Musings of an ex-expat Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 22, 2016
Bonjour et bienvenue! Permettez moi de me présenter. Je m’appelle Tim Hildreth et je suis désormais bloggeur pour Transparent Language! (Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tim Hildreth and starting today, I’m a new blogger here with Transparent Language.) I’m sure you can guess from my name, I’m not French. But I am…
Stacey Kent’s: “Les Eaux de Mars” (French cover of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s “The Waters of March”) Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 21, 2016
As the month of March draws to a close, I am reminded of the beautiful Brazilian song “Águas de Março” (in English: “The Waters of March”), written and recorded by Antônio Carlos Jobim in 1973. The song is about Brazil’s rainiest month and each, disparate image in the song revolves around the central metaphor of the end of…
Part 2: Line by Line Lesson: “Le droit à l’erreur” by Amel Bent Posted by Josh Dougherty on Mar 17, 2016
La semaine dernière (last week), I posted microlessons from the first 12 lines of Amel Bent’s Le droit à l’erreur (The Right to be Mistaken). The previous lessons focused on indefinite expressions, multiple word meanings, the 5 senses, negations, le passé composé vs. l’imparfait, the past infinitive, intensifiers, the uses of the word tout, coordinating…
The Prisons of Nantes – French Celtic Music Posted by John Bauer on Mar 16, 2016
Drapeau de Nantes (Flag of Nantes) by Ec.Domnowall, CC BY 3.0. La fête de la Saint-Patrick est à l’approche (St. Patrick’s Day is around the corner) and that means a lot of green, music, and Guinness. The holiday brings up thoughts of Ireland and its culture with des bars et des restaurants (bars and restaurants)…
French Interrogatives: Inversion Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 14, 2016
Jumping off my post from last week, I’ll spend more time this week describing how you can use inversion to create an interrogative sentence (a question) in French. Inversion is when you change the order of the subject and verb in a declarative sentence to create a question. Thus, the order in the interrogative…
Line by Line Lesson: “Le droit à l’erreur” by Amel Bent Posted by Josh Dougherty on Mar 10, 2016
Don’t you love it when a song you hadn’t heard in a long time comes on and you can sing along like a pro? This recently happened to me with a song I listened to when I started learning French. I didn’t know the lyrics well – it was always a song I had on…
Twice As Nice With Two Sixes – Leap Years In French Posted by John Bauer on Mar 9, 2016
If you are chanceux (lucky), or maybe malchanceux (unlucky), last week was the first time in quatre ans (four years) that you were able to celebrate your anniversaire (birthday). Tous les quatres ans (every four years) there is a leap year, but it wasn’t until last week that I realized I did not know how…