Party Held in the Evening

Parmeshwar Godrej to host a soiree for Oprah Winfrey screams the Times of India headlines. A must-read for the socially upwardly mobile people and those who aspire to be in those circles. But there is one more reason to pay attention to the headline – ‘soiree' or soirée (both spellings are acceptable in English). This word is taken directly from French and even spelt and pronounced (hear) as in French, though the meaning got distorted along the way.

In English, soiree means, “a party or reception held in the evening”.The French word soirée means evening, but not in the sense of ‘good evening’, bonsoir (hear), rather in the sense of ‘have a great evening’ (bonne soirée). It is as if soirée denotes the duration of the evening while soir denotes a point in evening. Subtle difference!

Now we understand why soiree, in English, means a party held in the evening. The party is expected to last the duration of the evening! (Unless you decide to invite both Shah Rukh and Salman (or their supporters) to the party).

Notice that soir is masculine while soirée is feminine.
The pairs jour – journée, an – année are similar in nature to soir – soirée.
Bonjour (hear) – Good morning ; bonne journée (hear) – Have a great day.
And of course, bonne année (hear) – Happy new year (the whole year, not just a moment in the year).

Hmmm… I should of thought of this post about a month ago, on the 31st of December. But I guess Oprah didn’t want to spend the New Year’s Eve in India. So, no Oprah, no soiree thrown by Parmeshwar Godrej and hence no timely post – thus goes the logic.

Van Gogh, Picasso and French Cuisine

Here’s an extract of news from the Indian press and a chance to learn a bit of French.

First, the news: “Indians have always loved phoren brands but when it comes to art, they have shown a preference for homegrown artists. That looks to change as an Indian auction house announced the first-ever sale of western art which will include names likeVan Gogh and Picasso. The Van Gogh landscape "L'Alee aux deux promeneurs" and the 1953 Picasso oil "Le Transformateur" are highlights of a Saffronart online auction in February.”

Note that Van Gogh’s painting is incorrectly spelt. It should have been L'allée aux deux promeneurs.

Second, to understand the meaning of L'allée aux deux promeneurs you need to get a taste of French cuisine. The word 'aux' is generally used to mean 'to' or 'in' for plural nouns, as in Je vais (hear) aux (hear) États-Unis (hear) (I go / am going to United States). But it also has a meaning of 'with' as in Soupe de poulet (hear) aux pommes de terre(hear) (chicken soup with potatoes). See how delicious the French version sounds.

Now let’s decipher L'allée aux deux promeneurs.
L'allée (hear allée) = the lane / path
aux (hear) = with
deux (hear) = two
promeneurs (hear) = walkers

Click here to see the painting.

Picasso’s painting is easier to understand, at least the title. It almost sounds English with a French accent, Le Transformateur (= The Tranformer). An excellent reproduction and vivid details of the painting with some explanation is available here. You can see the details of the painting as you move your cursor on it. I urge you to spend some time with the painting to understand the genius of Picasso.

Be Cunning, Be Smart

The word, malin (hear), has a negative connotation. According to the dictionary it means shrewd or cunning. In fact, the phrase malin plaisir (hear) means malicious pleasure, and attributed to devil himself.
I am sure you must have figured this out even without my referring to the dictionary because of the use of the prefix ‘mal’. This is true not only in English but also in French: malheureusement  (hear) is opposite of heureusement (hear) and means unfortunately.
It therefore took me a while and a little help from Google Translate to understand what the following meant: Une carte pour voyager malin. (hear une, carte, pour, voyager) 
It certainly could not be a malicious travel card. Turns out that it means ‘a smart card for travel’.
I guess that there is a very thin line between being smart and being cunning. And to be smart one needs to be cunning too.

No Person

Here are two sentences …

Il y a trois personne ici. (hear Il y a, trois, personne, ici)
Il n'y a personne ici.(hear Il n'y a)

Personne sounds like 'person' with a French accent, and means 'person'. Well, most of the time. Except, when it doesn’t.

Here’s what these sentence translate into …

There are three people here.
There is no one here.

Personne on its own means, no body.

You will find this in Tintin comics a lot. Something will happen, Tintin will go to investigate, and “Personne” – no body.

More on ne ... que and ne ... pas

My regular readers would know the confusion caused by ne … que, when you are more used to a negative in the form of ne … pas or ne … jamais. (see more at ‘about ne … que’)

Well, from what I read so far, turns out that the French may have the same problem. They therefore devised a wonderful solution round it.
Ask yourself: what causes the confusion?
The answer: the ‘ne’ that precedes a verb, that brings on the anticipation of a ‘pas’ after the verb.
So, what is the ‘ne’ is got rid of. After all, the ‘ne’ doesn’t seem to add any apparent value. And that’s exactly what the French have done, at least in the spoken form of the language.

The following extract is from the book I have grown to love, Complete French.

The structure is: ne + avoi + que + à but in everyday language the ne disappears …
Ils n’ont qu’à … all they need to do … becomes ils ont qu’a … [pronounced isonka]
Tu n’as qu’à … all you need to do … becomes t’as qu’à … [pronounced taka]
Il n’y a qu’à … all that’s needed … becomes y a qu’à … [yaka]

So, to take the sentences I originally used in the previous blog post:

Je parle (hear) français (hear) = I speak French
Je ne parle pas français (hear) = I don’t speak French … becomes Je parle pas français
Je ne parle plus français = I don’t speak French anymore … becomes Je parle plus français
Je ne parle jamais français = I never speak French … becomes Je parle jamais français (hear jamais)
but
Je ne parle que français = I speak only French … becomes Je parle que français.

Hmm… nice solution.

Food, French and Language

No other culture takes food as seriously as the French do. Take the humble potato, for instance. The French do not think there is anything humble about potato. They call it the apple of the earth, la pomme de terre (hear). I am not surprised that their love for food has found its way into colourful French expressions.

Il a (hear) la pêche (hear) – he is in great form
Je suis (hear) bonne (hear) poire (hear), moi! – I am too good!
Elle est (hear) tombée dans les pommes – She fainted
Quelle salade ! – What a mess !

In fact the last one reminds me of an expression used very commonly in middle India, around Gwalior. You may not find it in the text books: क्या रायता फैलाया है! ((pronounced, kyaa raita phai-laya hai) Meaning, what a mess! Literally, what a spread of raita; raita = a yogurt-based vegetable salad).

Anything that a book can do, the internet can do better. A search has revealed a wonderful site that is full of French idioms. If you a foodie and want to learn the French language, this is a great place to be: Chocolate and Zucchini.

My Favourite Quote in French

I can’t believe it. It has been a while since I am learning French and I haven’t tried to translate my favourite quote into French yet. Sacrilege. Especially when René Descartes was French.
Time for quick remedial action.
Here goes …

Cogito, ergo sum => Je pense, donc je suis => I think, therefore I am.

Now, that feels nice.

ça par exemple!

Use of par exemple! in Tintin comics really foxed me. The literal meaning of par exemple is for example. But from the context (and my memory of the English version) I could see that this phrase is being used as an expression of surprise. Till I noticed that the phrase almost always took the form ça par exemple! This, indeed, turns out to be an exclamation of surprise: ça par exemple! = how about that!

These small bits are what makes learning language all the more challenging and interesting!

A wasted opportunity

When my wife asked me to talk to her colleague who teaches French in school, I was thrilled. Another chance to practice!
Here’s how it went …

She: « Allô! Bonjour! »
Me: « Bonjour! Comment allez vous? »
She : « Bien ! Merci et vous ? »
Me : « Moi, très bien, merci. »

Then she said something so rapidly that I couldn’t catch it. And my brain just froze. All I needed to say was: « Je ne comprends pas. Parler un peu lentement S'il vous plaît » But no ! My brain refused to work. I quickly switched over to English and completed rest of the conversation, all the while mentally kicking myself for not talking in French. I felt so stupid.

What a shame! I get this opportunity to speak in French in Bangalore and I let go of it. On the positive side, she is likely to be in Bangalore for some more time – I hope – so, need another excuse to talk to her. This time I will try to do so in person. Talking over phone in a foreign language can be a bit demanding.

It is about s'agir de

After encountering il sgit de many times (and each time avoiding the pain to find its exact meaning) I decided to do what I haven’t done for some time now – use the dictionary.

As per the Oxford Starter French Dictionary, s’agir de = to be about. This is as confusing as the meaning given in the book, Complete French: s’agir de = to be a matter of. Fortunately, good dictionaries throw in example sentences. And this Oxford dictionary is a good one, though very basic.

De quoi s’agit il? = what’s it about?

Ah! I got it. But then I could make this much simpler: De quoi est il?

Laissez-moi penser à un autre exemple. Let me think of another example.

It is about a woman. (Don't ask me why this sentence came to my mind!). Using s'agir de the translation goes as follows: Il s'agit d'une femme. This definitely sounds better than Il est sujet d'une femme.

I hope I have understood the usage.
Hmmm… time to buy a better French dictionary. One that has lots of example sentences.

soit ... ou bien

Today I learned the use of soit … ou bien.
It means either … or.

For example: Nous allons soit manger dehors, ou bien avoir une pizza livrée à la maison. Pas de cuisine d'aujourd'hui.
We will either eat out or get a pizza delivered at home. No cooking today.

Another one: Soit jouer avec Cube de Rubik, ou bien d'étude. Vous ne pouvez pas regarder la télé.
Either play with the Rubik's Cube or study. You cannot watch TV.

So far so good, but this sentence from Complete French is ridiculous :

Alors, soit on va à la plage et à marée basse on peut aller visiter la tombe de Chateaubriand sur le Grand Bé, ou bien on fait une excursion en bateau sur la Rance jusqu'à Dinan ...
So, either we will go to the beach and at low tide we can go visit the grave of Chateaubriand on the Grand Bé, or we make a boat trip on the Rance to Dinan ...

Excellent sentence to get you used to long French sentences, but a lousy introduction to soit … ou bien.

Tant Pis

Some words just latch on to your memory. The sounds of it just resonates in your brain, and try as hard as you will, you find it difficult to dislodge it. Just as well. These words add colour to the language. Like tant pis.

Tant pis means too bad. It the sense of regret. But at times, with a little twist in your tone, it could also mean, ‘hard luck, go jump.’

Scene 1:
“She can’t come to the party. Elle ne peut pas venir à la fête. ”
“Tant pis.Too bad. I don’t want to come too. Je ne veux pas venir aussi.”

Scene 2 :
“My boss is mad at me. My wife nags. My dog barks. My tooth hurts. My shoe bites …”
“Tant pis. Hard luck. Get a life.”

Get the difference?

The opposite of tant pis is tant mieux. It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but its use will help you show off your my-French-is-not-bad-either skills.

"Hey! I have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting French as the world language."
"Pourquoi? Why?"
"Pourquoi pas? Why not?"
"Tant mieux pour toi. Good for you."

Mastering French Numbers

This is a time tested two-step method of mastering numbers. The kids do this all the time.

Step 1: Count (aloud) de un à cent (one to hundred).
Step 2: Count down (aloud) de cent à un.

Do this until you can count both ways fluently. Announcements at the train stations will never be a problem again. Be careful after the magic number 69! The pattern changes.

You can get the complete listing of numbers in French and the associated quizzes here.

Note: The picture used here belongs to Valeria Moreiro.

Satyajit Ray Interviewed with French Subtitles

To be able to listen to a master and learn French at the same time is an opportunity that you should not let go easily. Satyajit Ray was undoubtedly a genius. He was interviewed by Pierre-André Boutang and some good soul who calls himself/herself Calicocentric decided to place the interview on Youtube, and another good soul told me about it (Time on Facebook is not all wasteful, you know).
The interview is in 6 parts. The first one is here:

My recommendation … first see and hear the entire interview to get a flavor of the master, and then replay the whole episode on mute. The subtitles are in French.

Learn French from Tintin

Here are some of the recurring phrases in adventures of Tintin, when you read it in French …

Le lendemain … The next day

Chut … hush

Mille sabords! … Thousand potholes (Capitaine Haddock’s favourite phrase)

Tonnerre de Brest! … Thunder of Brest (Another one of Haddock’s favourote phrases, and if Wikipedia is to believe, The term comes from the thunder of Brest cannon which announced the daily opening and closing of the gates of the arsenal at 6 hours and 19 hours at the foot of the castle of Brest.)

Sapristi! … Damn! (This is as abusive as Tintin can get)

Pan! … sound of gunfire in French (Bang!)

And as all Tintin adventures end: "Tout est bien qui finit bien!" (All's well that ends well!)

Have a great 2012!