{"id":27297,"date":"2017-07-25T05:32:02","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T03:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=27297"},"modified":"2017-07-31T01:19:53","modified_gmt":"2017-07-30T23:19:53","slug":"describing-people-in-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/describing-people-in-french\/","title":{"rendered":"Describing people in French"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a previous post<\/a>, I talked about the irregular French adjectives beau, vieux, <\/em>and nouveau, <\/em>useful for describing the relative age and attractiveness of people and things*. This week we’ll talk about ways to describe some of the physical characteristics of people.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’m going to try something new this week. I’ve hidden the English translations by making the font white. Use your mouse to select the text to see the translations. And leave me a comment in the comments section to let me know if you like the new approach or not!<\/div>\n

Voil\u00e0 Sophie \/ This is Sophie.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Sophie est blonde. Elle a les cheveux blonds. <\/strong>[Sophie is blond. She has blond hair.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Sophie a les yeux bleus. <\/strong>[Sophie has blue eyes.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Elle a des taches de rousseurs. <\/strong>[She has freckles.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Voli\u00e0 Guillaume. \/ This is Guillaume (William)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Guillaume a les cheveux roux. Il est roux (rouquin). <\/strong>[William has red hair. He is a red-head (ginger).<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Il porte** une barbe<\/a> et des moustaches. Guillaume est barbu. <\/strong>[He has a beard and a moustache. William is bearded.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Guillaume porte un pull^ bleu marine. <\/strong>[William is wearing a navy blue sweater.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Voil\u00e0 Catherine. \/ This is Catherine.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Catherine est rousse***. Elle a les cheveux roux comme Guillaume.<\/strong> [Catherine is a red-head. She has red hair like William.<\/span>]<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Catherine a les yeux bleus, comme Sophie. <\/strong>[Catherine has blue eyes, like Sophie.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Catherine a une \u00e9charpe autour du cou. <\/strong>[Catherine has a scarf around her neck.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Et voil\u00e0 Christophe. \/ And this is Christophe (Christopher)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Christophe a les cheveux bruns \/ ch\u00e2tain.<\/strong> [Christophe has brown \/ light brown hair.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Il est brun. <\/strong>[He is ‘brown’.****<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Il a les yeux noisette. <\/strong>[He has hazel eyes.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div><\/div>Christophe a une montre au poignet. <\/strong>[Christopher has a watch on his wrist.<\/em><\/span>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pour finir \/ And at the end . . . here is a fun little quiz<\/a> on French foods that I came across recently over on NPR. How many can you get right? I must admit I only got 6 out of 10! I must not be eating enough.<\/div>\n

* Here are two more useful words that I should have included in that previous post: moche<\/em> and jeune. <\/em>Moche <\/em>is the opposite of beau<\/em> or joli. <\/em>It means ‘ugly’<\/em> or ‘unattractive’.<\/em> Jeune<\/em> is the opposite of vieux.<\/em> It means ‘young’. <\/em>As they both end in ‘e’, the singular forms are the same whether you’re talking about masculine or feminine. Both take an ‘s’ in the plural form.
\n** You can also say that ‘Guillaume a une barbe et des moustaches’<\/em> (using the verb ‘avoir’ \/ ‘to have’<\/em> vs. ‘porter’), <\/em>but the formulation is quite common. You can also ‘porter’<\/em> (‘wear’) des v\u00eatements <\/em>(‘clothes’<\/em>) and des lunettes (‘glasses’<\/em>). The verb ‘porter’<\/em> can also mean ‘to carry’<\/em>.
\n^ ‘pull’<\/em> is short for ‘pullover’.<\/em>
\n*** Pay attention to the difference between these two words: ‘rousse’ <\/em>and ‘russe’<\/em>. The first refers to a red-headed woman, the second is the female form of the adjective ‘Russian’! Of course, Chatherine could be une russe rousse! (Click below to play)

<\/div><\/div><\/div>
\n**** <\/em>There isn’t a good English equivalent here. If someone has brown (or black) hair, we just say “they have brown (or black) hair”.<\/p>\n

Image Credits:
\nThis weeks images come from https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/, a great source of royalty free, open source images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

In a previous post, I talked about the irregular French adjectives beau, vieux, and nouveau, useful for describing the relative age and attractiveness of people and things*. This week we’ll talk about ways to describe some of the physical characteristics of people. Voil\u00e0 Sophie \/ This is Sophie. Sophie est blonde. Elle a les cheveux…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":27298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[8589,284,11656,357,432],"class_list":["post-27297","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grammar","category-vocabulary","tag-describing-people","tag-free-french-lessons","tag-french-blog","tag-french-language","tag-french-vocabulary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27297"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27546,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27297\/revisions\/27546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}