Faire le tour du monde - en France !

Savez-vous qu’on peut rester en France et faire le tour du monde ? Voici des noms de villages français qui rappellent d’autres contrées plus lointaines !

- Allemagne-en-Provence, dans les Alpes-de-Haute-Provence

- Argentine, en Savoie

- Barcelonne, dans la Drôme 

- Les Déserts, en Savoie

- Montréal, dans le Gers

- Saint-Affrique, dans l’Aveyron

- Suisse, en Moselle

- Soudan en Loire-Atlantique

- Venise, dans le Doubs

- Vienne, dans l’Isère

Bon voyage !

Learn a foreign language!

"What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages? Bi-lingual. What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Tri-lingual. What do you call someone who only speaks one language? American."

 

Americans are often criticized by people in other countries because to be honest, we aren't all that great at learning foreign languages. But, to be fair, people usually rank their activities in priority order, giving greater weight to those things we feel we 'need' to do. In general, Americans don't feel a strong need to learn another language. Why?

 

The main reason is due to geography. Canada is mostly English-speaking, and Spanish, remains largely restricted to regions near the Mexican border (which is changing rapidly). The other reason is that English is quickly becoming the global language of science, commerce, and diplomacy (a title that used to be held by French). But it's different in other parts of the world. For example, here in France, my son is a Junior in high school. He started English classes, along with German, in 6th grade. He switched to Spanish in 8th grade. Most student learn at least 2 foreign languages (one of which is English), and it's not uncommon for students to pick up a third and sometimes even a fourth foreign language. Granted, Europe has many language zones packed into a relatively small space, so much of the language learning is done out of necessity. But we can learn an important lesson from the European language-learning model: if they can routinely learn additional languages, so can you!

As America becomes less isolated through travel and the Internet, geography will be less and less important. The sooner we understand that, the better. End result? We will see more and more of people learning new languages. What do you think about Americans and foreign languages? Do you feel that there are other countries, such as the UK, who are in the same linguistic 'boat'? Let me know in the comments section.

 

You can get started by going to www.languageroutes.com to pick up resources for learning French, Spanish and even English (for those of you teaching ESL/ESOL).

Vive la carte postale !

À l’heure des mails et des SMS, la carte postale a toujours le même succès en France ! Il s’en vend 332 millions chaque année et la plupart de ces cartes sont envoyées pendant l’été.

Choisie avec attention en fonction du destinataire, la carte postale a toujours la cote dans l’Hexagone. Ce petit bout de carton de 165 centimètres rassure les parents, fait plaisir aux personnes âgées, fait rêver les copines et rigoler les copains…

Au dos, les mots sont toujours les mêmes : « Une petite pensée de ……où nous passons nos vacances », «  Gros bisous de ….. où nous sommes pour une petite semaine », « Ici, tout se passe bien, le soleil brille et la mer est chaude … ».

Pour information, sachez qu’on ne peut pas écrire tout ce qu’on veut sur une carte postale. Vous risquez jusqu’à 1500 euros d’amende pour une injure par exemple.

À part ça, bonne écriture !

Speaking English makes you more likely to blame others

I was reading an article the other day about Anglophones and found out something interesting. If my friend Liz is at my house and stands on my coffee table and it breaks (I have no idea what she's doing up there- she'd never actually stand on a coffee table), if someone asks me what happened, I, as an English speaker am likely to say, "Liz broke the table," even if it was an accident. 

Scientists have done studies that determine that speakers in Spain or Japan would probably simply say, "It broke." At Stanford University, scientists showed videos of two people breaking eggs, spilling drinks and popping balloons - both intentionally and accidentally. The viewers, who were speakers of English, Japanese and Spanish, were later given a memory test in which they were asked to describe the events. Surprisingly, the English speakers remembered equally the accidental and intentional events. However, while the Japanese and Spanish speakers remembered the intentional events as well as the English speakers, they had a significantly more difficult time remembering the accidents! Why? Because the English speakers assigned blame to the person who popped the balloon, spilled the drink or broke the egg, no matter if it was an accident or not. This helped them to encode the incident in their mind. So is this a cultural difference or a linguistic difference? One more study points more toward the linguistic...

Remember the Super Bowl halftime show when Janet Jackson had her 'wardrobe malfunction', showing viewers more of her than she intended? Two groups of English speakers were shown the video of the incident and then given a written report of the incident and told to come up with a suitable punishment. The reports were worded slightly differently: in one, the end said 'the costume ripped' and in the other 'Justin Timberlake ripped the costume'. Even though the entire group had watched the same video, those who got the report that said 'the costume ripped' determined a punishment only half of that of the other group (who had a person to blame)!

Moral of the story? For English speakers, there has to be a scapegoat - someone to blame.

 

Petites pensées de la France en vacances …

Français ou anglais ?
Savez-vous qu’en visitant la France, les Anglophones ne se sentiront pas dépaysés avec le nom de certains villages au nom bien anglais ! Quelques exemples :

Brain : situé en Bourgogne, Brain compte seulement 26 habitants : les grands cerveaux sont rares !

Busy : petite commune du Doubs, Busy compte juste 530 habitants… : pas vraiment animé comme le laisse entendre le nom de ce village.

Condom : située dans le Gers, cette commune fait depuis longtemps sourire les Anglophones qui la visitent. Le maire de cette commune ne veut cependant pas assimiler sa commune aux préservatifs. En mars dernier, il a fait interdire la vente de préservatifs sous la marque « The original condom from Condom, France », refusant que le nom de sa commune soit utilisé à des fins commerciales. Les deux aristocrates français qui avaient lancé cette marque de préservatifs de luxe sur le marché américain ont dû en arrêter la fabrication. Pour la petite histoire, le siège de la société était basé à Condom, mais les préservatifs étaient fabriqués en Malaysie !

Cuts : commune de l’Oise, de 1 000 habitants…peu d’habitants pour un village au nom si court !

Hunting : situé près des frontières du Luxembourg et de l’Allemagne…D’après ce que l’on sait, les habitants de ce village ne pratiquent pas la chasse plus qu’ailleurs en France.

Noisy : c’est en fait le nom de six communes de France. Dans certains cas, ce sont des communes très tranquilles. D’autres au contraire, comme Noisy-le-Sec, près de Paris, sont entourées d’autoroutes… vraiment noisy !

Silly : plusieurs villages de France commencent par Silly : Silly-sur-Nied près de Metz, Silly-Tillard et Silly-le-long, dans l’Oise. Leurs habitants ne sont pourtant pas plus stupides que les autres !

En connaissez-vous d’autres ?

Have you read English Now n°56?

Issue 55 of English Now magazine is in the newsstands! (Of course, it's also available from our website.) English Now is different from any other language learning magazine in that it its articles are written specifically for French-speakers learning English who are at beginner to intermediate level.

Each page has keywords translated into French. No need for a dictionary here - we've done it for you. Also, the feature articles are available in CD format with 60+ minutes of audio read by native English speakers from Britain, the US and Australia to help the learner tune their ear to different accents.

So what's in this issue?

- learn about coffee culture in the US and UK.
- discover London behind the scenes!
- get key vocabulary for an American summer trip.
- find out where English-speakers meet up with friends.
- ask for recommendations for the weekend in English.
- read about bestselling author Agatha Christie.
- get key phrases for shopping in the UK and US.
- learn about American dollars and cents.
- meet a British artist, an American scrapbooker and a British chex boxer.
- keep up-to-date on the latest news from English-speaking countries.
- test your comprehension with exercises!


Find out more here, or join us on Facebook.