Archive for September, 2009

[ IMPORTANT ] Back to School Special - FrenchPod101 September 2009 Newsletter

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

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  3. Best Lessons and Blog Entries for September! - Find out what’s popular this month! The blog has some great content for you to see.

Welcome to the FrenchPod101.com newsletter. These periodic newsletters will deliver to you all the exciting developments that are going on at FrenchPod101.com. With each issue, you will receive the latest announcements, promotional offers, blog news, and forum news, while getting a rare glimpse of the behind-the-scenes life at the FrenchPod101.com office!

Read and Enjoy! And as always, if you have any comments or questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at contactus@Frenchpod101.com.

FrenchPod101.com Team

French Bazaar: Oh no! French Slang! Argot Lesson #1

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Have you ever heard of the word l’argot?

You might have heard of it as being the French slang. Well, it is true to some extent. But there is more to l’argot than just being slang.

 Today we’ll introduce you to one argot French word. But before we do, let’s talk about what l’argot really is.

The initial meaning appeared in the XVIIth century in France to generally designate professional thieves, beggars and  bohemians.  This group of people was literally called l’argot.

The word evolved to later designate the language used by this group of people. Just like any social group, they would use a vocabulary that would only exist among themselves. Now, having their own language not only identified each other as a group, it also allowed thieves and assassins to plan their crimes without being understood.

 Overtime, the word l’argot ended up designating every language specific to a certain social group of people. Therefore, there is today l’argot parisien (”Parisian Slang”), l’argot de la Bourse (”Stock Market Slang”), l’argot du journalisme (”Journalism Slang”), etc.

Here in the French Bazaar, we will mostly introduce you to l’argot parisien, not because we are Paris centered, but because this specific slang is the most used among French people. The Parisian Slang is also the one that directly comes from the original thief and bohemian’s argot we mentioned above.

Enough with history! What is our first word? It is…

UNE ALOUF (noun, feminine) - A MATCH

(Standard French: Une allumette)
It is very easy to use, you can simply say :

Tu as une alouf?  “Do you have a match?”

Or, in the plural form: Tu as des aloufs?  “Do you have any matches?”
My Dad (I know I keep talking about my Dad, but that’s only because he speaks the most eccentric French), back when he was a smoker, used to ask for aloufs all the time.

Our next word will start with “B”! We will see you around the corner of the bazaar…

French Bazaar: A French Pirate Party? Arrr…

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

A l’abordage! Aboard! Or, as Captain Hook says : “To the ship!”
For the first time in France, the very young Parti pirate de France (Pirate Party of France) will present a candidate for a legislative election. On September 20th, Maxime Rouquet, 23 years old, will run for deputy in the Yvelines’ 10th circumscription’s election, in the hopes of being seated in the National Assembly among the experienced veterans of the political profession.
Now, what is the French Pirate Party? Should we be worried? Should we watch our river banks? Should we avoid the Mediterranean coast? No, no, no, there is no such thing as boat looting on the coasts of the country that established human rights.

As you might have guessed, the Parti pirate de France is more involved in Internet and copyright issues than in stealing goods or yelling “Arrr” at Peter Pan. In fact, their political program focuses on Internet users’ rights and on reforming the patent system in France. It was founded in 2006 and mostly counts computer programmers and music professionals among its members.

This party might first look like one of those shallow movements that die soon after they are born. However, after 3 years of existence, they seem to lean toward an actual political strategy and plan on meeting the other European parties in order to strengthen their relationship and grow their numbers.

The Parti pirate de France hopes to give an alternate political response to how “music distribution must evolve”. One of their main concerns is preventing laws like the HADOPI* law from being passed as “it is technically not well packaged and doesn’t respect the presumption of innocence” Maxime Rouquet says.

Maxime Rouquet will mainly be running against Jean-Frédéric Poisson, candidate for the Assembly under the colors of the UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire - French conservative party) and favorite candidate for the Yvelines legislative elections.

While pirate parties in France had flourished only to disappear shortly after they started (there were six of them at some point!), the Parti pirate de France seems to be decided to stick around.

Something to keep an eye on…

*”Law favoring the diffusion and protection of creation on Internet”. It was adopted on May 12, 2009 by the French National Assembly.

French Bazaar: L’OuLiPo et la langue française - A Post for our Advanced Students

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Here is a post for our advanced students. It is going to be in French only. If you feel like you need a translation, please leave a comment and we’ll fix that!

Voici un article pour nos étudiants avancés.

Ou plutôt…voici un jeu pour nos nos étudiants avancés!

 

Vous avez déjà certainement entendu parler du Logo Rallye. Non? Là, vous vous dites: mais qu’est-ce qu’elle raconte?

Le Logo Rallye est un jeu littéraire inventé par le mouvement de l’OuLiPo – Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle. Et là vous vous dites: L’Ouli-quoi??

Commençons donc par le commencement.

En 1960, Raymond Queneau, poète et écrivain français, fonde avec François Le Lyonnais, un mathématicien, français lui aussi, l’Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle.

Ce groupe réunit des écrivains (comme Italo Calvino et Georges Perec, par exemple) mais aussi des mathématiciens qui proposent de construire une nouvelle littérature, une littérature expérimentale.

L’aspect le plus connu de cette “littérature potentielle” est l’écriture sous contrainte. Ecrire sous contrainte, cela signifie s’imposer des règles strictes pour écrire un texte, un poème, ou même un roman. Ces messieurs de l’OuLipo pensaient (et pensent toujours – L’OuLiPo existe encore aujourd’hui!) que les contraintes sont un moteur pour l’imagination. Les règles provoquent la créativité.

Un exemple? D’accord, un exemple.

 La méthode n+7 est un des exercices d’écriture sous contrainte les plus connus. En voici le principe:

- Prenez un texte déjà écrit, si possible célèbre, si possible un classique.

- Maintenant prenez un dictionnaire unilingue.

- La contrainte d’écriture (la règle, si vous préférez) est la suivante:

Vous allez changer tous les adjectifs de votre texte par d’autres adjectifs que vous trouverez dans le dictionnaire. Mais attention, pas au hasard!! Vous allez remplacer chaque adjectif par le septième adjectif qui suit dans le dictionnaire.

Imaginez que l’adjectif à remplacer est “vert”. Eh bien, prenez votre dictionnaire au mot “vert”, et allez jusqu’au septième adjectif placé après “vert”. Maintenant remplacez “vert” par le nouvel adjectif. Et renouvelez l’opération pour tous les adjectifs de votre texte.

Le résultat peut être extrêmement drôle, en particulier si le texte est très classique.

Est-ce que cela vous donne une idée de ce que l’OuLiPo* propose?

Bien sûr, leur travail est bien plus vaste et complexe. Mais ce serait trop long…

 Maintenant, voici le jeu que je vous propose aujourd’hui, appelé le Logo-Rallye:

Le Logo-Rallye, c’est facile. Je vais vous donner une liste de cinq mots, les cinq premiers mots qui me viennent à l’esprit. Et votre travail, c’est d’écrire, le plus vite possible et sans réfléchir, un texte de quelques lignes qui comprend ces cinq mots. Attention: gardez les mots dans l’ordre où je les donne!

Le principal ici est de NE PAS réfléchir, d’écrire très vite et de ne pas corriger ensuite. C’est ça qui rend le jeu drôle. Ne trichez pas!

Quand vous avez écrit votre texte, copiez-le dans la section “comments” de cet article, pour le partager avec nous. C’est parti!

- Voiture

- Enragé

- à genoux

- Gérard Depardieu

- Inutile.

 

* Un conseil: le livre de Raymond Queneau, Exercices de styles, est une bonne illustration de ce qu’il est possible de faire en écrivant sous contrainte.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2009 Contest Ends, and Everyone Wins!

Sunday, September 6th, 2009

Our $10,100 contest came to an end on August 31st,
and the winners were announced!
The contest was such an overwhelming success…

we feel everyone should be rewarded. :)

In total, almost 30,000 people participated!

160 won FREE subscriptions, but
we were so happy with the turnout,
we wanted to do something extra. So…
Read the rest of this entry »