Posted by Chanda
While the title of this French vocabulary article may seem a bit misleading, this exercise on family words may prove to be fun and helpful to your learning process. Fill in the blanks with the appropriate French word, or even better yet, let us know what your answers are in a comment!
1. La mère de ma mère c’est ma _______________.
2. Les enfants de mon oncle ce sont mes ________.
3. La fille de ma mère c’est ma ________________.
4. Le frère de mon père c’est mon ______________.
5. Le père de mon père c’est mon ______________.
6. Le frère de mon oncle c’est mon _____________.
7. La sœur de ma mère c’est ma _______________.
8. La sœur de ma tante c’est ma _______________.
Posted by Chanda
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 !
Posted by Chanda
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.
| prodigue (adjective)
Context: Dans la parabole, le fils prodigue vit les plus somptueuses années de sa vie avant de se repentir y rentrer chez son père.
Create two synonyms for prodigue.
dé_ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ s _ i _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ r
Write a sentence of your own using the word prodigue. |
Vous pouvez partager vos phrases avec nous dans un commentaire !
Posted by Chanda
French argot (slang) can be difficult to understand, but it’s really quite fun. So, today, we’ll talk about some expressions involving food that don’t have so much to do with food really, but might be useful to know. For example, if you want to say that you are a bit down in the dumps, you could say “J’en ai gros sur la patate” because ‘patate‘ although it really means ‘(potato) spud’ in English, is often used to refer to many other things when using French slang. So, be careful, because ‘patate’ can also mean ‘idiot’ as in “Il est vraiment une patate”. Or if you want to say that you have a friend who parties all night because he has a lot of energy or stamina, you could say “Il a la patate” or if you are wondering how you can get your energy back when you are sick with a cold, for example, you could ask “Qu’est-ce que je dois prendre pour avoir la patate?”. If you’ve been overloaded with information and your head is going to explode, you could say “J’ai la tête comme une patate!“. If you want to encourage someone by telling them to hang in there and not give up, you can say “Lâche pas la patate!” and although we could go on and on with the spuds (the French do grow 20 different varieties and perhaps for this reason, they seem to love using the word) finally, “patati patata” means ‘blah, blah, blah…’.
Moving on to sausages… If someone calls you “une andouille”, don’t thank them as they are calling you ‘a fool’. If your mother or someone else tells you “Fais pas l’andouille!”, they are telling you not to be silly (or, rather, not to do silly things).
As for other foods, a really bad movie is referred to as “un navet” (a turnip). “Chou” (cabbage) can mean ‘honey’, ’sweatheart’, ‘granny’ and ‘love’ when talking about another person. “Bête comme chou” refers to something that is really easy or ‘easy as pie’. “Faire chou blanc” means to ‘draw a blank’.
And just to throw a few fruits in, ‘”une poire” (a pear) or even “une pomme” (an apple) can mean ‘a sucker’ as in someone who is gullible and falls for anything. “Avoir la pêche” (peach) means to feel great and energetic just like “avoir la patate” above.
Well, I’m starting to get hungry, so until next time, je m’en vais (I’m outta here)!
Posted under Vocabulary
Tagged with argot, avoir la patate, avoir la pêche, avoir la tête comme une patate, bête comme chou, faire chou blanc, faire la andouille, French food, French slang, French vocabulary, gros sur la patate, lâche pas la patate, patati patata |
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Posted by Chanda
Some of you may have noticed the Word of the Day to the right of the blog articles. It is a helpful way to learn vocabulary little by little in context. You can even hear the word pronounced by a native speaker or see other forms of the word like the difference between the plural and singular and the definite and indefinite articles that go with the word. Well, today’s word is péniche. It just so happens that this word has a little ‘x’ by it in my Robert Micro dictionary that I bought when I was a student in Paris. I marked all the entries in the dictionary that I looked up during my year in Paris…I’m not sure why really, but it was fun and it also made me realize if I continued to look up the same words or not (If I continued to look them up, then I obviously wasn’t learning them…which meant more studying was needed). So, I thought I would discuss this word a bit today.
First of all, what does it mean and what is the context?
If you click on the link above, you can see that it means ‘houseboat’ and you can also see that it’s a feminine noun. My dictionary gives some synonyms: une barge (which is apparently a bit bigger than a péniche) and une chaland.
When you go to Paris, you will see many péniches floating along the Seine River. You can even have a romantic dinner at night on one as there are several for rental or used for commercial purposes. Buying one can cost you anywhere from less than €100,000 to more than €550,000 ($707,500).
Here’s an ad for a péniche that is up for sale. It is completely furnished and features an entryway (une entrée), a fully-equipped kitchen (une cuisine équipée), a living room (un séjour), 2 bedrooms (chambres), a shower room (salle d’eau) and a toilet room (un WC) as well as an office (un bureau) and dressing room (un dressing). It also has a sailor’s quarters and two decks.
For those of you who may not be looking to buy one, just stay on a péniche the next time you’re in Paris.
