Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
aimer
to love (in French this really means 'to like')
detester
to dislike, not really detest
brésilien
transsexual
car
bus (not automobile)
composter
to validate a train or bus ticket
correspondance
to change train lines (also has the
English meaning)
dame âgée
older woman (a term of respect in French)
demander
to ask (not 'to demand')
location
to rent
sortie
exit
A major stumbling block with Parisian French is the
argot
or slang words that young people are thinking up all the time.
Even the topics on the subject quickly become obsolete. Start
spending time with teenagers. That's the best way to learn
'in' (
branché
) French.
APPRENDRE!
While the verb
apprendre
means 'to learn', it can also mean
'to teach' (which is usually the word
enseigner
). Children
understand this crossover instinctively, and though we
cannot say learning French is painless, much work has
been done on teaching methods. Summarising a lifetime
teaching language and linguistics, John Dennis, retired from
San Francisco State University, offers a helpful approach to
French language learning.
Au Secours! (Help)
In a well-known American i lm, a young, cheerful student
of about 19 has failed his entrance examinations into a
prestigious American university. His exasperated father
hires an outrageously attractive woman to tutor him, her
payment based on his passing the exam. The subject at
hand? French grammar.
In the occasional scenes where anything remotely
academic occurs, we see the young man stumbling through
the present tense of
être,
the verb 'to be': '
Zhuh swee, too (um)
ess, ill (ah) ess - est - er? ell est..
.'
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