Cahier de Vacances

We are excited to announce the publication of our very first Lingua Franca Cahier de Vacances*.

While for some, doing extra French practice will sound the exact opposite of being on holidays, for others (most likely the true Chouchous*), there is nothing quite like sitting down with a brand new workbook to practise your skills.

The first in a series of sixteen, so you'll soon be able to buy a companion workbook for each Lingua Franca text, from Absolute Beginner 1 to Advanced Revision. We started with the Beginner 1 title as it is an area where many of our students struggle - those pesky slightly irregular verbs. As many of you will know, if you don't learn them properly as a beginner, they will come back to haunt you as an intermediate learner (l'imparfait*, anyone?).

Fear not, though, there is more than just grammar that is covered:

• asking closed questions

• the close future

• un tas de* useful vocab.

• sentence builders

• throwback exercises and much more.
  
  Best of all, the inside front and back covers are home to the most delightful (and useful) grammar summaries to help you ace your holiday homework. Bon courage!*

*Holiday Workbook | *Teacher's Pets | *the imperfect | *a heap of | *Good luck!

Nasal vowels

The sounds that make French sound just...well...so French! Master these and you'll be well on your way to perfecting your French accent.

Raclette Dinner

We are très tristes* that we'll be unable to hold our annual Dîner Raclette* this year due to Covid restrictions, but we may have just found the next best thing. Quelle excellente idée*!

By the way, if you’re a local Chouchou* and are planning on having your own raclette dinner this year, please fell free to borrow one of our machines. We'd love for them to see some use this year so they're primed for 2021.

*very sad | *Raclette Dinner | *What a great idea! | *Teacher's Pet

World Wellness Group

For some time now, our Chouchous* have generously supported the World Wellness Group which provides medical care to those most in need here in Brisbane.

It’s hard to believe, but being in need even here in Australia can translate to not having enough to eat, so the WWG has a ‘Community Pantry’ set up in their medical centre, where patients can access basic staples to cook at home.

We delivered several baskets of goods pre-COVID and feel the time is right to start a new collection for those who need it most. So if you have any extra cans in the back of your cupboard you don't need, we'll have a basket set up au nid* from next week. Not sure what's needed? Jetez un œil* at our shopping list below.

*Teacher's Pets | *the nest | *Take a look

liste de courses

boîtes de conserve

haricots, pois-chiches, thon, lait de coco

céreales

riz basmati, nouilles instantanées, pâtes

légumes secs

lentilles, orge

laitages

lait longue conservation

pâtes à tartiner

beurre de cacahuètes, miel, confiture, nutella

autres

petits pots pour bébé et lait maternel, couches, produits d'hygiène et de beauté

shopping list

canned goods

beans, chickpeas, tuna, coconut cream

grains and cereals

basmati rice, two-minute noodles, pasta

pulses

lentils, barley

dairy

long-life milk

spreads

peanut butter, honey, jam, nutella

other

baby food and formula, nappies, personal care items

La Petite Boutique

If you haven't done so already, we'd encourage you to check out the newest addition to our "French with Benefits" programme: La Petite Boutique by Lingua Franca.

Why is it of benefit to your French? La Petite Boutique is where we stock our newest and most helpful workbooks as well as a bespoke range of French diaries, cheat sheets, stationery items and aide-mémoires*.

Très tendance* are the Challenge Series workbooks, designed to clean up your French by focusing or common pièges* such as pronouns and prepositions. Filling in these gaps helps your spoken French as well, since you’ll no longer stumble as you approach them and instead will breeze through them like a pro. Interestingly, though we designed these workbooks with our advanced students in mind, many upper beginner and intermediate students are snapping them up and are finding them really helpful to clarify the learning they’ve already done, as well as get a sneak peek into the future.

More of a real beginner? We haven’t forgotten about you either. Keep your eyes peeled for a beginner exercise book which covers the basics such as asking questions, present tense verbs, simple prepositions and really helpful vocabulary.

*memory joggers | *Very popular | *traps

Ultimate French Resources #1

At the start of my career tutoring French, I was a huge consumer of French grammar books. In fact, French language books of all kinds - I wanted them all. As befitting my personality (and that of many of our students, I hear), each book has two or three pages completed and the rest of the book is entirely blank. A true addict, once I'd realised a particular book was not going to magically make me speak French fluently, I discarded it and went looking for my next dose*. So the books piled up until I nearly ran out of new ones to buy. Sounding familiar?

Over the years, though, I've noticed there are a couple I return to time and again and along with a couple of websites, they have really become my French bibles.

In the next few newsletters, we'll cover my top five. Let's start with a fantastique* website: Lawless French.

WHAT:

A website for learners of all levels

WHO:

Laura K. Lawless, an American woman, fluent in French, based in Guadeloupe, who is also responsible for the French for Dummies book, which is actually very good.

POINTS FORTS*:

Very, very thorough, you can sign up for a weekly newsletter with helpful tips and for more advanced levels, her 'Subjunctivisor" will tell you whether your sentence requires the subjunctive or not. Very useful.

POINT FAIBLE*:

It's not a particularly beautiful site, but it is nonetheless very, very good.

*fix | *fantastic | *best bits | *weak point

How to type French accents

We are often asked by our Chouchous* how they can type French accents on their various devices. The wonderful website Thought Co has again come up with the goods, with a blow-by-blow account of how to do so, regardless of whether you are plutôt* Apple or Android. Here below, though, a quick guide to your options.

*Teacher's Pets | *more/rather

French vintage posters

We may not be able to indulge in le voyage* at the moment, but you can at least partially satisfy your wanderlust (and your penchant for la nostalgie*) on this very evocative site.

As you’ll see, some of the rarer posters cost about the same as a flight to Europe, but the joy of just gazing at them? Inestimable*.

*travel | *nostalgia | *priceless

Vrais amis

In the very first lesson of our Absolute Beginner 1 course, we introduce you to the idea of cognates: words shared between languages. English has more than 7 500 of these words from French, and c'est garanti* you'd use at least one a day (think 'garage', 'entrepreneur', 'ballet' 'finance' and 'au pair').

As your learning progresses, we also admit there is another phenomenon at play, that of 'faux amis', or false friends (one of our tutors, Josephine prefers to call them 'bad friends' and she's not wrong!) These are words that look like English words, but have a different meaning (attention!*: attendre, journée and préservatifs may not mean what you think they do). But let's focus on the positive and return to the vrais amis*, which offer what all good friendships do - help and support when you need it.

Take a couple of minutes to regarder la liste* which is helpfully categorised into useful adjectives, nouns and verbs.

Be sure to remind yourself that you're reading French as you run your eye down the list. It can be quite a mind-bending exercise. Bonne lecture*!

*it’s guaranteed | *Be careful! | *true friends/cognates | *look at the list | *Happy reading!

Harry’s Bar Paris

In a previous blog post, we gave the recipe for a French 75, a classic French cocktail whose effect on the imbiber was likened to a blow from a 75mm French canon. Savez-vous que* this cocktail was the creation of Le Harry's Bar in Paris? For us in the Anglophone world, the French 75 is likely the least known of the bar's original cocktail creations: the Bloody Mary, the Side Car and the Blue Lagoon all hail from the same adresse*, and the classic Italian Bellini was first served up at Harry's Bar in Venice.

So why is Harry's Bar so special? Well, for a start, the bar started life across the Atlantic in Manhattan, where, with prohibition approaching, the owner decided to dismantle and ship his beloved bar to Paris, piece by piece. Harry's soon became a deuxième chez soi* for American expats and its clubby feel and expert bartenders eventually drew non-French luminaries such as Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart, Aly Khan, Rita Hayworth and even the Duke of Windsor. And bien sûr*, when Coco Chanel is counted as a patron, you can be assured the bar has un charme certain*.

Located at 5, rue Daunou in the 2nd arrondissement, Harry’s needed a way to assure a steady stream of thirsty Americans. So in 1924, the bar's legendary Scottish manager, Harry Mac Elhone, placed the following ad in the Herald Tribune: « Just tell the taxi driver: Sank Roo Doe Noo and get ready for the worst! ». Intelligent, non*?

Indeed, a 16 year old James Bond uttered this very phrase in Ian Fleming's 1960 short story "From a View to a Kill", that .... "started one of the memorable evenings of his life, culminating in the loss, almost simultaneous, of his virginity and his notecase".

An interesting side note: since 1924, Harry's has conducted a straw poll amongst its American patrons prior to each presidential election, and have been wrong only on three occasions: 1976, 2004 and 2016. Je me demande* how they'll go in 2020?

*Did you know that | *address | home away from home | *of course | *a certain charm | *Clever, isn't it? | *I wonder

La cédille

Undoubtedly the cutest of the French accents, this little squiggle looks a lot like a number 5 without its lid and descends from the middle of the bottom of the letter 'c'. So what does it do? It changes a hard 'c' sound to a soft one.

French works very similarly to English when the letter 'c' is followed by a vowel.

The cedilla (or c cédille in French) changes a hard 'c' to a soft one. Even our most débutant* students will have seen this at work in 'ça va', which, if not for the accent, would sound like 'ka va'.

*beginner

Le Festival

There is no doubt about it. The team responsible for Le Festival really do not take non* for an answer.

As we all know, the arts has taken an absolute hammering during Covid and events are folding de tous les côtés*. But the organisers of the biggest French festival in Australia? Ils refusent*!

So what did they do? Firstly, instead of cancelling the event, they postponed it to October. Next, they launched a crowd-funding campaign to ensure that come October they were sufficiently financial to actually run the 10th édition* of the much-loved event. Not stopping there, they added a fantastic raffle as a way to promote their partners and raise additional funds.

Finally, a surprise announcement raised the bar in a major way. Le Festival Director, Betty Moinet, and her team, still wanting to celebrate La Fête nationale* with the people of Brisbane, have organised a series of free cultural conferences. The lineup has to be seen to be believed. There is something for absolutely everybody and you can sign up to as many sessions as you like. The amount of work that would have gone into organising this series of events is phenomenal and, under the current circumstances particularly, speaks volumes about the passion Betty and her team of volunteers bring to putting this event on for us, the French-loving public of Brisbane.

Let's support them by getting involved in any way we can. Allez!*

*no | *left and right | *They refuse! | *year | *Bastille Day | *Let's go!

Snippets of Paris

www.snippetsofparis.com

This is such a great little website! We came across it last month when we were doing some research for our story on Au Clair de la Lune* and earmarked it for further investigation this month and I am so glad we did. It is absolutely plein à craquer* with recipes, stories, etiquette tips, travel ideas, language anomalies and much, much more.

Written by Nassie, a Canadian ex-pat who discovered the French art de vivre* and never looked back, it is the perfect site to dip in and out of over a quiet weekend. The best thing about it? It's not a blog offering up the clichéd version of living in Paris, but a more considered and honest one, which is often much more interesting for true lovers of France and the French language.

As she writes:
Snippets of Paris aims to tell you what the locals tell their friends about, to go beyond the glittering lights of the Eiffel Tower. We’ll share with you fun anecdotes about what daily life in France is like, so that you too can imagine yourself living here. Does Paris continue to hold its charm if you are living there, rather than just visiting? Do you ever become fluent in French? And raising kids in France!? Ooh là là!

Bonne lecture*!

*By the Light of the Moon | *full to bursting | * art of living | *Happy reading!

Coup

If you've been learning French for a little while, you may have come across the word 'coup'. Perhaps you've seen un coup de téléphone or un coup de fil (both used for phone call). Even before French came into your life, you were probably familiar with a coup d’état* (even if we Anglophones tend to pronounce it something like 'koo day tar' rather than the more sonorous way it should be said).

What you may not know, though, is that coup has a huge range of translations, from 'blow' or 'knock', to 'attack' or even 'drink' and all the way to Vulgarville with 'f*ck'. So, a multi-dimensional word at the very least!

Where it really comes into its own, though, is in les formes composées*

Jetez un œil!*

Everly Magazine

If you've been coming to Lingua Franca for a very long time (remember the Vroom days?), you may have had the good fortune of meeting a lovely young woman called Lesley Slade. In her typically understated way, Lesley came to us 'just to learn some French', which she did for two or three terms if my memory serves me correctly. The next thing we knew, Lesley had moved to Paris and vivait son rêve* working as a freelance journalist, speaking French, completing a writers residency in Champagne, teaching English in Paris, attending shows for Paris Fashion Week and... naturellement*... falling in love.

Fast forward seven years and Lesley is back living in Brisbane (now with her French-Tunisian husband) and has decided to launch herself yet again into the inconnu* (you really have to admire Lesley's dynamisme*) by starting her very own magazine.

Everly is a lifestyle magazine about style, fashion, travel, the arts, culture and inspiring human interest stories. There's a definite French flavour, which is of course inspired by her time in France.

Taking a look at the cover of Issue #1 and Everly’s Instagram account, it is immediately clear that Lesley speaks our language: the 2020 Chanel spring-summer collection, interviews with beloved Paris-based Australian photographer Carla Coulson and comedian Tim Minchin and a round-up of Aussie entrepreneurs taking the French coffee scene by storm. Quoi de mieux?*

If you'd like to go into the running to win one of three copies of Everly Issue 1, email us the name of a book by Carla Coulson. We’ll take the first three entries. 

Bonne chance*!

*was living the dream | *naturally | *unknown | *get up and go | *What could be better? | *Good luck!

Spotify Playlist

We always encourage our students who are en pause* with their French to stay in touch with it in some way. It's such a shame to completely lose contact with the language when life gets busy, so flicking through a French magazine, watching the French news, even cooking a French recipe are all great ways to garder la main*.

Some would suggest even buying French makeup is a way to stay in touch - a position I wholeheartedly endorse.

One of our students, Anna Vella, avocate* by day and I suspect part-time DJ by night, has put together this fantastic Spotify playlist, which is keeping her French on a slow burn as she takes a well-earned break from her studies.

Merci Anna et à bientôt, j'espère*.

Where do you find your French music?

It’s surprisingly everywhere. French radio apps are fantastic – but Spotify is also a great black hole to get lost in.

Are theRE any special memories attached to any of the songs on your playlist?

I was the prime demographic for Sex and the City when it was originally released. Re-watching the final episode, An American Girl in Paris (Part Deux) a few years ago contributed to my motivation to start learning French, and the MC Solar song “La Belle Et Le Bad Boy” is synonymous with that episode. On our very last gathering as part of last year’s Paris Summer School, I was swapping information with another student as to French songs we recommended or had discovered on the trip and that one came up (I tried to pretend that I hadn’t Shazamed it directly from the television….). It was an Australian Girl in Paris (Part Trois) moment for me.

Who is your all-time favourite French artist?

Daft Punk (and their spin-off Stardust) are pretty hard to go past. I feel like they were pioneers of the house/electronic/dance/synthpop sound in the early to mid-1990’s (and some of their “music videos” were wild). It was hard to go past Daft Punk, a $2 Fire Engine and a dance floor at the time. They have stayed on the scene and continue to chart. And I appreciate their sustained effort to dress like robots. Also, Petit Biscuit is a different speed but wonderful – he is only 20 and in 2018 he did a set at Coachella.

What is the song on the list that best represents France for you?

“Tout va bien” by Orelsan. I heard it in a taxi on the way home after a night out in Paris last year during the summer school – I was full of delicious food and wine and had been laughing all night and it was raining and I was giving directions in French and I was watching the muted city lights go past. It was magical. And the lyrics to that song make no sense. Je kiffe!

Go to track when I'm…

Sad: Night Trouble, Petit Biscuit

Tired: La Fin Du Monde, Ludo Pin Facing

Getting up on a Monday morning: 40%, Aya Nakamura

In need of motivation: Da Funk, Daft Punk

*taking a break | *keep your hand in | *lawyer | *Thank you, Anna, and see you soon, I hope

L'accent circonflexe

Savez-vous que* the circumflex accent in French was originally a combination of the acute and grave accents? Neither did we until very recently and though its effect on pronunciation these days is fairly negligible, it can be a real help in working out the meaning of the word it appears in. Regardez* the video below for a fuller explanation.

*Did you know that... | *Watch

French 75

Tiring of the (now) ubiquitous quarantini? Feel like expanding your cocktail répertoire* without expending too much effort? Enter the French 75, a classic cocktail français* invented by Harry MacElhone from Harry's New York Bar de Paris who named his creation after a 75mm French canon, a blast from which he believed produced a similar effect.

*list | *French

L'accent grave

Katrina explains the effect of the accent grave* on pronunciation. If you think of it making the sound of the letter 'e' in the English words 'bed' or 'egg' you'll be very close indeed.

*grave accent.

Au Clair de la Lune

We’re sure most of you are familiar with the French Song “Au Clair de la Lune*” but did it ever cross your mind that it might be a bit risqué*? It certainly did not to us, until we were tipped off by a curious student, Martha, who set herself the seemingly innocent challenge of translating this French comptine*. So what did she find? Well, it all starts out fairly innocently, with talk of quills, candles and the love of God, but by the third verse, things have taken a sexier turn (or do we just have dirty minds au nid*?).

See what you think by checking out the video, which seems to play on the faux* innocence of the words. Again, we could just be seeing this through a slightly perverted lens, mais sérieusement*, the God of Love wants to enter your cabin??? À vous de décider*.

"Au clair de la lune,
Mon ami Pierrot,
Prête-moi ta plume
Pour écrire un mot.
Ma chandelle est morte,
Je n'ai plus de feu.
Ouvre-moi ta porte
Pour l'amour de Dieu."

Au clair de la lune,
Pierrot répondit :
"Je n'ai pas de plume,
Je suis dans mon lit.
Va chez la voisine,
Je crois qu'elle y est,
Car dans sa cuisine
On bat le briquet."

Au clair de la lune,
L'aimable Lubin;
Frappe chez la brune,
Elle répond soudain :
–Qui frappe de la sorte?
Il dit à son tour :
–Ouvrez votre porte,
Pour le Dieu d'Amour.

Au clair de la lune,
On n'y voit qu'un peu.
On chercha la plume,
On chercha du feu.
En cherchant d'la sorte,
Je n'sais c'qu'on trouva;
Mais je sais qu'la porte
Sur eux se ferma.

"By the light of the moon,
My friend Pierrot,
Lend me your quill
To write a word.
My candle is dead,
I have no light left.
Open your door for me
For the love of God."

By the light of the moon,
Pierrot replied:
"I don't have any pens,
I am in my bed
Go to the neighbor's,
I think she's there
Because in her kitchen
Someone is lighting the fire."

By the light of the moon
Likeable Lubin
Knocks on the brunette's door.
She suddenly responds:
– Who's knocking like that?
He then replies:
– Open your door
for the God of Love!

By the light of the moon
One could barely see.
The pen was looked for,
The light was looked for.
With all that looking
I don't know what was found,
But I do know that the door
Shut itself on them.

*By the light of the moon | *risqué | *nursery rhyme | *at the nest | *false | *but seriously | *Over to you to decide