Archive for 'Vocabulary'
Which State/Province Are You From? Expressing Location in French Posted by Josh Dougherty on Sep 3, 2015
I’ve been writing about prepositions with certain verbs lately, but today I’d like to discuss prepositions referring to American states and Canadian provinces (still worth reading if you’re not from those places – can never have too much grammar 😉 ) A while back, we wrote a post on how to say you’re from, living…
Can You BRING Me to My French Class? No, but I Can TAKE You… Posted by Josh Dougherty on Aug 27, 2015
Unless you are already on the moon, I’m not going to say this to you! It doesn’t matter how much I want to go there. Logically speaking, ‘bring’ and ‘take’ shouldn’t cause too much confusion, but I hear native speakers make this mistake time and time again (talking about English, by the way). “I’m going to…
Help! Attention! Urgence! Posted by John Bauer on Aug 26, 2015
Many medical and emergency words are similar in French, but they are also different enough to lead to major confusions. Médecin doesn’t mean medicine and an emergency is urgent, but in French it’s l’urgence that takes the name. That last sentence is confusing because of all the closely related words that are nearly the same…
Bon anniversaire, Harry! Harry Potter Terms in French Posted by Josh Dougherty on Jul 31, 2015
Bon anniversaire, Harry Potter ! On July 31st, the boy who lived turns 35. Since the first book was published in the summer of 1997, the 7-book series of fantasy and adventure novels by J.K. Rowling has become disgustingly successful. Let’s look at some numbers: the books have sold over 450 million copies worldwide, which…
L’International des Feux Loto-Québec (The Montreal Fireworks Festival) Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Jul 27, 2015
The summer is the season of fireworks. Some years my family has been lucky: We get to see Fourth of July fireworks in the US before heading out to Paris for our annual pilgrimage and watching the spectacular fireworks for la fête nationale. This year, however, we are not traveling and I am stuck dreaming…
How To Find A Hardware Store in French Posted by John Bauer on Jul 22, 2015
My computer problems quickly led to hardware problems, which meant finding a hardware store. Les problèmes were that my hardware vocabulary isn’t very good in English never mind in French, and that it was still incredibly hot. I needed a very small screwdriver to take off the screws on the bottom of my laptop and…
Les embouteillages! Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Jul 20, 2015
Normally I try to focus on writing about the fun things about summer: gardening, going to the beach, and going to music festivals. However, there is one unavoidable (and not-so-fun) fact of summer life in and around large French cities: les embouteillages! Un embouteillage is a traffic jam, and there can be a lot of…