French Music - Vanessa Paradis

Posted by Chanda
Oct
18
2009

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFna8sPpOg

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.

 
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French Vocabulary in Context IV

Posted by Chanda
Oct
15
2009

Today, I’ll give you another very short vocabulary activity to work on.  French teachers can use this exercise as a quick warm-up activity.  I will provide the answers in a later post (in a few days) so you have plenty of time to get to it.

I thought of this word this afternoon when I had to get after my 3 year-old daughter. (Hint, hint..)

admonester (verb)

Context: Julie a admonesté son petit chien pour avoir jappé quand quelqu’un a frappé à la porte.

Create three synonyms for admonester?
_ e_ m_ _ _ _ _
_r_ _ _ _ _

r_ _ _ _ _ _ _ r

Write a sentence of your own using the word admonester.

Vous pouvez partager vos phrases avec nous dans un commentaire !

 
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French Grammar - Adverbs

Posted by Chanda
Oct
12
2009

C’est quoi un adverbe? Well, according to my Robert Micro (my all-time favorite dictionary…although not completely sure why), c’est un mot invariable ajoutant une détermination à un verbe (ex : marcher lentement), un adjectif (ex : très agréable), un adverbe (ex : trop rapidement), ou à une phrase entière (ex : évidemment, il ne se presse pas).

In English, we often say that an adverb tells how something is done.

Il se bouge facilement. (He moves easily.)
Il s’est finalement décidé. (He has finally decided.)

In French, many adverbs end in -ment.  However, there are some exceptions.  The formation rules are as follows:

1. You take the feminine form of the adjective and add -ment.
fort › forte › fortement
doux › douce › doucement
vif › vive › vivement
fou › folle › follement

2. For adjectives that end in -ent and -ant, the suffix is -emment or -amment.
prudent › prudemment
violent › violemment
courant › couramment
suffisant › suffisamment

3. For adjectives that end in -i, -é and -u, the final -e in the feminine form disappears.
vrai › vraiment
absolu › absolument
aisé › aisément

There are also adverb words or adverb word groups like hier, longtemps, tôt, tard, demain, souvent, loin, près, dehors, trop, là-bas, partout, quelque part, quelquefois, jamais, assez, beaucoup, assez, très, vite, par hasard, à peu près, tout à l’heure, au maximum…

Some adjectives can also be used as adverbs in their masculine singular form like bas, fort, cher, froid…

Finally, there are some often-used adverbs that are completely different from their corresponding adjectives:
bon › bien
mauvais › mal
meilleur › mieux
petit › peu

Who can make a sentence with as many adverbs as possible?  Please share in a comment.

 
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French Slang - Argôt Français Contemporain

Posted by Chanda
Oct
9
2009

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 under Culture, Vocabulary
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Let’s Talk About Verbs - Venir

Posted by Chanda
Oct
6
2009

Je viens de mettre mes filles au lit. I have just put my girls in bed.

Venir de conjugated in the present tense and followed by the infinitive is the equivalent of to have just + past participle.

Elle vient d’arriver. (She has just arrived.)
Ils viennent de faire leurs devoirs. (They have just done their homework.)

It is an irregular -ir verb and is conjugated in the present tense like this:

je viens
tu viens
il/elle/on vient
nous venons
vous venez
ils/elles viennent

There are other verbs that are conjugated in the present tense in the same way; in other words, with the same suffixes, and they are: devenir (to become), revenir (to come back), se souvenir de (to remember), tenir (to hold) and obtenir (to obtain).

Why don’t you give us an example sentence using one of these verbs in a comment!

 
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