Photo duet: La Rue

La Rue est le theme de cette semaine sur Photo Friday and it's the theme of my photo duet with "KK" with one other criteria: our photo must be related to France.

We dug into our archive and selected our photos independently et voilá:

gauche- a street in Saint Paul de Vence, June 2008

An exceptionally empty street in Saint Paul de Vence where painters like Marc Chagall and writers like Jacques Prévert once lived. It's not the captive chair that makes this street of the medieval, fortified town exceptional nor is it that artists and painters and international stars might have once walked upon it. For me, what makes it exceptional is that it's quiet and empty. Saint Paul de Vence reportedly attracts over 2.5 million tourists every year- and those streets are narrow! To me, Saint Paul de Vence is like one of the most charming outdoor malls you'll ever encounter- and it's "real". If I don't think of it that way, I am overwhelmed and a little saddened by the commercialism. (petit_foufou)

droite - a street in a wine village near Strasbourg (probably Riquewihr), late Spring 2007

I'm not a big fan of busy urban cityscapes. This is more my version of a pleasant street. I spent a pleasant hour or so noshing on flammkuchen and watching a stork in its nest atop one of the old timber-framed houses. Then I marched off the beer calories in the climb up to the local castle ruin. (kk)

The photographic vocabulary list goes on... (see tag photo friday) so here's an example phrase with the plural of today's photo theme:

"Courir les rues" means to run along the street. It's also the name of a French chanson swing band. Here's a visual and auditory introduction of "courir les rues", the band, with Parisian street scenes.

If you want to join the weekly photo-taking fun: www.PhotoFriday.com

Mitsou

One of the English language's greatest bards, Shakespeare, once wrote (Act II, Scene II, Romeo and Juliet):

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

And indeed, the poetry of the French language is not lost in the English translations. Oddly enough, the English translations not only attracted me to the culture, the cities and the French way of life but also to that certain indescribable "je ne sais quoi" that is at the heart of "Frenchiness".

And at the heart of that Frenchiness is almost some story of love. Even, or most poignantly, when it boils down to only one brief meeting after an exchange of letters for Mitsou and her "blue lieutenant".

I just finished reading the novel Mitsou by the famous French writer Colette. In German. German is not my native language. It's not a language that I've learned because I'm enamored of it (but I'm certainly enamored of a certain "normal German boy"). If someone's going to be taking poetic licenses I imagine them to be speaking in French, Spanish, Italian but not German.

So it was with a bit of surprise that I found that "je ne sais quoi" of Colette's writing very understandable and giving my heart a good shaking- even in German:

"Er streicht ganz zart eine Haarsträhne aus Mitsous Gesicht und versucht seinen Vorwurf in Worte zu fassen: 'Ihr großer Fehler besteht darin, daß sie einen zwingt, an sie zu denken, während man selbst versucht ist, ihr zu sagen: Du kleiner Kummer, du – du hast nicht das Zeug, zu einer großen Liebesqual zu werden!"


Now, I can't wait to someday be able to read the original and truly know the difference in meaning between Kummer (heartache) and Liebesqual (Qual is literally torture, agony; Liebe is love), let alone the proper French words for that!


je ne sais quoi a quality that cannot be described or named easily; literally "I do not know what"

Listen to and watch Bireli Lagrene & Gipsy Project perform un certain je ne sais quoi on youtube.






La photo: Petit Fou Fou undergoes an "ostrich neck massage" at the Cango Ostrich Farm, South Africa. Octobre 2007.

J'attendrai le suivant

It's been a waiting game for the last few weeks. Faithful readers have been waiting for a blog post. I'd been waiting to go on vacation (Afrique du Sud!) and admittedly procrastinating posting. Gasp!

I wanted to wait until my African Safari was over to surprise you all with pictures of lions, leopards, herds of elephants- OH MY! I did see the "big five" and more and have the pictures to prove it but we all have to wait a little bit longer as sorting through deux mille cinq cents quatre-ving-quatre photos is a bit time-consuming.

The wait for a blog post is over though! Enjoy this short film (only quatre minutes et trente-sept secondes): "I'll wait for the next one".


deux mille cinq cents quatre-ving-quatre 2584
literally two thousand five hundred four (times) twenty (and) four

quatre minutes et trente-sept seconds 4 minutes and 37 seconds

Listen and learn your French numbers at:
http://french.about.com/library/begin/bl-numbers.htm

It's a date!

A perfect intro to award-winning French director Claude Lelouch, the streets of Paris and the petit_foufou road to learning français: C'était un rendez-vous.

Let Lelouch take you on a non-stop 8-minute drive through 1976 Paris and then decide if you want to take a seat on the couch and spend more than an hour on him and his movies.

You can also, as I did, find it a metaphor for your learning style. I've been on the road to French since last year. While it hasn't gotten me to parler couramment le français à dans grandiose Paris (Nice was a "nice" start, though) and the road has definitely been bumpy, I've realized that it's been great fun so far. Sometimes I'm going full speed ahead and I feel the exhilaration of comprehension only to realize in hmmm, less than 8 minutes that, uh, hm, ah... Non! Je ne comprends pas plus. Somebody (m_ff?) hug and console me!

Like Lelouch's wild unstoppable ride, even the red lights of mastering conjugation (stop to learn them before going on) are blown at the expense of sounding like I am speaking a foreign language- only it's not French.

I am still watching French movies with the subtitles on, still conversing partly in English with my French teacher, still can barely manage simple dictation but I AM still having an amusing, entertaining and dare I say - educational - ride! Paris, me voila!



C'était un rendez-vous It was a date

parler couramment le français dans la grandiose ville de Paris
to speaking fluent French in the great city of Paris

Non! Je ne comprends plus No, I don't understand anymore

Paris, me voila literally "Paris, here I am"
but can be used to express Paris, here I come!