Tag Archives: musique francaise
A real star Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 28, 2017
Céline Dion is surely one of the world’s most successful and well-known French-language singers. Born in the Canadian province of Québec and singing originally exclusively in French, Céline has gone on to international stardom in English and in French, selling over 200 million albums worldwide (making her the best-selling Canadian artist of all time). Céline’s…
A few of my favorite things Posted by Tim Hildreth on Mar 14, 2017
This week marks my cinquante-deuxième (52nd) entry to the Transparent Language French blog! Bon anniversaire à moi! (Happy anniversary to me!) Cinquante-deux semaine (52 weeks) means it’s been just un an (one year) since I first introduced myself to you! I hope it’s been une bonne année (a good year) for all of you and…
Love and animals? Posted by Tim Hildreth on Feb 14, 2017
Happy Valentine’s Day! C’est le 14 février*. Le jour des amoureux ! (It’s the 14th of February. The day of lovers!) In honor of the day, I thought a little song about love was in order. Malheureusement (Sadly), l’amour n’est pas toujours facile ! (love isn’t always easy!) So while today’s song is about love…
It’s all about you Posted by Tim Hildreth on Feb 7, 2017
Whereas English only has one from of the word ‘you’ (serving as both the singular and plural*) French, like many languages, has two (tu and vous). But do you know why? And do you know when to use them? ‘Tu‘ and ‘vous‘ are personal pronouns that replace (or refer to) the subject of a…
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…
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…
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…