Posted by Chanda
French pop/electro-rock singer Alizée Jacotey was born on Corsica on August 21, 1984. She started studying dance at the age of 4 and continued at a renowned dance school until she was 15. A friend signed her up for a national television singing contest. She performed the song ‘Ma Prière’ and won the talent show Graines de Star in 1999. Famous French singing duo Mylène Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat saw her on the show and carefully arranged Alizeé’s launch as a singing sensation. She has since released three studio albums, a live album and a for Mexico-only compilation album (Tout Alizée). Her single Moi…Lolita is her most famous song and was a hit all over the world. That song was featured on her debut album Gourmandises. Because of this, Alizée was the highest selling female French singer in 2001.
Despite the sexy image she gained from her songs, she actually has a squeaky-clean image and is said to be a very private and shy person.
Her other albums include Mes Courants Électriques (2003) and Psychédélices (2007), which was released after taking some time out of the public eye to take in her quick success at such a young age and get a better understanding of herself. A live album (Alizée En Concert) was also released in 2004 following her French tour. In all, she has sold over 5 million albums. Recently she has begun gaining fans in the United States, having released two English-language versions of her French songs “I’m Fed Up” and “I’m Not Twenty”.
Alizée married French singer and former Star Academy contestant Jérémy Chatelain in Las Vegas and they have one daughter.
Her official website is http://alizee-officiel.com/.
Posted by Chanda
For personal reasons, I have been looking more and more at l’horoscope lately. I feel as though I’ve had a streak of bad luck, so I thought reading my horoscope (mon horoscope) could either clear this up for me or just help me avoid this bad luck in the future. And so I thought about how fun it was for me to read horoscopes in foreign languages as a student as they were usually kind of easy and featured lots of different vocabulary and interesting sentence structures. First, I’ll give you the signs so that you can find your horoscope more easily in newspapers and magazines.
| ARIES |
BELIER (21 mars au 20 avril) |
| TAURUS |
TAUREAU (21 avril au 20 mai) |
| GEMINI |
GEMEAUX (21 mai au 21 juin) |
| CANCER |
CANCER (22 juin au 22 juillet) |
| LEO |
LION (23 juillet au 22 aout) |
| VIRGO |
VIERGE (23 aout au 22 septembre) |
| LIBRA |
BALANCE (23 septembre au 22 octobre) |
| SCORPIO |
SCORPION (23 octobre au 21 novembre) |
| SAGITTARIUS |
SAGITTAIRE (22 novembre au 20 décembre) |
| CAPRICORN |
CAPRICORNE (21 décembre au 19 janvier) |
| AQUARIUS |
VERSEAU (20 janvier au 18 février) |
| PISCES |
POISSONS (19 février au 20 mars) |
Here are some interesting websites with French language horoscopes:
http://www.linternaute.com/femmes/horoscope/
http://fr.astrology.yahoo.com/
http://www.lhoroscope.com/
Consultez-vous l’horoscope avant de prendre une décision importante? Dites-nous!
Posted by Chanda
Demonstrative articles are a little bit different in French as opposed to English. And since they are words that you often want to use when speaking, well, I thought we’d discuss them today. First of all, not only is there a singular and plural form, but there are also masculine and feminine forms. So, that makes it a little more complicated than in English.
Singular THIS (an object that is close to you)
Masculine - ce (but careful… cet is used with a word that begins with a vowel or with a word that begins with a silent consonant!!)
Feminine - cette
Plural THESE (more than one object that is close to you)
Masculine and Feminine - ces
Now, if you want to use THAT / THOSE for objects that are further away, you can either use the same as the translations for this/these or you can use là or là-bas like this to insist on the fact that you are talking about objects that are not close to you:
Singular: Ce (masc. noun) là-bas / Cet (noun begins with vowel or silent consonant) là-bas / Cette (fem. noun) là-bas
Plural: Ces (plural noun) là-bas
Here are some examples:
J’aime ce tableau. (I like this painting.)
Cet ami est un bon ami. (This friend is a good friend.)
Cet homme est mon mari. (This man is my husband.)
Pose les livres sur cette table. (Put the books on this table.)
Ces tables sont marrons. (These tables are brown.)
Ces amis vont à la même école. (These friends go to the same school.)
Ces hommes travaillent à Paris. (These men work in Paris.)
J’aime ces tableaux-là-bas. (I like those paintings over there.)
Some other useful expressions using demonstrative adjectives include:
à ce moment-là (at that moment)
à cette époque-là (at that time)
Elle est allée par là. (She went that way.)
Posted by Chanda
I once worked in a call center and was responsible for making the calls to French-speaking Québec. Although I had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in French, I was a bit intimidated the first time I had to make a call. I mean what was I supposed to say to these people??? And the fact that I had to remind them of their debts and their obligation to pay them ASAP was not so comfortable either. In any case, I quickly got used to making the calls. I thought I would share this experience with all of you since you may just have to either answer a phone or make a phone call in French some day.
So, if you ever do have a need for French phone vocab, well, here are some ideas:
First of all, use ‘vous’ if you’re not sure who is on the phone. This is the way the phone was answered at my university office in Paris: ‘Central College, Bonjour!” Now, I find that really simple and it works quite well for any type of office really. You could say, “(Company Name), Bonjour!”. But, you will probably have to add who is on the phone…in other words, your name. So, you could say, “(Company Name) Bonjour! (Your Name) à l’appareil“.
If you are making the call from your office, you will probably want to say something like this: “Bonjour, pourrais-je parler à (person’s name you want to speak to)” (Could I speak with…?) or “Bonjour, je voudrais parler à (person’s name you want to speak to)” (I would like to speak with…). When they ask you who’s calling (C’est de la part de qui?), you can say: “C’est (your name) de la part de (company name) à l’appareil”. They might tell you “Ne quittez pas” which means to please hold or “Je vous le passe” which means I’m transferring you. If you’re not very lucky, the line might be busy for the person you want to speak with and they’ll say, ‘La ligne est occupée”. If the person is not there, you can ask, “Pourrais-je laisser un message? (Can I leave a message?) …but then for the message, you’re all on your own! 
Now, if you are in a private home, you can just answer the phone by saying Allô? That’s really simple!
Posted by Chanda
The summer is underway and the pilgrims on St. James’ Way can be seen making their way to Santiago. One of my very favorite appetizers or first course dishes is Coquilles Saint Jacques or what is known in English as simply ’scallops’. I don’t know about you, but I find Coquilles Saint Jacques much more elegant…but then again that seems to happen a lot with French cuisine. The funny thing about them is the fact that their history is actually tied to Spain and that they don’t have such an elegant name in Spanish…Saint Jacques or Saint James was one of the 12 Apostles and the scallop shell is the symbol of the crusaders of the Order of St. James, which was founded to protect pilgrims headed to Santiago de Compostela. The story goes that St. James saved a drowning knight’s life and the knight came out of the water covered in scallop shells. It is also said that the body of St. James, himself, was lost in the ocean on the way to Spain for burial and later washed ashore covered in scallops. There are also other versions. In any case, the order and the French dish were named in his honor.
I thought I would share this very simple Coquilles Saint Jacques recipe with all of you.
Ingredients:
1 lb. of scallops
2 pints mussels
10 oz. shrimp
3 shallots
1 glass of white whine
1 cup of fresh cream
2 tablespoons of olive oil
5 teaspoons of butter
2 small cans of mushrooms
salt
pepper
Mince the shallots and sauté them in the oil until clear. Add the scallops, mussels and shrimp and let them cook for 3 minutes on low heat. Then, add the mushrooms and again let it cook for a minute.
Pour the white wine over this and then pour in the fresh cream and let it cook for 5 more minutes. Thicken the sauce with butter. Salt and pepper.
Serve this in the scallop shells after you have cleaned them.
