Archive for 'Music'
Getting in the mood . . . Posted by Tim Hildreth on Jun 27, 2017
… For France! At the end of le mois d’août (the month of August), my family and I are heading to France to celebrate a wedding. It has been over three years since my last trip to France, and I can hardly wait. Three years is a long time to be away from a place…
In the eye of the beholder Posted by Tim Hildreth on Jun 20, 2017
Belle isn’t just the name of the main character in Disney’s latest film. Belle is also a French adjective that means beautiful, lovely, pleasant, or agreable (unlike joli/jolie – pretty, belle doesn’t only pertain to appearances). Ok, so that’s not entirely true. In another oddity of the French language, belle is technically not its own…
She’s a beauty Posted by Tim Hildreth on Jun 13, 2017
As one of my fellow bloggers said, Claude François was “an iconic French singer who died at 39 years old, and who even [more than] 30 years after his death still fascinates people in France and abroad…”. I suspect that fascination is due in equal parts to his great songs, his tragic death…
Les Sœurs Boulay – Music From Québec Posted by John Bauer on May 31, 2017
Listening to la musique française (French music) is a good way to practice your French and have fun à la fois (at the same time). When you find un groupe that has a style you really you study all the time just by listening to them over and over. Les Sœurs Boulay (The Boulay Sisters)…
How Did France do in the 2017 Eurovision Competition? Come Hear Their Song Choice! Posted by Josh Dougherty on May 18, 2017
Another May, another Eurovision. May is that special time of the year in Europe where countries go to battle for the best song. Each country chooses a singer to represent the them, and both an official jury and the European public decide on the winner via a point system. You can learn more about the…
French pronunciation basics part 3 Posted by Tim Hildreth on May 16, 2017
Many words in French end in ‘e’. And while the final ‘e’ can make us pronounce other letters (think ‘petit‘ vs. ‘petite‘ or ‘français‘ vs. ‘française‘), it is, in itself, usually silent. Usually, but not always! In poetry, and often in songs (which are, after all, just poems set to music), a final silent ‘e’…
What would you do? Posted by Tim Hildreth on Apr 25, 2017
Last summer I asked ‘what I did‘ and ‘what you are going to do‘ (looking at the past and future tenses in song). This week, a look at another French tense – and a new song – to learn about le conditionelle (the conditional). Le conditionelle is not actually a tense, but a mood…