FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

Clothespins wishing for something to hold on to.

Rosetta Stone French (CD-ROM) -- "an award-winning method used by NASA and the Peace Corps". More French language software here.

souhaiter (sweh-tay) verb
  to wish for

Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités, ont leur mélancolie.
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy. --Anatole France
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Monsieur and Madame D. walked up the stone-flanked Chemin St Claude, stole under a narrow bridge beside which poppies burst in springtime, and made the hairpin turn leading to an old mill, its wooden wheel having done one last tour* sometime in the last century. Behind the giant roue,* where water falls over a stone wall and splashes across the moss-covered slab below, droplets hit the ground where figs once fell in summertime, coloring the earth purple.

Having passed the sleeping fig tree, Monsieur and Madame took up a single lane road which leads to the thyme-scented garrigue* and its forest beyond, to a south-facing villa they might soon call home. Having reached a shallow fossé* along which wild asparagus grow and are snapped up each spring by local gourmands,* they turned right and walked along a field where a great parasol pine and an old stone cabanon* have held their ground, resistant to the restless tractors and newly laid cement blocks of the surrounding lots. There they made one last turn, walked to the end of a stone path and knocked on a door the color of which could be described as somewhere between the green of a neighboring olive grove at daybreak and the hard-to-crack shell of those heavenly almonds that grow at the top of the hill at Saignon.

"They're here!" Jackie shouted and I hurried over to my daughter, smoothed down my chemise (drying the sweat from my palms) and opened the front door to welcome our buyers. As I wished them "bienvenue"* I wished a bit, too, that I were in their shoes.

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References: le tour (m) = turn; la roue (f) = wheel; la garrigue (f) = moor, wild mediterranean scrubland; le fossé (m) = ditch; le gourmand (la gourmande) = one who is fond of food; le cabanon (m) = stone cottage, shed (also hut, cabin); la bienvenue (f) = welcome


Hear French:
Listen to my son, Max, pronounce the French word for "to wish for" in this quote:
Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités, ont leur mélancolie.
Download souhaiter.wav

Selected Terms & Expressions:
souhaiter la bonne année = to wish somebody Happy New Year
souhaiter la bonne chance à quelqu'un = to wish someone good luck
souhaiter à quelqu'un de réussir = to wish someone success
ce n'est pas à souhaiter = it is not to be desired