on the perfect pronunciation of each word is mastering the rhythm of the…
France’s Wine Regions and Terroir Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 2, 2015
One of the best (and most fun!) ways of getting to know France is through learning about its terroirs. Terroir is a French loanword in English that you might already be familiar with — especially if you are an oenophile — that loosely translates to a “sense of place”. In other words, terroir is the special characteristics of a particular…
Vocab for Surviving a French Winter Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 23, 2015
En écrivant ce poste à New York pendant un hiver particulièrement brutale, je me suis dit « Allez, je vais faire un poste sur la neige, la froideur, et tout le reste. » Looking out my window today, I see about two feet of snow on the ground and frozen branches on bare trees. My car thermometer…
How to Avoid the French Subjunctive Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 16, 2015
This is my fourth and final post in the series on forming and using the subjunctive mood in French. If you haven’t guessed already based, the subjunctive is vital to speaking (and writing) French like a native — that’s why I’ve dedicated so much time to it. However, many students are still quite intimidated by…
Subjunctive: Irregular and Stem-Changing Verbs Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 9, 2015
As I mentioned last week, besides evaluating in which circumstances to use the French subjunctive, the most difficult part of this mood is learning how to conjugate irregular and stem-changing verbs into the subjunctive. Luckily, there are only about 10 verbs that are irregular and 10 verbs that are stem-changing in the subjunctive – although…
Delving into the French Subjunctive Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 2, 2015
Last week, I spent some time introducing what the subjunctive mood expresses and how it is used in other languages, such as English. You can visit that post here. This week, I would like to go into more concrete examples of how to form the present subjunctive and, just as importantly, how you can recognize when…