Dip into some of the peculiarities and richness of the language.
The traditional command in France is “Ouistiti!” (pronounced wee-stee-tee) instead of “Say Cheese!” when taking pictures. Your lips assume a semi-smile when saying the “wee” in ouistiti. A ouistiti is a type of South American monkey. A Tour Eiffel sign on its first...
Onamatopoeia refers to words that imitate the sound they describe. You might imagine they would be the same or similar in most languages, but they aren't. Sometimes they sound the same, but are spelled differently. A sampling of French onomatopée: English ...
What to do about getting your period in Paris
Learning French as a second language when you're an adult presents unique challenges. Perhaps you've been successful in a field that required memorization of an enormous amount of material. You can memorize long lists of French vocabulary words and verb conjugations....
What does this photo have in common with the next photo? Both show une punaise. Yes, a punaise is both a bedbug and a pushpin or thumbtack. It's also a verb (punaiser means to pin or tack something up).
Which of the following photos depicts a pair of 'tongs'? Answer: It depends on the language. In English, it's the metal hinged tool of course. But in French, les tongs (fem, pl) are flip-flops or thongs.The metal device is called pince à aliments (fem,...
Recently I watched the French film A Christmas Tale by director Arnaud Desplechin with actresses Catherine Deneuve and her real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni. The film did not make a big impression on me, but one word in it seized my attention: cadet. They...
I have a big problem with the word petit in French. Such a little word to cause me such grief. Somehow along my French language path I developed the bad habit of pronouncing it PETT-ee. And it's grating to French ears. That's IF they understand what I'm trying to say....
Theoretically, I love clean, minimalist, zen decor. However, it's only an aspirational state, one that is completely unattainable for me. Entropy rules my life. A clear surface, an empty wall, any unfilled space soon attracts objects. I continually fight this...
An article by medical writer Lauran Neergaard reviewed research on how children become bilingual so easily. She cited studies on the difficulty Japanese people have in distinguishing the "R" and "L" sounds in English, "rake" and "lake" sounding the same to their ears....