FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

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I am excited to share the good news--'les bonnes nouvelles'--with you today. My next book will be published by Simon and Schuster!

I want to thank French Word-A-Day readers for the support and encouragement you have sent in. Thanks also to these selfless behind-the-scenes editors: Chris and George Christian and Kathy Tinoco--who have sent in, on a daily basis and after publication, corrections to these stories.

Amicalement,
Kristin
October 19, 2005

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Today's word:

la nouvelle (noo-vel) noun, feminine
  1. news
  2. short story

adjective:  new

Listen:
Hear the word nouvelle pronounced: Download nouvelle.wav

Citation du Jour:
L'originalité, c'est la vision nouvelle d'un thème éternel.
Originality is the new vision of an eternal theme. --Michel Ciry

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Words in a French Life "...a heart-winning collection from an American woman raising two very French children with her French husband in Provence, carrying on a lifelong love affair with the language."

"...take a great trip with a memorable travel book." --Real Simple Magazine

"A former Phoenix resident and a self-publishing success story, Espinasse parlays her popular blog (french-word-a -day.com) into a book-length reflection on life as an émigré." --The Arizona Republic
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       Along la rue Gambetta in St. Tropez

le drap (drah) noun, masculine
  1. woolen fabric  2. (drap de lit) bed sheet

Listen:
Hear the word drap pronounced: Download drap.wav

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Also:
le drap-housse = fitted sheet
le drap de bain = bath towel
le drap de plage = beach towel

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Expressions:
se mettre entre deux draps = to go to bed
être dans de beaux draps = to be in a fix, to be in an embarrassing situation

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Proverb:
L'eau, si claire qu'elle puisse être, n'a pas de vertu de blanchir du drap teint en noir. Water, no matter how clear it can be, cannot bleach out a black-stained sheet.

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A Day in a French Life...

When Jean-Marc announced the invitation to Lolo's family's home in St. Tropez I packed the sheets. I also packed bath towels and a change of clothing for Max, Jackie and myself. Jean-Marc threw some fishing gear into the trunk of the Citroën before we motored south to the former fishing port/modern-day tourist mecca.

When I lived in the States, I don't remember ever opening the front door to a sheet-schlepping guest and I never dragged my own draps* along when staying the night chez les amis.* But the French are sometime sheet-porters and their thoughtful gesture has many a host heaving a silent sigh of relief...

...especially when 15 guests show up at the door, which was our hosts' wish this past weekend.

Almost one century ago Lolo's grandfather owned a cable factory on the quiet bay of St. Tropez. Boats came and went, collecting the cables and ferrying them off to be tucked eventually beneath the bed of the sea. The cable factory had several buildings along the sea front including a canteen for its workers and a few employee and family outbuildings. Today the canteen and the rest are homes to Lolo's extended family as well as prime real estate property along the Côte d'Azur.

While Jean-Marc stood in the gravel driveway (and makeshift pétanque court) balancing a pastis in one hand and a heavy steel globe in the other, I made the beds and unpacked. Later, we would switch roles, with his watching the kids and washing the pans while the no-longer-desperate femmes au foyer* discovered the city.

The foyer women now navigated the center of St. Tropez, darting in and out of a multitude of boutiques and licking a lot of windows* in the process. While it was fun to see so many specialized boutiques and to rub coudes* with the rich and famous, consumerism and people watching have nothing on the charm and character of the city itself; the real joy is in witnessing the unglossed and
unlifted faces of the old buildings and immersing oneself in the old ways of a once unknown-to-most city.

And while we didn't see Ivana or Rod or Mick,* we did see the draps (as in the classic French window scene where real French life--and hung laundry, including socks, underwear and sheets!--continues amidst the hype and popularity of a quaint French city).

In a phrase: Let it all hang out; and in French: Vive les draps français!*

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References: le drap (m) = sheet; chez les ami(e)s = at friends'; les femmes au foyer (f) = housewives; licking windows = from the French expression "lécher les vitrines" = to window-shop; le coude (m) = elbow; Ivana (Trump), Rod (Stewart), Mick (Jagger) = regular visitors to St. Tropez; Vive les draps Français! = Long live French sheets!

  Looking due south, toward the Mediterranean Sea

la boussole (boo-sol) noun, feminine
  1. compass

Listen: Hear Jean-Marc pronounce the word "boussole": Download boussole.wav

Expression:
perdre la boussole = to lose one's head; to go haywire

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Citation du Jour:
Vivre sans but, c'est naviguer sans boussole. Living without an aim is like sailing without a compass. --John Ruskin

A Day in a French Life...
Yesterday I joined two other mamans accompagnatrices* to hike alongside 24 petits randonneurs* during the first school sortie* of the semester.

Before marching single file to the forest behind our village, Jackie's class received photocopied maps. The eight-year-olds took care to protect the handouts, slipping them into binder-ready, see-through document covers--a habit they practice with most of their school papers.

Next, le maître* distributed les boussoles.*
"Ça ne marche pas!" one of the children complained, shaking his compass.
"No, compasses don't WALK," the teacher shot back, "they FUNCTION!"
Well, if le maître is caring about language, showing little patience for argot (in this case the French verb "marcher," "to walk," also slang for "to work" i.e.: "Ça ne marche pas--It doesn't work"), he is also passionate about nature, and so we collected our boussoles, sketchbooks and sacs à dos* and headed due ouest.*

Twenty minutes later, we stepped off the paved road and onto the uneven sentier.* The forest floor beneath our feet was as fragrant as a Mediterranean spice shop, with thyme, flowering rosemary, menthe sauvage* and intensely fragrant wild lavender around every French bend.

We admired the thick trunk of an old olive tree and the heavy stone restanques* which terraced the land--evidence that the area was cultivated at one point in time. As we hunted the forest floor for more visual delights our eyes came to an abrupt halt.

Les cartouches*...

The blue and red cartridges, left behind by les chasseurs,* were scattered throughout the forest alongside the pinecones, rosemary and lavender. With the teacher's suggestion, the children collected a hefty sackful of the empty cartridges to deliver to Monsieur le Maire.... as a souvenir from our field trip.

There is an expression in French, "perdre la boussole," which means to "lose one's compass" and, figuratively, "to lose one's mind." Seeing all those toxic cartridges littering the forest you couldn't help but wonder if the chasseurs had lost theirs.

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*References: la maman accompagnatrice (f) = mother chaperone; le randonneur (la randonneuse) = hiker; la sortie (f) = field trip; le maître (la maîtress) = teacher; la boussole (f) = compass; le sac à dos (m) = backpack; l'ouest (m) = west; le sentier (m) = path; la menthe sauvage (f) = wild mint; la restanque (f) = terrace held by a stone wall; la cartouche (f) = cartridge (gun); le chasseur (la chasseuse) = hunter

Books on the French language:
Dictionary of French Slang and Colloquial Expressions lists approximately 4,500 common slang words and colloquial expressions. Entries include grammatical information, the definition in English, a sentence or phrase to illustrate usage, and an English translation of the example and, where applicable, a corresponding English slang expression. Each entry also identifies the word or phrase by type: student or youth slang, political slang, literary slang, and criminal and drug-related slang.

Leaves falling in the village of Grimaud, near St. Tropez

tomber (tohn-bay) verb
  1. to fall; to come down; to go down; to hang

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Listen:
Hear my daughter Jackie pronounce the word "tomber": Download tomber.wav

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Expressions:
tomber amoureux = to fall in love
tomber malade = to fall ill
tomber par terre = to fall down
tomber dans les pommes = to faint
tomber à l'eau = to not pan out (plans)
tomber pile = to arrive at the right moment (event)

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Citation du Jour:
L'arbre se sauve en faisant tomber ses feuilles.
The tree saves itself by letting its leaves fall. --Pierre Jean Jouve

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A Day in a French Life...

While the grapevines beyond our salon's* window are choking the vert* out of their feuilles* and the kaki tree's leaves are changing from avocado green to tomato red and aubergine, there are other signs of fall in our neck of the leaf-spurning French woods...

Fall is here when I see the woman collecting fenouil* by the side of the country road. "Pour les escargots," for the snails, she tells me, as I slow the car and roll down my window to chat. She'll add thyme, she explains, to the fenouil and serve up this gut-cleansing last supper to some unsuspecting gastropods before plunging the slow travelers into a deceptive stovetop jacuzzi. Garlic butter and persil* to follow...

Autumn has arrived when les coups de feu* echo daily in the garrigue* behind our village. While the camouflage-sporting chasseurs* are hard to spot, the mushroom hunters aren't, with their wicker baskets full of girolles* and cèpes,* the earth still clinging to the mushrooms' spongy feet.

I know it is fall chez nous* by the way my husband begins to snub rosé in favor of more complex red wines, which warm the French soul at the end of a chilly journée.* And fall is here when the moustique* plugs are removed from the sockets and couettes* are thrown over the beds as I tuck the kids in and answer their favorite fall question: "How many days left, maman,* until les Vacances de la Toussaint?"*

(For the record, seven days left until fall break!)

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*References: le salon (m) = living room; vert(e) = green; la feuille (f) = leaf; le fenouil (m) = fennel; le persil (m) = parsley; le coups de feu (m) = gunfire; la garrigue (f) = Mediterranean scrubland; le chasseur (chasseuse) = hunter; la girolle (f) = chanterelle (mushroom); le cèpe (m) = boletus or porcini mushroom; chez nous = at our place; la journée (f) = day; le moustique (m) = mosquito; la couette (f) = comforter or duvet; la maman (f) = mom; les Vacances de la Toussaint = All Saints Day Vacation

Jean-Marc busy with the 'mise en scène' for his next wine article. (The bottle is lying on a bed of sea urchins.)

une épine (ay-peen) noun, feminine
1. thorn, prickle, spine

Also: épine dorsale = backbone

Listen:
Hear the word "épine" pronounced: Download epine.wav

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Expressions:
être sur des épines = to be on pins and needles
tirer à quelqu'un une épine du pied = to relieve someone's mind or to get someone out of a mess

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Citation du Jour:
La vie est une rose dont chaque pétale est une illusion et chaque épine une réalité. / Life is a rose whose every petal is an illusion and each thorn a reality. --Alfred de Musset

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A Day in a French Life...

At a sandy Mediterranean crique* near the seaside town of Les Issambres, separated from St. Raphaël by a deep blue gulf, we closed our weekend on a rich, sea-salty note. If you factored out the cloudless sky, you'd see how the reddish blur of the Esterel mountains capped the busy French city en face* like an Arizona sunset.

During the half-hour drive from our village to the plage,* I quizzed Jean-Marc on his favorite appetizer.
"Do you know the other French term for oursin?"*
To my surprise, he didn't.

"Une châtaigne de mer!" I said, pleased to know something French that he didn't. When Jean-Marc found the term 'sea chestnut' endearing, I offered him the English (un)equivalent which is 'sea hedgehog.'

As my masked Frenchman headed out to sea, I wished him "Bon oursinade!"
"That will come later," he reminded me.
True, an oursinade is the "feasting on sea urchin soup" and not the hunting of sea urchins.
"Then... bonne pêche!" Happy fishing! I called out.

Apart from the mask, Jean-Marc wore thick rubber sandals and carried his formidable mop-spear (half mop, half fork, a do-it yourself tool he'd rigged together on a previous sea urchin outing). Back at home, he'd swiped my laundry basket and was dragging that out to sea as well...

Eventually, Max and Jackie swam out to the tiny rock island, and helped their father collect the 'sea chestnuts'.  Jean-Marc returned to shore first, barefoot, followed by the kids who'd tucked a half-dozen oursins into their father's size 12 plastic shoes before floating their catch back.

The four of us sat on our beach towels, the laundry basket full of sea urchins at our feet, admiring the colorful spiny creatures. Beneath the setting sun the urchins showed their brilliant colors in copper, violet and khaki.

Jean-Marc used shearing scissors (another object lifted from our bathroom, along with the panier à linge*) to open the prickly spears, revealing a star pattern inside consisting of sea urchin eggs.

"Bon appétit!" one passerby called out.

We didn't have spoons and were obliged to lick the strips of orange roe from the shell, taking care not to get stabbed by an épine* in the process.

I watched my husband savor the delicate orange 'fruits of the sea,' washing the roe down with a splash of rosé wine.

"Rien de plus simple," he said.  "Rien de plus bon."*

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*References: la crique (f) = cove, inlet; en face = facing; la plage (f) = beach; un oursin (m) = sea urchin; le panier à linge = clothes hamper; l'épine (f) = spine; Rien de plus simple. Rien de plus bon. = Nothing simpler. Nothing better.

      
Cypress trees make me run for a box of mouchoirs...  Photo taken in Collioure, France

"Hand made." Hammocks for sale along the Grand Canal in Sète, France.

une arapède (ara-ped) noun, feminine
  1. a limpet

Listen:
Hear the word arapède pronounced: Download arapede2.wav

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Expression:
coller comme une arapède = to tagalong / cling to someone (who'd rather have some time alone)

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Citation du Jour:
Une âme pure est comme une belle perle. Tant qu'elle est cachée dans un coquillage, au fond de la mer, personne ne songe à l'admirer. Mais si vous la montrez au soleil, cette perle brille...

A pure soul is like a lovely pearl. As long as it is hidden in a shell, at the bottom of the sea, no one considers admiring it. But if you display it in the sunshine, this pearl sparkles... --Le curé d'Ars (Pastor of Ars)

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A Day in a French Life... (Sète--part two)

After lunch, Jean-Marc and I strolled out to the quay, past the bateaux de pêche,* past the last seafood restaurant and its rebel fishmonger, past the Hemingway look-alike, who sat in darkness, hand-knotting colorful hammocks in a cramped garage facing the port.

Midway down the digue,* we spotted an opening in the seawall and climbed through to where a short paved incline gave way to a line of giant boulders fronting the sea. A few meters away from us, an old married couple sat in his-and-her fold out chairs, reading his-and-her magazines. If it weren't for the tourists filing by, just behind the seawall, you'd have thought the couple was chez eux.* Who needs an expensive seafront home when you have a pleasant (if public) terrace on the water?

The gentle slope of the digue suggested a post-repas* siesta. Taking the clue and minding the hard surface below, I twisted my hair into a thick bun and reclined back onto the makeshift pillow.

Jean-Marc returned from a swim, seashell in hand.
"C'est une arapède," he explained. I examined the coquille,* its conical shell resembling a miniature Chinese hat.
"Do you know the expression 'coller comme une arapède'?" Jean-Marc asked.
"When threatened," he continued, "the arapède will cling tightly to a rock, making it difficult to separate from the rock's surface--like a tiresome friend, or tagalong--as the expression goes."

Looking out to the sea, I noticed how the surface changed depending on the sky. The clouds floated to the sun and the sea became dull; the sun reappeared and the surface glittered--truly a sea of diamonds! Though the atmosphere was silent, the sparkling water, if you looked at it just so, was in musical animation; sunlight hitting the dancing surface of the sea created a salt-water symphony.

Something stirred inside of me as I witnessed the spectacular scene. Je suis l'arapède. I am the tagalong under the Chinese hat--clinging to my rock that is la France. Once threatened,* I now relax back before the diamond-capped sea and listen to the roaring chorus.

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*References: le bateau de pêche (m) = fishing boat; la digue (f) = dike, seawall; chez eux = at their place (home); le repas (m) = meal; la coquille (f) = shell; [threatened: In 94' I was served papers informing me I had one week to leave the country--my long stay visa was no longer valid.]

Les coquillages (shellfish) in Sète

une boule (bool) noun, feminine
  1. ball

Listen:
Hear my daughter Jackie pronounce "boule": Download boule.wav

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Expressions:
avoir les nerfs en boule = to be irritated
faire boule de neige = to snowball
perdre la boule = to go crazy
avoir une boule dans la gorge = to have a lump in one's throat

Also: une boule de billard = a billard ball

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Citation du Jour:
Le jeu de boules est une activité dans laquelle on s'engage tout entier. Le temps n'y existe plus et plus rien n'a d'importance que le mouvement fascinant de ces sphères inspirées.

The game of 'boules' is an activity in which one is entirely engaged. Time no longer exists and almost nothing else matters apart from the fascinating movement of these inspired globes. --Yvan Audouard

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A Day in a French Life...

With our backs to the Spanish border, we began the four-hour journey home from Collioure. Jean-Marc suggested we stop in Sète, France's second largest fishing port, affectionately known as the "Venice of Languedoc." The "island" of Sète is criss-crossed with canals and the industrial city is barely attached to the southern French coastline, like a delicate pearl. "Delicate" in contrast to the
bustling fishing port, where 'les chalutiers' or trawlermen are forever in motion unloading the morning's catch, mending broken nets or flashing a toothless smile to gawking tourists like myself.

"This is where Georges Brassens lived," Jean-Marc mentioned, as we made our way up the stairs from the underground parking garage. I've heard my husband sing along to his beloved Brassens, but didn't realize the latter was a poet, just like another famous resident of Sète, symbolist poet and author, Paul Valéry. Filmmaker Agnès Varda lived here as well, which isn't surprising given that Sète, like Collioure, is known for its exceptional light.

Jean-Marc had a hankering for oysters which led us to a seafood restaurant, one in an interminable line of eateries, facing the Grand Canal. I'm not a big fan of coquillages,* but have no qualms about eating the hard-to-reach "sea meats" tucked into their stubborn, thumb-splitting shells. Never sure what to order, I shared Jean-Marc's plateau de* coquillages appetizer including huîtres,* raw mussels and crevettes.*

The boiled moules* we each ordered for the main meal were delivered in two large casseroles, one for Jean-Marc, one for me. We pulled off the lids, carefully turning them over to serve as receptacles for the empty shells.

Half-way through the pot, I told Jean-Marc that I was getting full.
"Then don't eat any more," he said.
"But you're full and you're finishing yours," I replied.
"That's because I am polite."

Though he was kidding me, there was truth behind his comment. I thought back to one of Jean-Marc's previous jobs, also in wine sales, where he often dined with clients. While I envied him for the gourmet fare he got to sample, I felt sorry for him each time he ran into old school chums who never failed to comment on his changed physique. The 20 pounds he'd gained were explained by an obligation of finishing each dish or risk insulting the cook.

We didn't have to worry about upsetting the Sétois* cook, but waste was something to feel guilty about, especially having discovered I had room for ice cream.

"How many 'boules'?" I asked, referring to scoops included in an order.
"As many as you like," the waitress replied.
"Chocolate, vanilla and coffee, please," I decided.
"She means chocolate and vanilla--and coffee to drink later," Jean-Marc interrupted.
"No, I mean chocolate, vanilla and coffee--trois* boules."

The French women at the table next to ours dropped their forks into their slimming salads. I looked over at them, repeating my order.
"That's right, une boule de chocolat, une boule de vanille et une boule de café."

When the three boules were delivered in a thick glass flute, I was careful not to waste the ice cream... still feeling guilty about the mussels and all.

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*References: le coquillage (m) = shellfish; le plateau de = platter of; une huître (f) = an oyster; la crevette (f) = shrimp; la moule (f) = mussel; le Sétois, la Sétoise = person from Sète; trois = three

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Words in a French Life: "...a heart-winning collection from an American woman raising two very French children with her French husband in Provence, carrying on a lifelong love affair with the language."
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