Posted by Chanda
Ever since I had a delicious albeit overpriced fondue with a close friend in Le Quartier Latin eleven years ago in Paris, I have been in love with fondues and my fondue pot.
So, I thought I’d share a recipe for Fondue aux trois fromages:
Ingrédients
200 g de gruyère
200 g de fromage à raclette
100 g de mozzarella
1 gousse d’ail émincée
10 cl de lait et 20 cl de vin blanc
1 cuillerée à soupe de fécule de maïs
poivre noir du moulin
muscade râpée
Dice the cheese. Heat up the milk, all but 4 tablespoons of the wine and the garlic in a caquelon (fondue pot). Add the diced cheese all while stirring well. In a separate bowl, mix the corn starch and the remaining white wine. When the cheese has melted but is not liquid, pour this mixture into the caquelon while continuously whisking. Simmer until smooth and creamy. Bring to a boil and let it cook for a few minutes. Add pepper and nutmeg. Let the fondue simmer gently over a hot plate in the middle of the table as everyone dips their food into it.
You can dip breadsticks, little pieces of French baguette bread, small baked potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, apples or anything else you can think of in your fondue.
Bon appétit!
Posted by Chanda
I was basically introduced to French literature during my third year in college which I spent in Paris studying the Cours de Civilisation Française offered at the Sorbonne through Central College Abroad.
Although it felt like I was never going to get it in the beginning, with help from the teachers at the Sorbonne and my French friends, I unlocked the treasure chest that is French literature. One of my very favorites is Madame Bovary. I’m not sure why really, but I fell in love with this novel by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). One of my favorite excerpts is when Emma Rouault (the main character) discovers her new home three days after her wedding to the widowed Charles Bovary, a very shy, uninteresting and insensitive man she had just recently met. The reader becomes Emma as the description is thoroughly made from her perspective. The detailed adjectives and nouns make for impressive imagery as Flaubert uses objects instead of emotions to show who his characters are. It’s heart-breaking to feel just like Emma, the only daughter of a rich Normand farmer, as she discovers a home that her new husband had not even prepared for her, having left it just as his first wife (who Emma refers to as l’autre) had decorated it and which as far as Emma is concerned is old, dirty and of poor taste (un papier jaune-serin, des fleurs pâles, la toile mal tendue, flambeaux d’argent plaqué, bois de sapin, une grande pièce délabrée…). My favorite line in this chapter is: …Emma songeait à son bouquet de mariage, qui était emballé dans un carton, et se demandait, en rêvant, ce qu’on en ferait, si par hasard elle venait à mourir.
Flaubert apparently wrote this story after having read about a young woman who cheated on and was later murdered by her husband. Hence, the fact that Emma later commits suicide which is presaged in this line I quoted.
I encourage all my readers to open up a French novel and read just a little excerpt. Use a dictionary if you really need to, but only for the words that really block your general understanding of the story. Don’t waste time looking up each and every one of the words you don’t know as this will frustrate you before you even finish one sentence. And after all, the most important thing is that you get a general idea of the plot or the action as that will be enough to keep you wanting to go back for more.
Posted by Chanda
Possibly most famous in the US as Johnny Depp’s long-time love and mother of his two children, Vanessa Paradis was born on December 22, 1972 in a town near Paris where she took piano and dance lessons. Now a successful singer, actress and Chanel model, she became a child star in 1987 at just 14 years of age after the release of her single Joe le taxi, which was #1 on the French charts for 11 weeks and rose to #3 on the UK charts. In 1990, she won the Victoire de la Musique Female Performer of the Year award with her second album, Variations sur le même t’aime. In 1992, she moved to the US to work with Lenny Kravitz, who wrote and produced her English-language album “Vanessa Paradis”, the most successful single from which was entitled “Be My Baby”. Bliss was released in 2000 and Divinidylle in 2007, with which she won several music awards and nominations in France.
She is rumored to currently be working on a Greatest Hits album.
She filmed her first movie as an actress, Noce blanche, in 1989, for which she received the 1990 César Award for Most Promising Actress despite her later claim that the filming process with the Director was not a good experience for her. In 1994, she worked with Gérard Depardieu in the film Elisa. Perhaps one of her most famous films in the US is the French movie La fille sur le pont (The Girl on the Bridge), released in 1999 in France and in 2000 abroad, and for which she was nominated for another César Award. Her official website is Vanessa Paradis de A à Z.
Posted by Chanda
One of our readers asked if I would write an article on slang that young people use. Although I’m not going to say I’m any kind of expert as my teenage days are long over, this article is an attempt to find something for him.
Some young people, especially those in urban neighborhoods speak what is known as langue djeunz (as in langue des jeunes). Some of this slang is also used among families and friends outside the big cities through the spread of hip hop culture and SMS language. Much of modern French slang comes from the influence of foreign words (English, Arabic, etc.). One form of this slang is what is called verlan, which some of my French friends introduced me to when I lived in Paris. Verlan is all about reversing the syllables of a word, but not usually with words with more than three syllables. And it has to sound cool, so sometimes the word is then changed a bit to be pleasing to the ear. The word verlan actually comes from reversing the syllables of l’envers (reverse or back to front).
l’envers → ver
l’envers → lan (although for phonological reasons, the e was changed to an a to make verlan)
Here are some French words in verlan:
femme - meuf (woman)
énervé - vénère (angry)
arabe - beur (Arab)
cigarette - garette-ci (which was later transformed to garo)
bizarre - zarbi (strange)
père - reup (father)
Finally, here’s a really interesting website in French on French slang. There are even fables by Jean de La Fontaine in slang. Le Dictionnaire Argôt Français
Et merci de nouveau Ryan pour ton commentaire!
Posted by Chanda
When living in a student dorm in Paris, there were a few chairs around a table topped with the day’s newspaper and some magazines in the entrance hall. I would often hang out there for a couple of reasons. One - so I could learn more French and stay informed of back-then President Bill Clinton’s political situation by reading the free newspaper that I wasn’t about to pay for on my student budget. Two- so I could make French friends and see the ones I had already made as they came in after their classes. At first, I was surprised at what an event greeting everyone would be each time someone came in. It would go like this: male student number one would come in the door and immediately say “Bonsoir” and then proceed to shake hands with each guy gathered in the area and kiss each girl on both cheeks, saying “Bonsoir” individually to all of them as they each stood up to receive the greeting. Then, male student number two would come in the door and immediately say “Bonsoir” and then proceed to shake hands with each guy gathered in the area and kiss each girl on both cheeks, saying “Bonsoir” individually to all of them as they each stood up to receive the greeting. Then, female student number one would come in the door and immediately say “Bonsoir” and then proceed to kiss each person gathered in the area on both cheeks, saying “Bonsoir” individually to all of them as they each stood up to receive the greeting. And this could go on for an hour or more. Some people would stay and chat for a bit and others immediately went up to their rooms to get ready for dinner. I remember that it felt nice to be greeted as in a similar situation in the US, for example, unless it is a good friend walking in, your presence could basically just be ignored. These greeting sessions made it so much easier to feel included in a foreign country, make French friends and in turn, learn French.
So, this story leads me to a few basic rules of greeting etiquette in France:
1. When greeting someone or saying good-bye, always shake hands quickly with just a little pressure. Children should shake hands too.
2. When you enter a room, greet everyone in it.
3. If you greet a man, say “Bonjour/Bonsoir Monsieur“, when greeting an older woman say “Bonjour/Bonsoir Madame” and when greeting a single young woman, say “Bonjour/Bonsoir Mademoiselle“. Don’t use their first or their last names as it’s considered too informal. If you’re close friends or among all young people, you can use their first names. Children should not use first names with any adults, except their close relatives.
4. When leaving a group, also shake hands and say “Au revoir Monsieur/Madame/Mademoiselle” to everyone in the group. If you’re all friends and you’re a female, then do the cheek kissing thing and say “Au revoir/À plus tard/ À tout à l’heure” to everyone.
