Le nouvel an (New Year’s) is a perfect time for finding those little ways (comme apprendre une nouvelle langue / like learning a new language!) to make our lives better. As is the case in many countries, les Français (the French) use le jour de l’An* (New Year’s day) to declare leurs bonnes intentions (their good intentions) for the year ahead.

Les bonnes résolutions pour la nouvelle** année (New Year’s resolutions)

It’s been a few years since we looked at making resolutions in French and with all the crazy news coming out of France (and beyond) recently, now seems like as good a time as any to talk about the ways that we can all faire un monde meilleur (make a better world).

Sometimes when someone makes une résolution (a resolution), you can tell how committed they are (sometimes) by how they phrase it. Success (or failure) often depends on how committed you are. Here are some phrases you might encounter / use when des résolutions are in the air.

Et vous ? / And you ?

What do you hope to do this year? Bellow is a (short) list of some of the many things that people often promise themselves to do more (or less) of as one year turns into the next.

Click here*** to watch a video from last year of des habitants de Reims (local people living in the French city of Reims) talking about what they hoped to accomplish in 2018.

* Notice all the different ways to say “New Year’s” in French …
** Nouvelle (neuf, neuve, nouveau, nouvelle) is one of those magical French adjectives that can both follow (as is the rule) and precede the noun. While French adjectives usually come after the noun that they modify, adjectives of beauty, age, goodness, and size (or as they’re sometimes referred BAnGS …) generally precede the noun.
*** With all of the chaos in France right now, the local media has been less focused on lighter fare this year than in years past.