Once upon a time, so the story goes, all the world spoke the same language. How easy life must have been for travellers! But then people got over-ambitious and started building the Tower of Babel – and ‘God confounded the language of all the Earth’.(Genesis 11:5-8) This has caused a lot of problems for expats! [...]
It’s nearly Christmas so time for something light-hearted – a selection of famous French quotes – and some less famous quotes. Enjoy, and let me know any well known or amusing ones that have been missed… “France has more need of me than I have need of France” Napoleon
We have all seen menus in French restaurants that have been translated poorly into English, where perfectly delicious dishes suddenly become unappealing, completely uninteresting, or exotically rude sounding in the English version offered up for tourists. A quick search for examples found ‘savage rabbit’, ‘varied crudenesses’, ‘raped carrot’, ‘prickly tomato sauce’, and ‘jumped lamb’. Tempting, [...]
If you were one of the 90 or so inhabitants of the place in northern France called ‘Y’ (pronounced ‘e’ ‘rather than ‘e-grec’ if you are interested) would you (a) move house (b) spend happy hours trying to explain to people that you really do live in the place in France with the shortest name [...]
We had a record-breaking 12 teenage girls staying in the house last night. I’m not quite sure why, it’s not anyone’s birthday as far as I know, they just kind of turned up, ate lots of food, made a lot of noise, talked all night and then left the next morning. They kept coming up [...]
I don’t often promote products and services on this blog – firstly because people don’t come here to read adverts, and will rush off elsewhere – and second, because there aren’t so many great products that are appropriate to our ‘typical readers’. But today I’m going to break with tradition. You don’t need to switch [...]
I’m always harping on about French expats and visitors to France who don’t make any effort to speak French, even a few common courtesies that everyone must remember from school. You remember: “bonjour”, “merci” and a few others. So today I’m going to pay special tribute to two overheard conversations – congratulations to those involved [...]
Note: you might also like to see Learn to Speak French on the main site, which is more detailed than the chatter below! During the winter my French speaking skills seem to go into a bit of a decline, then pick up again during the spring and summer as I get out and about with [...]
When I’m not dealing with the challenges of running French gites, the French language is one of the big challenges for me, and for pretty much anybody who moves to France. There are various stages that need to be passed through – asking simple questions, having a conversation, understanding the television, being able to understand [...]