je voudrais de la limonade

i find my french accent is better in the mornings when i am only semi-conscious. the accent used to worry me a lot: try as i may, try as i might, my voice refuses to pinch itself into the corset of spoken french: it peeps, bulges and droops from all sorts of places it shouldn’t. it’s unavoidable, though, and we will all, all, just have to live with it. at least i’m not english.

i see france has a new president. if i’m thrilled that i will no longer be confronted with carla bruni’s fertility, i can only imagine the relief of the french themselves. congratulations! why is his surname a country?

i’m writing exams so the french learning has slowed to a standstill. but i did read about the curious little phrase il y a (there is, there are) and i came up with l’entrée de narnia est dans le caveau coca cola. which is probably wrong but how you determine the gender of non-french nouns, like so much else, escapes me entirely.

getting by in french

salut! j’ai une chienne mignonne, mojo. elle est de deux.

mojo.

if you’re reading this and you actually understand french, don’t hesitate to point out any errors. my grammar safety net is google translate. be gentle.

i’m using various bbc products to broaden my linguistic horizons. if they are anything to go by, english people migrate in massive numbers to the shores of france purely to order coffee and ask for directions to local train or bus stations.

it’s rather boring. why order coffee when you can tell waiters, je ne sais pas où je suis. je suis une chemise. or ask a sexy stranger, pardon monsieur. où est votre maison?

what’s french for ‘but i don’t have bail money’?

incidentally

or not, depending on your personal view on google usage: the top ten blogs for francophiles. a lot of them seem to be about food, or people who have published books about their blogs and now devote columns and columns of blog space to advertising those books, or both, which is clearly diabolical.

this one seems rather good, though: french word-a-day. i found this picture on there and despite my not-a-francophile status this just looks as irresistable as christian bale in a suit-and-tie:

meanwhile, in france.

for comparison's sake: christian bale.

yet more referencing. the harvard referencing of hot men.

i could ‘reference’ ‘france’ all day, iykwim. ahem.

i could also stare longingly at french properties in provence all day long. oh, if only i had few million euro lying around. would you look at this?

you want to raise children in me.

imagine waking up in your restored provence farmhouse and going, i think i fancy a walk around my multi-acre estate today.

yes these are my own ruins.