Be CaReFuL! Final Consonant Pronunciation in French Posted by Josh Dougherty on Mar 5, 2015
Behind French’s beautiful sounds is a very complicated pronunciation system. Unlike Spanish, for example, the words aren’t always pronounced as they’re spelled; c’est-à-dire que c’est n’est pas une langue phonétique (that is to say that isn’t not a phonetic language). Why are –er, –é, –ay, –ai, –ais, –ait, and –aient all pronounced the same? It’s…
As Easy As RFI: The News in French Posted by John Bauer on Mar 4, 2015
When I first came to France I would spend every day in a café studying. I was trying to convert my entire life into French. I watched la télévision française (French television), watched des films français (French movies), listened to la musique française (French music), and followed l’actualité française (French news). Even though my French…
France’s Wine Regions and Terroir Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Mar 2, 2015
One of the best (and most fun!) ways of getting to know France is through learning about its terroirs. Terroir is a French loanword in English that you might already be familiar with — especially if you are an oenophile — that loosely translates to a “sense of place”. In other words, terroir is the special characteristics of a particular…
15 Interesting Facts about the Pope’s Palace Posted by Josh Dougherty on Feb 26, 2015
No, we’re not talking about the Vatican. For about 70 years, 7 successive popes ruled from Provence in the south of France. The history is very long and interesting, and si vous voulez connaitre l’histoire à fond (if you want to learn about it in depth), I’ve included 2 YouTube documentaries at the bottom. This post is…
French Youtube Stars: Norman Thavaud Posted by John Bauer on Feb 25, 2015
In the modern era of content creation there are many new names coming out of the Internet. A big platform for these new stars is Youtube with many people now creating leurs propres séries (their own shows) on the website. En France many of these youtubeurs have strated breaking into the mainstream. One of the…
Vocab for Surviving a French Winter Posted by Elizabeth Schmermund on Feb 23, 2015
En écrivant ce poste à New York pendant un hiver particulièrement brutale, je me suis dit « Allez, je vais faire un poste sur la neige, la froideur, et tout le reste. » Looking out my window today, I see about two feet of snow on the ground and frozen branches on bare trees. My car thermometer…
Tout sur Tout: Everything You Need to Know about Tout Posted by Josh Dougherty on Feb 20, 2015
Tout is a very versatile word in French — you’ll generally find it means “all,” but you’ll notice different meanings when you see all its forms. This little word can be used as an adjective, an adverb, a noun, and a pronoun, and all with varying forms. We’ll go over all of those separately. I…