Cloche – French idioms with “bell”

Here are a few bell French idioms :

Déménager à la cloche de bois (“to move at the wooden bell”) is to go out without paying. To do a moonlight flit.

Etre sous cloche (“to be under a bell”) is to be preserved, protected, with a negative sound to it. To be put under a cover.

Quelle cloche ! (“what a bell !”) : what a numpty, what an idiot!

Se taper la cloche (“to help myself with the bell”) is to have a real feast.

Avoir un autre son de cloche (“to have another bell sound”) is to get another story, another version of it.

Se faire sonner les cloches (“to have my bells rung”) is to get a good telling off.

 

So a cloche is a bell, but also an idiot (as a name and an adjective), and also a dome (a bell cover).

A bell tower is named “un clocher” (say : “closhey”), which is often used to say a village. If someone is attached to his village, il est attaché à son clocher (his bell tower).

The verb “clocher” (it could be “to bell”) means it’s not quite right. Il y a quelque chose qui cloche : something is wrong.

Un clochard is a tramp, a homeless person.

Avoir un esprit de clocher (“to have a bell tower spirit”) is when you want to stay with the opinions of a group.

 

Voilà ! Have fun!

Learning by weaving

As a bookseller, I hear sometimes this phrase from a mother, about her child :

– He doesn’t read.

This is a screens generation, so it happens all the time! I answer the simple way :

– Buy him books, anything, about what he loves!

Trivial, but true. The little guy will, with a little luck, find it interesting. Something interesting in a BOOK? Really?

The structure here is simple : to learn something, weave it with a subject you already know, or an interesting field.

To gain vocabulary in English, I never learned lists (boring), but I bought American books, short stories (Carver, Caldwell), or actors’ biographies (Warren Beatty, Karl Malden). I underlined words or idioms I didn’t kknow…

Like the British red string :

The ropes in use in the royal navy, from the largest to the smallest, are so twisted that a red thread runs through them from end to end, which cannot be extracted without undoing the whole; and by which the smallest pieces may be recognized as belonging to the crown.

Use a red thread of passion or knowledge into your learning process. If you have to learn German, complete the process with the autobiography of (and other books about) your favorite German director (Fassbinder? Herzog?). Or subjects.

It’s “interesting”, it’ll weave, therefore you’ll learn with efficiency.

Where else to use this?

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Vial & Stoop : Types of black holes in language

I’m French and I write in English – I make mistakes and I discover new words everyday.

When I read an article or a short story, I understand what happens, and I admit I don’t translate anymore.

But, well, I always meet new insects, which are really puzzling at times…

Today I met “Vial“. Never seen this word but I guessed. A little bottle. In French we call this “une fiole”, which I find funny. Same structure : vial/fiole. OK.

“Stoop” was trickier. First, it’s a noun AND a verb. A doorstep (“perron”, in French), and also “to bend”.

There, here am I questioning English Gods : why do you have to stoop, if you have to bend or even to bow?? Can stoop be replaced by to crouch or to squat?

Worse : as a metaphor or a figurative sense, to demean, to do something “below one’s status, standards, or morals”. “S’abaisser à”.

OK, but also to slant (to stoop a bottle of wine?) – then what is to lean? – to catch a prey for an eagle (“the bird stooped and seized a salmon” – un piqué), to submit (“stooped by death” or “this people does not stoop to Rome”) – even to degrade?

 

Thus, when you read “not your language”, you see holes. Little ones can be filled by contexts, other ones make you make a face, pick a dictionary, and go travel in language, in an awe, for twenty minutes. You should try French while I study the word “slew” (4 nouns, 7 verbs, pfff…).

 

At the end, I found : Stoop : “a vessel for holding liquids; a flagon”. Come on!

Hmmm. Fetch me a stoop of liquor, please. Two new words and I’m done. Back to bed. With my book!

Thanks for reading!

“Fleas & Cooks” : Some French Idioms explained

Secoue-toi les puces !

“Shake your fleas!”, we say to someone who needs to wake up and act. It’s hard to find the English one. “To give somebody hell” is too hard – for this we say : “Passer un savon” (to pass a soap). “Shake things up a bit!” is maybe OK.

 

Couper l’herbe sous le pied

“He cut the grass under my feet!”. Means… To pull the rug out from under, cut off the legs, deprive.

 

Prendre quelqu’un de vitesse

“To take someone with speed” : outpace (devancer), overtake (dépasser), get a jump on (prendre de l’avance, commencer plus tôt). You got the point…

 

Cuisine

• Cuisiner quelqu’un : “To cook someone” is our “To grill someone”. Well, it’s France!
• Un dur à cuire : “A hard to cook” is a hard nut, a tough cookie.
• Vas te faire cuire un œuf! : “Go cook an egg!” is our “Get lost!”, or “Go jump in a lake!” (do you use it really?).
• C’est du tout cuit : “It’s some all cooked” : It’s all done!

 

Fourmis

Fourmis are insects (ants), and we make plenty with them :

J’ai des fourmis dans les jambes (I have ants in my legs) : pins & needles…

Fourmiller : to swarm, to teem : to be present in large numbers, to move in large numbers. Interesting to say that we use this verb for flat, “on the ground” events, there’s “crawl” into it. Bees can not fourmiller in France! We have pulluler (to pullulate), grouiller (to bustle with, when it’s busy teeming), and we don’t have any “to mill around”. Lovely!

Un fourmillement (you could say “an antment”), therefore, is a welter, jumble, clutter, but also “the fact that one has pins and needles in one arm”, for example.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Don’t learn French, it’s a mess – Part 5 : La place des adjectifs

An adjective in French must be written after the name. A red house is “une maison rouge”, but poets like to put before to sound poetic.

The meaning can be different if you put it before or after. Un “grand homme” is a great man, and un “homme grand” means a tall man.

Here’s a (uncomplete) list of these : ancien, brave, cher, chic, curieux, certain, drôle, grand, jeune, nul, pauvre, petit, seul, sale…

• un drôle de chat (a strange cat), un chat drôle (a funny cat)
• une seule dame (only one woman), une dame seule (a lonely woman)

Short adjectives are often written before the name : un vieux château (an old castle), une jeune fille (a young girl).

Well, some of them can be placed before or after : “un excellent travail”, or “un travail excellent” (good job!).

English adjectives are invariables. In French, adjectives change depending on gender and number (I’m sorry, dear).

 

1. Un petit homme (a little man)
2. Une petite fille (a little girl)
3. Des petits crayons (little pencils)
4. Des petites boîtes (little boxes)

 

Some adjectives like beau (beautiful) and nouveau (new) are really tricky.

You can say “un homme beau” (an handsome man) but more commonly “un bel homme” (I don’t know why, but I suppose it’s because it sounds better like that !).

“Il a un nouveau clavier” (he has a new keyboard) but “Il a un nouvel ordinateur” (he has a new computer) – just because it’d sound ugly with a nouveau-ordinateur (o-o).

 

 

Read books and watch movies, that’s a good way to learn all this…

Thanks for reading!

 

“Ces belles fleurs et ces beaux poissons sont à moi !”

Don’t learn French, it’s a mess – Part 3 : “tu” or “vous”?

“You” is a little mess in English because one uses the same word to one or to a group :

“You come with us?” addressed to five persons is a problem : You to the group or you to one person of the group?

In French the first you is “tu”, and the plural one is “vous”. Therefore it’s clearer (even if in real life I know the context helps). “You come with us” means :

• Tu viens avec nous (to one person)
• Vous venez avec nous (to the group)

 

But we complicated it a bit much of course. Because in French you can only use “Tu” to persons you know very well : friends, family, or maybe little kids. First names = Tu.

The formal, polite way to address someone you just met, an employee, your superior or anyone you have to show respect, is not “Tu”, but “Vous”.

If you buy a coffee, if you’re a teacher in front of teens or adults, if you just met your future mother in law, you have to say “Vous”. Yes, like the plural. I know…

Therefore, “You come with us?” becomes :

• Tu viens avec nous ? (to one person)
• Vous venez avec nous ? (to the group)
• Vous venez avec nous ? (to one person you want to show respect)

 

Yaah if you use the casual “Tu” to your new boss or to the waiter in a bar, you are clearly disrespectful.

The problem, then, is to find the frontier between both!

• Some teachers (but not all of them) say “Tu” to students, even when they are 17 years old.
• You can say “Tu” to your manager, but you’ll never do that with the top manager.
• You will be asked by your future mother in law to address her with “Tu”, when you’ll know her a bit more. It’s often very hard to pass from one to another, and you’ll hear yourself telling back “Vous” sometimes. Maybe you’ll stay in that state!
• We sometimes want to sound aristocratic for fun, and if you want to sound like a baroness, you’ll tell your mother “Mère, voulez-vous me passer le sel s’il vous plaît ?” insteat of “Maman, passe-moi le sel, stp” – “Mother will you please…” instead of “Mom pass the salt, please”.
• Your “Please” becomes “s’il vous plaît” (formally), “s’il te plaît” (friends). Kids say for fun : “steup“.

 

To use tu is “tutoyer”. To use vous is “vouvoyer”.

I have a couple of online friends with whom we use only “Vous” in our emails – even if I’ve known them for 20 years. It gives a way I can’t really explain. A way to stand, to be focused and maybe elegant. It’s clearly a smile…

 

Let’s call it the “don’t call me by my first name” state…

 

Thanks for reading!

(and oh sorry for my English here)…

 

Instagram : keri_karina

 

 

Don’t learn French, it’s a mess – Part 2 : “aller”

“To go” is cool when you’re a little French student : In the present “I go”, in the future “I will go”. I just had to remember “He goes” (not “gos”), and the preterit “I went” – but we early knew by heart our list of irregular verbs, right?

To go is “aller”, in French : this beast is constantly mutating! The present is “Je vais”, the future “J’irais”, and he’s back with the past : “Je suis allé”.

(by the way : “Go on” is “Allez-y”, but “Go ahead” is also “Allez-y”)

 

Of course you know that our first “you” (tu) is used for people you know very well, and the other “you” (vous) for a more formal speech.

Thus if you talk to a group OR to your mother in law, you say “Go on” : “Allez-y”, but if you talk to a kid ou your best friend, your “Go on” becomes “Vas-y”.

• You have to go? : “Il faut que tu y ailles“.
• They would go : “Ils iraient“.
• Go! Go for it : “Allez! Vas-y!”.
• OK maybe I should go now : “Bon, je devrais peut-être y aller“.

(I’m sorry)

 

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

Don’t learn French, it’s a mess – Part 1 : “On”

Hi everyone. In French it’s like in English. We have I, you, he/she, we, you, they. That simple :

• Je mange, I eat
• Tu manges, you eat
• Il mange, he eats
• Nous mangeons, we eat
• Vous mangez, you eat
• Ils mangent, they eat

OK?

But we French invented “ON”.

“On mange” = “He (the group of us) eats”

You’ll find it useless, and it is. And we use it all the time.

What is “On”?

“On” is a way to say “we”, but in a group. From a few people, we make a group, and it becomes a “he”.

Voilà. We almost NEVER say we, in France, we say “on”, which is “The group of us”.

We in France never say “We take a break” (“Nous prenons une pause”), but “ON takes a break” (“The group of us takes a break” -> “On prend une pause”). Why? I fucking don’t know!

Think about it : you’ll learn “nous” (“we”), you’ll write it, but you’ll NEVER say it, unless you wanna sound a student.

“Do we go?” : you’ll never say “Nous y allons?”. You’ll say : “On y va?”.

I told you, it’s a mess. Give up.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

English words I struggle with

Lawmakers concerned about Trump’s mental state summoned a Yale University psychiatry professor who said : “He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.”

I understand it’s something about collapsing, but I’m not sure. It’s knitting vocabulary, right? When do you say that about a human being? Isn’t this verb a bit positive too (like unravelling a mess)?

I guess that stiff upper lip sounds UK, but I’m not sure? Do you use it in America? Does it mean composure and phlegm like in France, or is it colored with coldness? In French, “le flegme Britannique” is a way to stay calm in all circumstances, even if your house is bombed. Thus there’s an (almost) invisible smile in it.

I ask, because stiff is tough and rigid, right?

Shanty is a mystery. Is it a ruin, a small ruin, a sweet ruin? Isn’t it a little house? Is a shanty town a poor ghetto, or can it be a quiet chalet village for tourists? It’s a sailor’s song too??!

What’s the difference between ruse, trick, cunning?

I have a big problem with reckon. First, it’s a false friend, because “reconnaître” in French is “to acknowledge”. OK, it means to estimate and to consider, but also to think. In this last meaning, does it sound Southern, or do you say it in Massachusets too? Reckon on, reckon with, reckon without : do you SAY them?

To bedight : do decorate. Is it vintage? Never said? Funny?

To diminish, to dwindle : What is the difference? To peter into… When do you use this??

Colloquial and familiar…

Ohhh…

Someone told me one day that to learn a language is an infinite process. Tonight I feel terribly weak.

 

Have a nice day!

Instagram : arrowvideo

Quiff is a mess & French frou-frou noiseling : an #ESL struggles with English words…

One pleasure of ESLing is to gain vocabulary.

This week I watched a clever crime movie, Body Heat. Smart dialogs offer you new words – and I watched it in English with English subtitles. Each time I find an unknown word I remotestop the film and I check on my phone, and it’s… almost always a problem (because the French words are, obviously, “not exactly” what yours mean, it’s always a bit… displaced).

All these words were totally new to me :

• Outsmart seemed easy but it’s not : beat by cunning, surpass, foil, thwart – what is it exactly? I like the way it’s made : “Out + Smart” (could be offsmart, right?). We have “déjouer” in French, which could be “de-play” or “out-play”. I love the cousinning of all these.
• Rustle is great. I imagine it’s non human, something in a tree or maybe from a dress’ fabric, right? We have bruissement in France, and as “bruit” means noise, it could be… “noiseling”. I wonder what’s the difference with creasing or crumpling. We have in French the delicious “Frou-frou” for the “dress swish”, the word says it all, right?
• Searing is clear, but then, when don’t you say burning? Is it… more painful? More red? More intense? Can you use it to talk about meat (then is it spoiled, or delicious)? What is scorching, then? Can I have a searing memory?
• Arson is “setting fire to property”, but is it a law word only? Could I use it metaphorically, like I want “to arson my feelings/my past”? Where does this word come from?
• Quiff is a mess. I found the hairstyle thing, OK. But what’s a “quiff’s eye”, then? A “haughty little stare”? (Haughty? Really? New word again… which led me to “your high horse”, a clear idiom, for once). But for quiff I also find “legitimate spouse” (really?), which seemed the case in the movie I was watching.
• Askew : where is it used? For a hat? For a life? Does it sound vintage or do young people will say it about your eyes (or your books on the shelf)… askew?

 

Where does it come from, to feel such pleasure, exploring this? I don’t know.

Feel free, ô my reader, to make things clearer in the comments. Maybe it’ll help my brain (and some other’s) to understand these daily subtleties…

Thanks for reading! Bonne journée !

Instagram : _bodylanguage_

Merde alors ! : “Polite swear words?” – Some #ESL concerns…

Everyone in the world knows for good that, when you learn a language, the first things you want to know are bad words, insults and other blasphemies.

But you are in the merde if you want to swear… politely. Sometimes you have to! In front of kids in a class (“Oh dear”, “Oh my goodness”) or your grandparents, right?

Instead of saying “shit“, I heard one day Brian Eno saying “Shhhhite” (like realizing there was a cam, he had to finish his “shh” in another way). I liked shite!

One friend told me that kids could use “Oh snap” instead of it.

Today I googled a bit and found :

Son of a beach, mother trucker, or “Motherfather!” (haha), holy buckets (??). Ice hole. Shazbot. Dirty bear. Cheese and rice (instead of Jesus Christ). Sugarfoot. Upsy Daisy.
Shiznit. Chappaquiddick, etc, ohlalaaa.

“Get stuffed” instead of “fuck you”. I just found “up yours” : REALLY? That’s GREAT!

I love the simple and smart  “What the eff”.

“Rats!”.

One site advised to use Old Swearing Terms, like Fopdoodle or Zooterkins. And what’s “Crummidy Dum Dum”? Well, dear, I need some help here…

Bleep yourself : “I lost my bleeping pencil!”.

These pages :

• https://wehavekids.com/parenting/101-Great-Cuss-Word-Alternatives
• http://agentfrey.blogspot.fr/2012/01/bad-words-141-alternative-ways-to-cuss.html

 

Well, in France we sometimes use the Belgian ones…

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : clara_ferreira_alves

Palm of Ordinary Seeds & Masters Wrong : Chronicle 8

Within my reach !
I could have touched !
I might have chanced that way !
Emily Dickinson 

 

For some of us, who have inside a sort of “rush”, a surge, an inner run-up force, there are many ways. You can Huckleberry Finn along a river, you can also Kerouac all along the road, you can choose a passion (collecting – forks or shipwreck books -, throw yourself into sports, politics, veganism or religion, anything that can keep you busy). If you have young kids, you don’t have to worry : these little brats will keep you busy. You can disappear, too, into alcoholism or antidepressants, or sleep. Shopping, why not, if you’re moneyfilled.

My daughter was in England all past week in Plymouth, including the day people were killed and stabbed in London. You will see plenty of pictures of people in Europa saying “We Are Not Afraid”, and, like Londonians during the V1 V2 Nazi bombing during WWII, we are NOT afraid. I told my daughters to live, to shop, go to theaters and restaurants and have fun with friends. That’s our way to resist : to stay ourselves against idiots.

And yes : spot the emergency exits, everywhere they go.

When you advise a friend to read a book, to watch a movie, and she or he asks why, you answer : “You will know once you’re on it”. With a certain smile, right?

When a window is closed, another can open. What kind? What is different? What if it was the last window, closed for ever?

After a big disappointment, what’s left ? Pieces : misanthropy, auto-torture about ideals and dreams, and Art as a shelter.

What do we do (or think we can do) against an formidable enemy, a wrong energy? What if you can’t resist because it would be stupidly useless? Seeds for an article :

• Don Quichotte’s mills
• A drop in the water
• An attempt for appel d’air
• Dessiller (open sb’s eyes)
• Draw maps (for later)
• Barometer (to warn)
• Warn, alert
• Guerilla
• Witness
• Grains of sand (in the clock)
• Breaches & holes drilling

Map of Variations :

To draw a map is very common. You can use it anytime, on anything. Territory, music, history, love. Then it’s not “really” a map, but a set of informations about something complex, a table, a chart.

Choose a song and list elements : lyrics, instruments, production, place of instruments in the sound, construction. There’s one “another nature” map, though : It’s how all these change and evolve in time.

Seed/Tool : in every chart you find or work on, think about the MoV.

Feedbacking a patient can have a great effect, I read once. It’s probably the same for teachers, parents… It means : stopping being “The One Who Knows”, ride down next to your patient/student, and talk man-to-man about YOU. This can have a tremendous good effect. Your advice, on this?

This is a seed for short stories : “When imminent danger is a godsend”. Why, where, how, etc. Your turn!

Embarrassment when you see a Master out of his domain. Nietzsche’s music? Schoenberg’s paintings? Or someone you know? A great cook trying to fix his car? A genius computer programmer parenting? And so what?

Sapiosexual breakups are the worse. Because instead of missing an inventing sex life, magic tenderness and a silky skin, you miss a thinking brain, a conversation master, a challenging thinker, you miss questions, surprises, bends and laughs. AND magic tenderness, okay. That’s worse, eventually.

Eventually is a very tricky word for us French. I know it means “after some time”, or even “finally”. But in French, “éventuellement” means “possibly”, or “potentially”. Well, even now I have to check. Each time I use it. My brain doesn’t not want it. I always want to call Obama on the phone to explain him there’s a mistake.

Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Jean-Pascal

Writing in another language

I’m French. I write in English. Why? Here’s what I see :

• Blogging in English forces me to me short and simple.
• So it’s like pendrawing instead of oil painting. Water instead of wine.
• I constantly check (and thus learn) vocabulary.
• So I have to think about the French vocabulary too.
• I am not distracted by any search of French “Style”, and it’s a relief.
• I quit my well known ground, to find another babyway to walk on another soil.
• Writing in French is like “too easy”, it flows fast (as I type) from ideas to words.
• Writing in English is more like building a little plane-model with unusual words. It’s slower, and a pleasure too.
• There’s a playing child pleasure into it.
• As it’s not my “tongue”, I feel really more chilled out when I write here.
• Therefore I can focus on my little tools, not “How to say that in French properly”.
• I invent words with a smile.
• I make mistakes on purpose… with a smile.
• I know and feel that I miss something, and I have to ignore it, and let go.
• I can speak English, but I’m also quite lost in it. I explore, then.
• I learn constantly about American culture, just by watching the way this language expresses things.
• Idioms are different, and each time it’s like finding a jewel.
• It’s probably an exercise for “one day write in French”, with new eyes and muscles-of-the-brain gained from writing in another language.
• It can also be a way to voluntarily lose bad habits in my own language.

 

Beautiful books are always written in a sort of foreign language, said Marcel Proust. That’s a great seed for the mind, don’t you think? It’s about style. When I’ll “write back” in French, I’m sure I’ll be richer, then, because of my English exploration years…

Merci!

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#minimalism #minimalist #minimalistic #minimalistics #minimal #minimalove #minimalobsession #photooftheday #minimalninja #instaminim #minimalisbd #simple #simplicity #keepitsimple #minimalplanet #love #instagood #minimalhunter #minimalista #minimalismo #beautiful #art #lessismore #simpleandpure #negativespace

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#French #Blogging in #English : un Songe

OK I’m French, I knowwww that I make mistakes. Sometimes I even make mistakes on purpose, like when I use nouns as verb. Thus… at night : I bed, then in the morning I coffee. I should have written that “I mistake on purpose”…

Blogging in English? Why?

Because it’s not my native language, so I HAVE to make in simple and short. Simple because I don’t have all the vocabulary. Short because… I know you don’t like to read long articles on your smartphone. Therefore short is good. It also forces me to be synthetic.

I asked some friends “how does it sound?”, but they were really not able to tell me. Charming Frenchy? Awkward foreigner? Disturbing little flaws? I don’t know if it brings colors or botherness…

Yes, OK, botherness : no, OK. I liked it, though!

What I heard also is that it sounds French ALSO because of the way ideas are expressed (How so? Casualness? Impoliteness?), or even because… American people just simple don’t think like that, or say that. Parfois, un article vient d’un simple songe…

Songe? What’s between “think” (penser) and “dream” (rêver), in English? We have this verb : songer. And a splendid noun : un songe…

Bonne journée. Thanks for reading!

Instagram : mariadelsur

 

About ze #French accent

OK I’m French, and my English is complètement full of erreurs.

It’s not that I don’t give a frog’s fat ass (an elegant idiom I learned about yesterday) : when I began this blog, I asked a friend to fix my mistakes, and she said that she could almost HEAR mon accent Français in the text!

But yesterday I had un choc. I watched un documentaire HBO about Vogue (ze magazine). One of the French fashion lady was from France…

I’m pretty sûr that she lives in America since years, but she visiblement had pleasure to “spik like ZAT”, like with a level 7 French casualness.

However, it’s really not hard to say “a dress” instead of “a drrress”, like we “R” the “Rs” in Frrrance, as you know. No effort here…

Yes it’s like… charming, right? Yet I wonder : what should I do if I one day come to the USA? Do I try to speak like American people, or do I lower my tonguework to casually stay “morrre French”?

Thanks for reading! Bonne journée !

 

In #French #Zodiac, a Virgo is a… Virgin, oops!… ( #language & #astrology )

Well, that’s true. In English you have a very poetic way to name zodiac signs. In French we stay closer to… to what, after all?

A Virgo is a Virgin in France, une Vierge. So you can imagine the embarrassment of a Virgo when she’s asked, and the smart smiles of the guys, haha.

What else? Aries is un Bélier (a Ram). Leo is just a Lion. Libra : Balance (it’s Scale, yesss). And Pisces are Poissons (Fishes, yep).

How about your language?

I’m a Taurus. Hi! I post the positive keywords, OK? The negative? Well…

Thanks for reading! Bonne journée !

 

In French, there’s a SPACE between the word and the exclamation point

In English :

• GO!
• Do you Love me?

In French :

• ALLEZ !
• Dis, tu m’aimes ?

Well, so what? Oh, nothing, dear! But it’s SO deeply rooted in me that when I write in English I have to think about it. It bothers me like a “mistake I have to write”. I gives a tight aspect of the end of the phrase. And each time I write in French, I feel relieved, like, errr, when a woman takes off her bra after a long day. Ahhhhh.

Aaaah, relief!

Aaaah, quel soulagement !

It’s like… well… It’s like the end of the phrase needed some AIR. I like to imagine that… it’s linked with our sense of slowness. La promenade. There’s no hurry to put a “!”, let it breathe, voilà.

 

Thanks for reading ! For reading!, sorry. Follow me!

 

 

“Quirky Churning”, The Happy Fisherman Tale, or how I really got new words #ESL

Learning English is a pleasure I can’t really describe… but some people in America, (learning French) understand me because they feel the same BIG INNER SMILE when they make further progress. Why, et pourquoi? Je ne sais pas… It’s like feeling your own brain growing like a little tree!

In my about file I wrote :

OK I’m french. My english is a frenglish, it’s rusty and wobbly, et voilà. Try me, though. I’ll do my best. I promise. If sometimes it’s too bad, just laugh at me or roll you eyes.

And of course I make mistakes! For example, I find really hard to remember that you don’t put a space between a word and “!” and “?”. In France we do ! Sorry : we do!

How can I get more words, vocabulary or idioms, out of learning stupid lists?

The more effective way has been to read a book in english, underlining all the things I don’t get (words, but also “in context complexities” or phrases constructions), and then ask to a native speaker.

In a conversation, you can ask “when and where” a word is used (rarely? daily?). It’s the way I heard about this word, “quirky” (original, bizarre, excentrique, et aussi sans doute farfelu). Each time I get one, I’m like a happy fisherman, thankful. Merci!

When you text with a native speaker, you sometimes meet a strange word, a never seen word, it’s like meeting a little trinket in a King Cake!

Yesterday I heard about a “churning brain” for the very first time in my life! I didn’t ask, this time, but I checked on the Reverso app.

The old pyramid of “how do we learn” (Google image it) is pretty accurate here.

Meeting native speakers learning French taught me another thing :

When you have to explain a word and a way you use it, you enrich yourself, you climb too!

PS : A higher level is to watch a movie without subtitles. It goes fast and my brain overheats, like “running after the meanings and getting it but stop you go too fast silly!”. Haha. Not for two hours. Or with the English subs, thanks.

Merci ! Bonne journée ! Thanks for reading!

Questions to a teacher… #teaching

Oh these questions, I have to write them.

How do you do ?

How do you juggle with two principals ? Do you have work at home ? Do you mainly teach teachers, or kids ? How do you do, for each ? Do you teach classes of teachers ? Who resists ? Who doesn’t ? How do you convince them ? Do some teachers watch you teach, sometimes ? Are some teachers, who love your work, able to convince others of “she’s so right on this !” ? Are you paid enough ? How do you report to your boss ? Emails ? Face to face ? Does she watch you teaching ? Do you teach kids one by one, or in classes ? Is your “pack” of children fixed, or does it change along the year ? Why ? What are your main difficulties ? What is easy ? What surprises you ? Do you meet parents ? Why ? Do you report teachers about kids progresses ? Do you put some kids “out” of your program ? Are some kids reported ? How do you works with speech pathologists ? Psychologists ? Do some ESL have other problems (like gifted ESL) ? How do you stay connected to the law ? Are some kids very difficult ? Did you have to call the police ? To change kids from a teacher to another ? What about comparing with previous years ? How do you get new ideas ? Do you use computer programs ? Do you show movies to kids ? Do you read about our job ? Do you get good advices from experimented colleagues ? Do you have enemies ? Why ? Do some people admire you ? Do some parents ask for an appointment with you ? Why ? What are the language kids come from ? Spanish, French, Russian ? How about the other special aid teachers ? Do you collaborate ? How ? How is the link between the grades ? Are there new teachers ? Did some people get fired ? Will you like it for years ? Can you climb the hierarchy ? Who helped you the most ? Do you have a rat pack ? Great moments ? Do you use music ? What about your thesis ? Do you have ideas for a book ? About what ? Do you like all this ? What do you miss ?

Some French feel-good movies to choose from

Well, maybe you’ll need them one day ?

17 Feel-Good French Films

IMDB Feel Good French Movies

http://www.rendezvousenfrancais.com/top10feelgoodfrenchmovies/

Franglish’s favourite feel good French films!

20 Best French Films on Netflix

5 Feel Good French Films

The perfect pairing: five feel-good French films – and the desserts to eat as you watch them

The 10 Best French Movies for Beginners

14 Must-see Romantic French Films

You’re welcome