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Nov 19

9 Comments

No. 52: Les Macarons

IMG_8650I love the French macaron. And to think, 4 years ago, I had never even heard of this whimsical creation. If you’ve never seen one, these charming double-deckered dots, look impossibly similar to multi-colored miniature hamburgers buns that you might find in your daughter’s dollhouse. They are gorgeous from top to bottom.

While I like the unusual and trendy flavors (this season Ladurée is featuring les baies roses—pink peppercorns) and the fanciful colors, when it comes to macarons, it turns out I’m a plain-Jane-vanilla kind of girl.  J’adore le parfum vanille—that, and the pistache.

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During my time in France, I have probably eaten at least one hundred of these colorful, cream-filled confections. Don’t tell Superman, but at €2.25 a pop, that’s roughly $300 worth of cookies. It’s my guilty pleasure, so sue me.

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There are several ways I like to eat them. I savor them in a cozy salon de thé with un café noisette, or depending on the flavors I order, a cup of chocolat chaud. I also love eating them on a park bench at lunchtime watching the world go by. Often I bring them home to the family as a special after dinner treat. This is my preferred method for enjoying les macarons. We usually share a box of 6-8, cutting them in quarters or halves, so we can all taste a bit of each. Sometimes I make the family close their eyes to try to figure out the flavor, other times I make them wait while I meticulously set them up for a photo shoot. I always suggest a sip of water to clear the palate between tastings. But the most important thing I have found to enjoy this indulgence is to make the time to relish every tiny bite…the taste, the smell, the texture and the view. Les macarons are scrumptiously edible art, exquisite and very, very French.

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Vocabulaire

chocolat chaud: hot chocolate

J’adore le parfum vanille: I love vanilla flavored

pistache: pistachio

salon de thé: tearoom

un café noisette: an espresso with a small bit of steamed milk

Nov 18

2 Comments

No. 51: Tongue Twisters

funkydowntown.com

funkydowntown.com

Alors, chaque semaine, dans mon cours de français, we spend 30 minutes practicing tongue twister, known to the French as les virelangues.

Les virelangues are silly slogans we are supposed to speak swiftly, satisfactorily, and seriously to assess our skillfulness in successfully saying a succession of similar sounds succinctly.

Our assorted assembly of eight adventurers from across the earth, each with an array of atypical accents, histoires, et angst, ce n’est pas an attractive arrangement.

The mental and physical gymnastics we have to perform to suitably spit out these sentences is not only monumental, madcap and manic, mais also mirthful, meaningless, and modestly miserable.

Batman tries to twist his tongue…
nicolas-virelangues.com
nicolas-virelangues.com
nicolas-virelangues.com

Oh, we try so hard! And French is not an easy language, but, alas, c’est une langue qu’on aime!

Here’s a sample of a few we’ve been working on…it ain’t pretty:

Dans ta tente ta tante t’attend. (In your tent your aunt is waiting for you.)

Lily lit le livre dans le lit. (Lily reads the book on the bed.)

Poisson sans boisson, c’est poison! (Fish without drink, that is poison!)

Cinq chiens chassent six chats. (Five dogs chase six cats.)

Un taxi attaque six taxis. (A taxi attacks six taxis.)

Même maman m’a mis ma main dans mon manchon. (Even mom put my hand in my sleeve.)

Un gros porc dors au bords le beau port du Bordeaux. (A porky pig sleeps by the beautiful port of Bordeaux.)

Je dis que tu l’as dit à Didi ce que j’ai dit jeudis. (I say that you say to Didi what I say on Thursdays.)

Trois tortues trottaient sur un trottoir très étroit. (Three turtles are trotting down a very narrow sidewalk.)

Ces six saucissons-ci sont si secs qu’on ne sait si s’en sont. (These six sausages are so dry that we don’t know if they are (sausages).)

 Pauvre petit pêcheur, prend patience pour pouvoir prendre plusieurs petits poissons. (Poor little fisherman need patience to be able to catch many small fish.)

Chat vit rôt,
rôt tenta chat,
chat mit patte à rôt,
rôt brûla patte à chat,
chat quitta rôt. (The cat sees the roast. The roast tempts the cat. The cat puts a paw on the roast. The roast burns the cat’s paw. The cat leaves the roast.)

Take a listen here to hear how hard these are to say!

Vocabulaire:

Alors, chaque semaine, dans mon cours de français…: So each week, in my French course…

ce n’est pas: it is not…

c’est une langue qu’on aime: it’s a language we love

histoires: stories, histories

mais: but

virelangues: tongue twisters (une phrase difficile à prononcer)

agapegeek.com

agapegeek.com

Nov 17

6 Comments

No. 50: The Sparkling Tower

Christmas_Eiffel_tower_sparkling_2009.jpbThose of you who know me well, know that j’adore la Tour Eiffel. No matter how many times I see it, it still sets my heart a flutter. I love it morning, noon, or night.

But what I really love about MY tower, as we call it chez nous, is when it sparkles every hour on the hour from sundown to midnight. Not only is it plain lovely to see, but it always makes me smile to hear the crowds who are seeing it light up for the very first time.

The communal “Ooooooh!” and gasps of surprise and awe make my evening trot around the Champ de Mars with Taz so happy, and reminds me that I am the luckiest girl in the world to live in the City of Light and Sparkles!

Vocabulaire

Champ de Mars: the expansive green area at the foot of the Eiffel Tower extending to École Militaire (literally the field of Mars)

chez nous: at our house

J’adore la Tour Eiffel.: I adore/love the Eiffel Tower

Nov 14

3 Comments

No. 49: Crisp Fall Days

I promise this will be my last post about fall…at least this fall. But I just can’t resist the colors of these crisp fall days in France. This desert-dry-climate-Colorado girl has never met a deciduous tree she doesn’t love.

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Even the cars have changed colors this autumn!

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Nov 13

3 Comments

No. 48: Licking the Windows

An ideal way to spend these mild but crisp fall days is to lick the windows around town. Yep. That’s what the French call window-shopping: licking the windows (en français: faire du lèche vitrine). It’s absolutely the perfect phrase as the shop windows in France are so beautifully delicious, you almost want to eat them up, or at least take home a little taste.

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Nov 12

4 Comments

No. 47: le Sandwich

IMG_2069I’m not a big fan of sandwiches in America unless it’s the day after Thanksgiving: juicy turkey, mayo and freshly ground pepper, or Boxing Day when the Christmas honey ham is cold and the Dijon mustard is flowing. Mais en France, it’s easy to become addicted to le sandwich, the Frenchie’s fast-food. Bien sûr, it has a heck of a lot to do with the warm, crusty baguettes, but for me, it also has a lot to do with the ingredients and the lack of traditional condiments.

I’ve heard that France’s national sandwich is the jambon-beurre (ham and butter), but frankly, you can do a lot better than that at any decent boulangerie in France. En fait on the way home from school today I had a Brie de Meaux et figues sandwich (Brie from Maeaux, fig jam, softened figs and walnuts—all on a just from the oven baguette.) C’était délicieux!

Here are some of my other favorites:

Chèvre & Miel: soft cheese, goat’s cheese rounds, baby spinach, honey and walnuts.

Parmesan & Poulet: roasted chicken, tomatoes, arugula, thyme, rosemary, and shaved parmesan.

Bleu & Pommes: blue cheese, fresh apple slices, arugula, raisins, blue cheese sauce.

Roblochon & Porc: Roblochon cheese, smoked pork tenderloin, , salted butter and hazelnuts.

3 Fromages: Brie, emmental, fromage frais (creamy cheese), mustard and honey.

Pont l’Évêque & Jambon: carmelized onions, pont d’évêque (a creamy soft cheese from in Normandy), country ham.

Brie de Meaux & Truffes; Brie, greens, mascarpone truffé, truffle balsamic vinegar.

…and of course, le Croque Monsieur…but that French standard deserves its own post!

Vocabulaire

bien sûr: of course

boulangerie: bakery

C’était délicieux! It was delicious!

en fait: in fact

jambon-beurre: ham and butter

Mais en France…: But in France…

Click here to find my favorite carry-out sandwich shop in Paris.

Nov 11

3 Comments

No. 46: Faux Amis

hippiehippieshaker.blogspot.com
bespeckledhedgehog.wordpress.com

There are so many things I love about learning French. One of my favorite is the chance to collect the funny stories or ridiculous things foreigners say as we plod along in our language classes. It can get particularly silly in French.

Donc, over the past three weeks, I have been compiling a list of faux amis, or false friends, that my classmates and I have incorrectly used in our attempt to communicate with our prof. These are the words that look the same (or nearly the same) in French and English, which foreigners desperately throw into their conversations in hopes of being understood.

Although there are thousands of words that are true cognates or vrai amis in French, I’ve found that sometimes it’s better not to simply throw in the English word, and avoid feeling like un imbécile.

For example, it’s best not to ask an owner of a fruit orchard if she puts préservatifs in her jam, as I’m quite sure she hasn’t been adding condoms to her confiture. Better to say: conservateurs or agent de conservation.

source: shame-full.com

When someone asks you to bring your baskets, don’t go looking for some nice wooden ones, better to head to the closet and pick up your tennis shoes/trainers.

If you are a single male at a bar, you might not want to start the conversation by notifying the ladies that you are un bachelier, unless you want to impress upon them that you did indeed pass the bac (the French equivalent of a high school degree.) Try célibataire instead.

Shopping for some lingerie or undergarments, please don’t ask where the bras are, or you could end up in the storage room with the spare mannequin arms.   Ask for the soutien-gorge instead.

prweb.com

When you go to vote, don’t expect to get un ballot, unless you want to hang out with the nitwits or nerds. If you want to make sure your vote is counted, see if they will rustle you up a un bulletin de vote.

Don’t ever ask someone if you can pet le chien, unless you want them to call the animal welfare agency to ticket you for thumping, beating, or passing gas on their furry friend. You’ll be better off if you simply ask if you can câliner or caresser the little guy.

When you come down with the inevitable autumn cold, don’t tell your prof that you can’t speak because you avoir la flemme, unless you are trying to tell him, “you really can’t be bothered” or you are “just plain lazy”. Rather explain to him that you have la mucosité in your throat.

If you are so sick that you have to go to the doctor, please don’t tell him that you have un pain in your throat, or he might spend the next 30 minutes rooting around for last night’s baguette. (Instead explain that you are mal à la gorge.)

And finally, when you are eating in a restau or café, it’s better not to ask the waiter for more napkins, unless you really need a couple of sanitary pads. Best to ask for une serviette.

newcel.co.uk

So, what are some of the funny Franglais conversations you’ve had with the French? Please send in your comments, I can always use a few more chuckles in my life.

Vocabulaire

avoir la flemme: can’t be bothered with

baskets: tennis shoes/trainers

bras: arms

câliner: to pet, pat

caresser: to caress, pet

célibataire: (to be) single

confiture: jam

conservateurs, agent de conservation: preservatives

faux amis: false friends

la mucosité: phlegm, mucus

le chien: male dog

mal à la gorge: to have a sore throat

napkins: sanitary pads

pain: bread

pet (péter): to thump, beat, pass gas, fart

préservatifs: condoms

soutien-gorge: bra

un bachelier: someone who has passed the bac (high school degree)

un ballot: a nitwit, nerd

un bulletin de vote: a ballot

un restau: cool way to say restaurant

une serviette: a napkin

vrai amis: real friends

 

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