Archive for 'Vocabulary'
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…
Running In Circles In Every Nook And Cranny – Two French Idioms Posted by John Bauer on Mar 14, 2018
Singing along to a song makes repeating the same few words over and over again much more fun and feels a lot less like les devoirs (homework). However, sometimes it can be hard to sing along, especially if the singer has a strong accent or there are a lot of expressions françaises! La semaine dernière…
French Grammar – Sometimes even être needs a vacation Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 13, 2018
Back in décembre (December) I shared a post about how sometimes the famous “House of être” needs to make room for guests. This week we’re going to look at some examples of the opposite… when verbs that usually take the verb être to from the passé composé switch teams and take the verb avoir…
Too much of a good thing Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 6, 2018
February is over, and we’ve moved on to le mois de mars (the month of March). So much of février is dedicated to l’amour (love) (including some of my own blog posts!) that I thought we could perhaps use a little bit of a palette cleanser to put all the calins, baisers, et amour (hugs…
Another love story Posted by Tim Hildreth on Feb 27, 2018
It’s been almost a year since we last went to the store. Well Monoprix is back with another too-cute pub (short for pulicité / commercial) that we’ll look at this week. Olympic update But first, a look back at another topic we covered more recently, les JO. The 2018 Jeux olympique came to a close…
French Nursery Rhymes: Une Souris Verte Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 26, 2018
One of my son’s favorite French children’s songs is “Une Souris verte.” It’s a very strange—albeit catchy—tune that dates back to the late seventeenth or eighteenth century. The song’s lyrics, or paroles, are below: Une souris verte qui courait dans l’herbe Je l’attrape par la queue Je la montre à ces messieurs Ces messieurs me disent…