French

Blog posts tagged with French.

Archive

La Bajon’s Sharp Tongue

France has a long-lasting history of stand-up comedians and satirical humor. The past decade has seen an increasing amount of more or less talented jesters, not least because of YouTube and other video hosts making it easier to spread sketches, sometimes home-made, very often very well done. Out of the many people who tried to […]
July 12, 2020
French kiss, French toast… Are they REALLY French?

Have you ever noticed how the English language uses the word French as an adjective, usually to describe something either ugly, perverted, disgusting or all of them at the same time? This looks like a plot against the frog-eat… against the Gallic people. It is time to shed some light on die hard clichés, nurtured […]
May 13, 2020
Joséphine, Ange Gardien – a series under divine protection

Tweet She’s only 4.3 ft. yet she is one of the most prominent TV personalities in France. 58-year-old actress Mimie Mathy has been on prime time on TF1 since 1997 four to twelve times a year! She is the lead characters of the Joséphine, Ange Gardien series, in which she plays
February 22, 2016
Les Grosses Têtes – France’s most popular radio show

Tweet Created in 1977, the “Grosses Têtes” (big heads or brainiacs in French) is a hugely successful afternoon radio show broadcast on RTL. Presented by Philippe Bouvard for 37 years, the show is moderated since 2014 by star TV moderator and radio guru
March 15, 2015
The French have a new obsession and you’ll never guess what it is

Tweet The French do all sorts of weird things. This post is not an umpteenth list of the usual clichés we all know – I don’t think the Internet needs that. Now, as sunny weather can be expected every day, strikes are on order (June is one of the months with most strikes in France […]
June 17, 2014
The secrets of Chamber

I was recently discussing the difference between “room” and “chamber”. It’s not quite easy to give an explanation without pondering for a moment. Spontaneously, one would think chamber is a more elegant way of designating a room. The word room is a more used than chamber: bedroom, living room, bathroom, etc. However, it does not […]
January 05, 2013
Swag? What the swag?

The good thing about living abroad is that you have the opportunity to learn a new language or sharpen your academic language skills. The bad thing is, after a certain laps of time, your primary language rusts and you feel like you are losing its command.
October 31, 2012
My favourite dictionaries – part 2: German-French

Upon arriving in Germany, I did not know any online German-French dictionary. Needless to say I was not willing to carry my printed edition everywhere and had to find a remedy to my predicament. The first resource I actually used was dict.cc for its very large content but that happened to be… German-English. It’s good, […]
October 01, 2012
The mysterious world of punctuation conventions

Punctuation is very often neglected and deemed as not that important by too many people who are brought to write. Ask English speakers how they differentiate the uses of colons and semicolons, they are not that assertive about how to use them correctly, if at all. But this is not about the use of punctuation, […]
May 21, 2011
How does it sound to you?

French being my native language, I can never relate to what I am sometimes told: “French sounds lovely”. I would assume most of my fellow French speakers do not really get what that means either. After all, who thinks that his or her language sounds beautiful? Is it because we heard it for so long […]
April 25, 2011