The French They Never Taught You 23: talk about, read about, write about
"To talk about something" in French is parler de quelque chose. Students learn to replace de phrases with ce dont, so "what you're...
Is "normal" in French always normal?
To be sure, the French translation of the English word "normal" is normal -- but the situation is more complicated than it looks. French...
Translating French Prospectuses
The first thing to note when you translate a prospectus from French to English is that it is bound to include boilerplate from United...
The French They Never Taught You 22: de France or de la France?
The general rule in French is that you express "from" or "of" a feminine country using de without the definite article la: revenir de...
France vs. Quebec: toutou
Here's a logo from Quebec that is bound to confuse a reader from France. Why? Because it shows the wrong animal! The word toutou in...
The French They Never Taught You 21: Annoncer
Annoncer is one of those verbs whose meaning is so apparent that teachers expect to you to recognize it when you see it. Obviously it...
The French They Never Taught You 20: Là and Voilà
They teach you that ici is "here" and là is "there." Voici means "here is" and voilà is "there is." That is true, as far as it goes. But...
The French They Never Taught You 19: ne pas que
Every first-year French student learns the forms "ne...pas" (not) and "ne...que" (only). But when both structures appear together,...
