Category: French (français)

Languages Quick Fix

By Simon

Languages Quick Fix is a very useful site I discovered today. It includes words, phrases, and idioms in English, Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, and German, plus a basic introduction to each language. There are recordings of the words, phrases, and idioms in all the languages – in the case of Chinese, the recordings are in Mandarin, Shanghainese and Cantonese. There are also links to news stories, dictionaries, and Chinese paintings (in the Learn Chinese – One At a Time section).

Another useful site I came across today is SmallMarble, a multilingual phrase book to which anyone can contribute. At the moment it has Spanish translations of most of the phrases, but few translations in other languages.

Word of the day – constable

By Simon

In the Roman and Byzantine Empires of the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the comes stabuli (count of the stable) was the person in charge of the stables at the imperial court.

Stables

The Franks borrowed the title but changed the position slightly to the head of the royal stud. During the 12th century in France, the comes stabuli became an important commander in the army and the title became conestable in Old French.

Eventually, the word was borrowed into English as constable and referred to “an officer of the peace” – this meaning was first recorded in 1596. During the 19th century, a regular police force was established in England and the police officers were given the title constable under a chief constable.

Police Constable H.189

Today, constable is the lowest rank in the British police, followed by sergeant, while Chief Constable is the highest rank.

Further information is available on: Wiktionary

Peeling the library

By Simon

Today’s word, library, comes from the Old French librairie, a ‘collection of books’, which is a nominal use of adjective librarius, ‘concerning books’, from Latin librarium, ‘chest for books’, from liber (genetive of libri), ‘book, paper, parchment’, originally the ‘inner bark of trees’, probably a derivative of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) base *leub(h) – ‘to strip, to peel’.

In French the word librarie means bookshop. A French library is a bibliothèque, which comes via the Latin bibliothēca, from the Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothêkê), ‘a place to store books’, which breaks down into βίβλος (biblos), ‘book’, and θήκη (thêkê), ‘chest’.

Variations on the theme of bibliothèque are used in a number of other languages, including:

Dutch – bibliotheek
German – Bibliothek
Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothiki)
Italian/Portuguese/Spanish – biblioteca
Russian – библиотека (biblioteka)

In Welsh, a library is a llyfrgell, from llyfr, ‘book’ and cell, ‘cell’, while in Irish it’s leabharlann, from leabhar, ‘book’ and lann (not sure of it’s meaning*). In Chinese, a library is 圖書館 [图书馆] (túshūguăn) = ‘map book house’.

It seems that the word library, or something like it, is not used in it’s English senses in many languages. The only ones I can find are Sesotho and Tswana (laeborari), Tsonga (layiburari) and Venda (laiburari), which appear to be loanwords from English. The Basque word for library, liburutegia, might possibly have Latin or Greek roots.

[Addendum] *lann in Irish is an archaic/obsolete word that means floor, enclosure or church. It comes from the Old Irish lann (building, house, land, plot, plate), from the Proto-Celtic *landā ((open) space, land), from the Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (land, heath). It is cognate with the Welsh word llan (church, parish, monastery, yard, enclosure, village), the Spanish landa (plain), and the English words land and lawn [source].

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary, Wiktionnaire, Yawiktionary

Rapid Language Learning

By Simon

Today I came across an interesting article entitled Rapid Language Learning, in which Konstantin Ryabitsev from Russia gives details of how he managed to learning enough French to pass TEF (Test d’Evaluation de Français). At the time he wrote the piece (2004), he was in the process of immigrating to Canada, where they favour applicants with knowledge of both English and French. He already spoke English, so decided to learn French as well, as he was planning to move to Montreal, where he now lives.

At first he tried to learn to read French using a French translation of Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban, but soon found that too difficult because he wasn’t familiar with French grammar. So he got hold of a copy of Schaum’s Outline of French Grammar and after about four months of working his way through that, he was able to read the Harry Potter book, then managed to tackled Le Comte de Monte-Cristo.

After that, he started working on his understanding, speaking and writing skills, using flash cards and associations to learn vocabulary and practising listening and speaking while walking to and from work. He also watched TV programmes that had been dubbed into French, French TV programmes and films, and also tried listening to audiobooks, but didn’t find that very helpful.

You can find out more about his methods in the article. I find such stories interesting. The methods he used wouldn’t necessarily work as well for other people, but he does have some good suggestions.

Le PM parle le français

By Simon

Yesterday I came across a video on YouTube of Tony Blair congratulating Nicolas Sarkozy, in French, for his victory in the recent French presidential election. I didn’t know that old Tony could speak any other language other than English, but he seems to speak French pretty fluently, with quite an English accent.

He starts the video with the following:

Bonjour à tous. J’ai décidé de me risquer à vous adresser ce message en français, ce qui est peut-être une bien mauvaise idée.

This suggests that he isn’t entirely confident about his French abilities, or maybe he’s just being modest.

I wonder if Tony actually speaks French when on official visits to France or other French-speaking countries. Or does he use interpreters.

Terracotta bureaucrats

By Simon

According to a report I heard on the radio this morning, the British Museum is going to stage a major exhibition of the terracotta warriors who guard the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), who unified China and was its first emperor from 221-210 BC. The exhibition will include not just some of the warriors, but also terracotta bureaucrats, acrobats and musicians. Apparently the emperor is attend in death by his army plus quite a few other members of his court.

The term ‘terracotta bureaucrat’ is not one you hear everyday and caught my ear.

The word bureaucracy combines bureau, meaning desk or office, with the Greek suffix -kratia, which denotes ‘power of’, and was coined by the French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-59). The word bureaucrat first appeared in writing in 1842. A bureau was originally a type of cloth used for covering desks and tables. It comes from the Latin Latin burra, wool, shaggy garment; via the Old French burel, coarse woolen cloth.

Terracotta comes from Italian and means ‘baked earth’.

Word of the day – rompre

By Simon

rompre /ʁɔ̃pʁ/ verb = to break (up/off/with) / séparer en deux parties, briser, mettre en pièces

Examples of usage
En tombant de cheval, il s’est rompu le cou.
– he broke his leg neck falling off a horse

rompre ses chaînes
– to break one’s chains

tu nous romps la tête avec ta musique
– you’re deafening us with your music

ils ont rompu (leurs fiançailles)
– they’ve broken it off, they’ve broken off their engagement

il va se rompre les os / le cou
– he’s going to break his neck

As we haven’t had a French word of the day for a while, I thought it was time for one. To remember this word I think of someone romping around breaking things.

Word of the day – glisser

By Simon

glisser, verb = to slide, slip, glide

Examples of usage
le beateau glissait sur les eaux = the boat glided over the water
ils glissèrent le long de la pente dans le ravin = they slid down the slope into the gully
le voleur leur a glissé entre les mains = the thief slipped through their fingers

Related words
glissade = slide, slip, skid
glissant = slippery
glissoire = (ice/snow) slide

I haven’t an particularly reason for slipping this word in today – I just like the sound of it.

The equivalent words in Irish are also interesting: sleamhnaigh (to slide, slip, slither), sleamhain (slippery, smooth, sleek), as are the Welsh words: llithro (to glide, slide, slip, skid, slither) and llithrig (slippery)