Are you looking for French books to read this summer?
Either in French or simply from French authors?
If you have already read all of Proust, Maupassant and Verne or do not feel ready yet to embark in Hugo’s Les Misérables, Alain Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes or Albert Camus’ L’Etranger, here are some non-classic suggestions of lesser known French books and authors, recent or not.
At the start of the Great War, millions of men were gathered together to fight France’s enemies. One of the difficulty for the Army and the officers was that many Frenchmen actually did not speak French properly but spoke their own local dialects. After months spent together in the fields and trenches of World War One, soldiers created their own “ trench slang “ ( “ l’argot des tranchées “ ), mixing words from popular French, Parisian slang, languages of the colonial soldiers and other popular dialects.
Nowadays, text messages have been implemented in all languages. French is no exception to the rule, and has its own style playing on the pronunciation of letters and words.
Here you will find some simple to use French text messages that are used for SMS messages and also on the internet.
Heavy Metal is certainly one of the most popular music in the world, but also one of the least known.
Metal is a genre of music that developed from Rock in the late 1960s and the early 1970s with famous bands such Black Sabbath or Judas Priest and their success also crossed the Channel and the Atlantic.
Hi, or rather Bonjour.
I’ve been living in France for more than 25 years now.
Living and working every day with French speaking people.
My sons are both French, the youngest is 14 and the oldest has just turned 18 and is awaiting the results of the famous “Bac” exams.
We live in the countryside, in a small farming village with about 120 inhabitants. A very typical village with mainly old houses and barns, no pavements, no stop signs on the road and the street lights are turned off by the mayor before midnight.
Basically, I never speak English, as there are no English speakers in the village. I would say that my spoken French is very fluent, although I do admit that I have difficulty with the spelling and conjugation.
On a daily basis, when I’m dealing with people who do not know me, they assume that I am a French native, not that I pretend to be one. We can talk about this and that, politics, sports, gardening and many subjects.
Then suddenly… I will pronounce a word.