Archive for 'Vocabulary'
Preparing For Un Voyage In French Posted by John Bauer on Jan 25, 2017
Traveling can be difficult when you combine la fatigue à cause du décalage horaire (jetlag) with a language barrier. Before you ever leave though, making sure all your travel arrangements are in order can prove to be quite difficult as well. Preparing a trip can take a long time. You might know where you want…
Third time is charming Posted by Tim Hildreth on Jan 24, 2017
Over the last few weeks I’ve been sharing some of my favorite French songs with you to help build vocabulary and pronunciation. While the 80’s where the heyday of rich story songs, all the great story songs aren’t from then. This week, a song that goes back a little bit further which many will recognize…
Longues Layovers – Delayed Flights In French Posted by John Bauer on Jan 18, 2017
I had un long vol (a long flight) back to les États-Unis a month ago to make it home for the holidays. Le vol was unfortunately delayed which led to many conversations with the staff in l’aéroport (the airport) trying to figure out how I was going to get home. Je me suis réveille à…
A pink canoe for two? Posted by Tim Hildreth on Jan 17, 2017
As promised, another “story song” this week to help you with your French. I find that des chansons (songs) – especially ones like this with extended spoken sections – can be very helpful in working on your listening comprehension skills and to model your own pronunciation on. [Parlé:] C’était pas l’année* dernière [Spoken :] It wasn’t…
5 French Idioms You Should Know Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Jan 16, 2017
Idioms (les idiotismes, m.) are expressions that don’t necessarily make sense literally, but have a well known meaning to native speakers. In order to be able to understand a language’s idioms, therefore, you can’t just know the exact definition of a word but you must also understand the social and cultural meaning behind that word. It is also…
Music and lyrics Posted by Tim Hildreth on Jan 10, 2017
If you’ve been following my blog posts this past year, you know that I love a good song. And what’s a good song, other than a story set to music? And who doesn’t love a good story? The 1980’s was the heyday of good story-songs and they are a great tool for learning language and…
The Ultimate Transparent French Blog 2016 Year in Review Quiz Posted by Josh Dougherty on Jan 5, 2017
Another year has come and gone, and what a year it was. The team at Transparent has had a lot of fun writing articles for you every week, but now we’re going to test to see how much you retained 😉 In 2016, the French blog received almost one million hits! We also added another…