Archive for 'Vocabulary'
Street French III – Worrying Posted by Transparent Language on Aug 12, 2009
I’m a worrywart (une bileuse). Tout m’inquiète. (Everything worries me.) I worry about things. (Je m’inquiète pour qqch.) I worry about people. (Je m’inquiète pour qqn.) Even when there’s nothing to really worry about. (Il n’y a pas lieu de s’inquiéter.) Je me fais du souci pour mon mari, mes filles, ma maman, mon père…en…
French Horoscopes Posted by Transparent Language on Jul 15, 2009
For personal reasons, I have been looking more and more at l’horoscope lately. I feel as though I’ve had a streak of bad luck, so I thought reading my horoscope (mon horoscope) could either clear this up for me or just help me avoid this bad luck in the future. And so I thought about…
French Vocabulary – Phone Language Posted by Transparent Language on Jul 6, 2009
I once worked in a call center and was responsible for making the calls to French-speaking Québec. Although I had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in French, I was a bit intimidated the first time I had to make a call. I mean what was I supposed to say to these people??? And the…
More Colloquial French Posted by Transparent Language on Jun 29, 2009
I broke my husband’s iPhone yesterday and no, he was not content. And just like many other people in today’s society, I decided to share this event with all of my friends on Facebook. About an hour later, one of my French friends responded with “Tu as des mains à faire des mottes!” and to…
Street French II – Food Posted by Transparent Language on Jun 18, 2009
French argot (slang) can be difficult to understand, but it’s really quite fun. So, today, we’ll talk about some expressions involving food that don’t have so much to do with food really, but might be useful to know. For example, if you want to say that you are a bit down in the dumps, you…
French Vocabulary – Idioms with Avoir Posted by Transparent Language on Jun 8, 2009
One of the first mistakes I, just like most beginning French learners whose native tongue is English, made is to say ‘Je suis chaud‘ (can be quite vulgar depending on who says it and in which situation) when I mean to say ‘J’ai chaud‘ (I’m hot as in temperature). In English, we usually use the…
French Word of the Day – Péniche Posted by Transparent Language on Jun 1, 2009
Some of you may have noticed the Word of the Day to the right of the blog articles. It is a helpful way to learn vocabulary little by little in context. You can even hear the word pronounced by a native speaker or see other forms of the word like the difference between the plural…