Le Carrefour: Connecting French-Speaking Populations in Vacationland
Jessamine Irwin chats with us about Francophone immigrant experiences in Maine.
Jessamine Irwin, French professor and director of Le Carrefour
by Brian Alcamo
“Nobody knows about French in Maine, and nobody knows about all of the newcomers that have been arriving in the past few years,” Jessamine Irwin tells me over a Friday morning Zoom call. “It’s a lot of new information in thirty-two minutes.”
I recently sat down with French professor-turned-documentarian Jessamine Irwin to learn more about her first film, Le Carrefour (The Intersection). Why is it called the Intersection? The film explores “the intersection of francophone immigrant experiences in Maine.” The immigrant experiences which Ms. Irwin is referring to are those of white, older French speaking Mainers and those younger black French speaking population that has been steadily arriving since the mid 2010s. The film’s goal, she says, is to “serve as a catalyst to create a space for conversation surrounding immigration.” Some of these conversations, she hopes, will happen in French classrooms.
Jessamine, first and foremost, is a French educator. She cares about the plus-que-parfait, proper pronunciation of the French “R,” and pain au chocolat. While university French departments and other institutions that offer French classes consistently advertise French as a global language with over 250 million speakers, (making it the fifth most spoken language in the world!) courses typically only offer linguistic and cultural insights into one country: France.
Maine may not be the first place on the list of “French-speaking places that aren’t France” (you may be more inclined to think of Louisiana for that), but the East-Coast’s northernmost state has historically been a stronghold of the French language in the USA. Le Carrefour not only gives us insight into the present day immigrant experience in Maine, but also takes us through the history of immigration in French, answering many people’s (including protagonist Trésor’s) big question: why is there French in Maine to begin with?
Tresor, one of the film’s main subjects.
Cécile, another main focus of the film.
The journey of French into Maine began with the migration of Acadians into the state during Le Grand Derangement. This period of time, known as “The Great Upheaval,” in the mid 1700s, was an ethnic cleansing attempt imposed by the British after they took control of New France (present day Canada). Acadians lived off the land and worked with the woods, producing commodities like maple syrup and snowshoes. To this day, many of them are very tied to the forest. Acadian settlements in Maine are positioned extremely close to the Canadian/American border. Some of their relatives moved down south to Louisiana, particularly New Orleans. Their southern eponym slowly underwent a linguistic metamorphosis to become a word (and cuisine) we all know and love today, Cajun.
Back up north, though, a wide-reaching underground French speaking population has been living there since the dawn of the United States, and Jessamine Irwin wants you to know about it. Le Carrefour stars Tresor and Cecile. Tresor came to the USA from the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a pitstop in Brazil. He speaks French, Portuguese, Lingala, Tshiluba, and some English. He is well educated, having studied pedagogy in his home country and Performing Arts in Brazil. Beyond his official education, though, Tresor is also filled with more worldly knowledge than most people. Before coming to the US, he lived in Brazil. He says that moving to another country is “like being born again.” Logistically speaking, this unfortunately meant that Tresor’s degrees and work experience abroad aren’t recognized in the USA. Despite being highly educated, he works night shifts in a warehouse in Maine. Hardship like this, including having to learn new languages, adapt to a new environment and bureaucracy, and deal with the trauma that comes with displacement, is a common thread among immigrants and history, Jessamine says, repeats itself.
This repetition, she says, is playing out right now in Maine, tucked away in the far northeast corner of the country. Cécile, the film’s other protagonist, is aware of this past immigrant experience. She is part of Maine’s large Franco-American community, and there was a lot of shame in Cecile's generation for identifying as such. “Many people might understand Franco-American as an American who speaks French,” Jessamine specifies, “but in New England the term takes on a more specific definition.” Not to be confused with Acadians who moved to Maine before the mills, Franco-Americans are of French Canadian descent, either an immigrant themselves or a descendant of an immigrant who moved to Maine from Canada to work in the mills during the Industrial Revolution between the 1850s and the 1930s. Cécile and others faced intense shaming from the English-speaking public, and were discouraged from speaking their language and from worshipping Catholically. Franco-Americans were even targeted by one of the largest KKK chapters in the US. “If we avoid trying to make people feel like they’re ‘Not American Enough’ we can all benefit from the diversity, more easily learn from each other, give people a voice, give power to people, and break the generational cycle of assimilation trauma.”
A bridge in the middle of Lewiston, ME
Mainers are very aware of people who did not grow up in Maine. They even have a phrase for it: “coming from away.” “To me,” Jessamine explains, “‘Coming from away’ is a very nonmalicious way that Mainers describe outsiders. People care about the lived experiences of others. “Maine,” she continues, “is not ethnically diverse. It’s very white, with those white people typically having Irish and/or French Canadian heritage.” There’s certainly lots of racism to deal with in the state. This racism follows economic lines and gets more rampant up north, away from Portland, Maine’s largest city (of 67,000 people). “People want to find someone to blame for their own hardship.”
Some people in Maine are welcoming the newcomers with open arms. In 2019 with the first big wave of asylum seekers, the former mayor of Portland, turned the Expo Center into makeshift housing, welcoming the asylum seekers and making them feel like they belonged, helping them to not feel othered. “It’s dangerous to not make people feel welcome,” Jessamine says. “There’s been displacement forever, and most Americans are lucky to have not experienced it.” Maine has an aging population. Like the countries where the immigrants are coming from, the state is undergoing its own Brain Drain. However, Jessamine says, “it’s practically being gifted these super capable young people, and even has some of the linguistic infrastructure required to welcome these newcomers.” Jessamine and Tresor want people to understand that educated people are coming. Trésor believes that all these immigrants want to do is pursue their passions and move forward with the people of Maine. In the 1970s, there were 147,000 French speakers living in the state, and that number has dwindled since. Newcomers are not only breathing new life into Maine’s economy, but its French-speaking population as well. But not even all Mainers know about their own state’s Francophone backbone.
The Gendron Franco Center, a historic stronghold of Francophone culture in Maine
Jessamine, luckily, grew up aware of all of the French being spoken betwixt and between Maine’s maple trees. Jessamine’s mother grew up in Madawaska, a town right on the border of Canada’s French-speaking province of New Brunswick. Her mom grew up hearing French on the playground everyday at school, and this exposure led to her pursuit of French, which she studied at the University of Maine in Orono and turned into a career while working at the school’s Franco-American Center. Perhaps interest in the French language is passed down matrilineally, because Jessamine followed in her mother’s footsteps, beginning her formal French studies in high school.
Unfortunately, the filmmaker didn’t get to formally learn about the French speakers in her home state that she knew existed during those early years of apprentissage. “In my French classes before the university level, I never came into contact with Franco-American representations.” With the exception of one Canadian teacher who provided some insight into Canadian French and cultural traditions, most of her school books were Euro-centric.
Jessamine finally began to learn about the French language in her neck of the (literal) woods when she began studying at the University of Maine, her mom’s alma mater. Learning French, or any foreign language for that matter, tends to unlock opportunities, and Jessamine was able to study abroad in France during her time in college. “When I went to Paris for the first time, it was like my eyes opened,” she says. “People had no clue what Maine was, and made fun of North American French. At first, I kind of embraced it.” Due to societal pressures, Mrs. Irwin was embracing was the homogenous view that many French students and educators have of the French language and culture. Through her film, she wants to challenge those ideas and provide a resource to help bring the diversity of the French speaking world into the classroom.
Vocabulary For Your Next Discussion About Immigration En Français
Les frontières - Borders
L’identité culturelle - Cultural identity
Locuteur natif - Native speaker
La barrière de la langue - Language barrier
Une dictature - A dictatorship
Lewiston, the center of Maine’s Franco American population, is what many Mainers would describe as a “die hard mill-town,” a working class town filled with Franco Americans. It was founded at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and many immigrants from Quebec fondly remember taking the train down to the Grand Trunk Railroad station. The town features remnants of “Little Canada,” which used to be tenement housing built in rapid succession for the mill workers who were moving in droves. “The main street is easily identifiable, with the Continental Mill coming, then Little Canada, and then the Franco Center,” Jessamine says. In a course that she created at NYU, Jessamine creates that experience for her students on a week-long trip to the french-speaking parts of Maine. But in a less curated setting during her summer of shooting footage in Maine, Jessamine could still speak French every day.
Shooting with a bilingual team provided a few language-barrier challenges. Cecile is fully bilingual, Tresor is still working on his English. Jessamine’s co-director, Daniel Quintanilla could understand French, which helped for some on-set shooting snafus, since most of the film is in French and only two team members could decide whether enough footage was shot. Where her teammate’s knowledge of French was even more crucial, Jessamine said, was during the editing process. It turns out that screens and keyboards provide none of the social cues or body language to supplement spoken word.
If you’re wondering whether you can strike up a conversation in French with someone, the short answer is “yes.” Walking around Lewiston on a busy day (when it’s not freezing cold out), you can hear French in parks, spoken between friends and families old and young. You’re not considered a nuisance for trying to speak French, either. It’s a very “Maine” thing to acknowledge a passerby on the street. To wrap up our discussion, Jessamine recounted the story of when Cecile was asked “How can we be more welcoming to immigrants?” at a recent screening Q and A. Smiling, Jessamine recalled that Cecile advised people to simply “look people in the eyes and say ‘bonjour.’”
Thanks For Reading!
Interested in watching Le Carrefour? Head to their website and sign up for their newsletter to hear more about future opportunities to view the film.
Nostradamus And His French Astrological Legacy
Who was this notorious star-loving soothsayer?
by Brian Alcamo
Astrology has been seeing a huge revival in the past few years, in France as well as in the US. It seems like more people than ever know about not just their singes solaires (Sun Signs), but also their signes d’ascendant (Rising Signs/Ascendant Signs) and their signes lunaires (Moon Signs). It turns out that France is home to one of the West’s most famous astrologers, Nostradamus. Read on to learn more about this fascinating sky-reader!
In The Beginning
Depending on who you ask, Michel de Notredame, more commonly known as Nostradamus, was born on either December 14th or December 21st. One of nine siblings, he was born in the South of France in Saint-Rémy de Provence. As a child, Nostradamus rapidly progressed through school, learning Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and math. His grandfather, born Jewish but converted to avoid the Catholic Inquisition, introduced him to astrology, piquing the young savant’s interest in the study of celestial happenings and their impact on human life.
Nostradamus began his study of medicine at the ripe age of fourteen when he enrolled at the University of Avignon. Malheureusement, he had to leave the university after a year because of a Bubonic Plague (“La Peste”) outbreak. Nostradamus worked as an apothecary afterwards, traveling throughout the Franco-Italian countryside. His treatment of the plague moved away from the common practice of mercury potions, bloodletting, and garlic-soaked robes, opting for his signature “rose pill,” which was rich in Vitamin C. Despite how deliciously aromatic a rose pill sounds, historians and scientists nowadays attribute Nostradamus’ high cure rate to his novel treatment routines which included rigorous personal hygiene, removing infected corpus from city streets, and good ol’ fresh air.
The man of the hour: Nostradamus
He was finally able to complete his medical degree in 1525 at the University of Montpelier, where his penchant for astrology got him into hot water with Catholic priests from time to time. Now a certified university graduate, Michel de Nostradame officially changed his name to Nostradamus in an attempt to Latinize himself, which was all the rage in the most fashionable of medieval academic circles.
In 1531 Nastradamus was invited to Agen in France's southwest where he met his wife and had two children. Financially supported by Jules-Cesar Scaliger by scholar Jules-Cesar Scaliger, Nostradamus enjoyed monetary security and celebrity status because of his successful treatments. This posh life came to a swift end when Nostradamus’ wife and children died of the plague, and the great healer quickly fell out of public favor. Scaliger, ever the careerist, brutally dropped Nostradamus for fear of looking like he was sponsoring a fool. Unfortunately, Nostradamus didn’t have a talent agent or manager at the time to help him spin this tragic loss into a tell-all book deal.
What’s Your Sign?
A More Celestial-Minded Chapter
When Nostadamus was summoned to be tried by the Catholic Inquisition after making a joke in 1538, he said “No thanks,” and began bounding eastward out of Province through Italy, Greece, and Turkey. This journey was not only the original Eat, Pray, Love (don’t fact check me), but it was also the backbone of Nostradamus' psychic awakening. One account said that the man even met a group of Franciscan monks, one of which he predicted would become Pope. Low and behold, Felice Peretti, a monk he’d met, was ordained as Pope Sixtus V in 1585.
French Astrological Vocab For Your Next Reading
“C’est quoi, ton signe ?” - “What’s your sign?”
Planète maitresse - Ruling planet
“Mercure est en rétrograde.” - “Mercury is in retrograde.”
Thème astral - Birth chart
Retour de Saturne - Saturn return
Nostradamus returned to France in 1547 after spending what he believed to be adequate time avoiding the Inquisition. He once again took up treating plague victims, and settled in Salon-de-Provence where he married and had six children with Anne Ponsarde, a rich widow. He once again quickly ascended the ranks of medical notoriety for innovations in the treatment of plagues in Aix and Lyon. During this time, Nostradamus published two books, one a translation of Galen, the Roman Physician, and the other called the Traité des Fardemens, an apothecary cookbook that included both cosmetic and culinary recipes. Perhaps trying to drive up industry demand, many of the culinary recipes were based on the use of sugar, whose supply was regulated by the apothecaries’ guild of that time.
Despite publishing two books on medicine, Nostradamus’ fascination with the occult continued to grow. Allegedly, he spent many nights meditating in front of a bowl of water and herbs (which was NOT soup!) in order to transcend the mundane world and enter the spiritual realm. He had many visions, which helped him write his prophecies. Nostradamus wrote his first astrological almanac in 1550, incorporating his visions and astrological knowledge into digestible information for farmers and merchants. The success of this first almanac pushed Nostradamus to write more.
By 1554, Nostradamus had made his prophecies a key part of his almanacs. In an attempt to concentrate his creative energy into one work, Nostradamus began writing a ten-volume oeuvre called Centuries which would attempt to make one hundred predictions for the preceding two thousand years. In 1555, he published “Les Propheties,” a collection of his greatest hits that included major long term predictions. Nostradamus hid his mystic predictions behind quatrains (four-line versions that rhyme) and a linguistic potluck including French, Latin, Greek, Italian, and Provençal— a Southern French dialect. Nostradamus evaded persecution from the Catholic Church, and his writings were never condemned by the church’s book-regulating body, the Congregation of the Index. He did so by leaving his predictions detached from magical practice.
While some questioned Nostradamus’ sanity, or posited his ties to Satan, many more were enraptured by his prophecies. He entered the inner circles of Europe's elite, eventually catching the attention of Catherine de Medici, Queen Consort of Henri II. She summoned the seer to her court in Paris to draw up horoscopes for her children and was eventually made the court’s Physician-in-Ordinary to his court. In 1556, Nostradamus’ owned up to Catharine de Medici that one of his prophecies from Centuries I was most likely referring to King Henri II. Three years later, the prophecy came true. Here’s the text:
Le lyon jeune le vieux surmontera,
En champ bellique par singulier duelle,
Dans cage d’or les yeux luy creuera,
Deux classes une, puis mourir, mort cruelle
"The young lion will overcome the older one,
On the field of combat in a single battle;
He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage,
Two wounds made one, then he dies a cruel death."
In 1599, King Henri II jousted with younger nobleman Gabriel comte de Montgomery, seigneur de Lorges. In one last swing, Montgomery’s lance splintered in two, one piece slipping through the King’s visor, hitting his eye, and the other finding its way into his temple. King Henri then waited 10 days for the wound to finally deal its final blow on his life. Do you think the prophecy predicted the his death?
Nostradamus was critiqued by ordinary citizens and astrologers alike. Regarding his King Henri II prophecy, critics have said that a joust between friends shouldn’t necessarily be considered the “field of battle.” Additionally many professional astrologers of the era considered him incompetent and didn’t agree with his use of comparitive astrolgy to predict the future. Some believe that many of Nostradamus’ predictions were based on biblical depictions of the apocalypse as well as the writings of classical and medieval historians. He then matched with their respective astrological readings in the past before being rearranged and appropriated for the future.
Goodbye, Mr. ‘Damus
Nostradamus’ lifelong battles against gout and arthritis eventually took a turn for the worse when his gout developed into edema (dropsy) where large amounts of body fluid build up under the skin. Eventually, the untreated edema led to congestive heart failure, and Nostradamus died on July 1st, 1566.
Nostradamus’ writings are continually inspected by people today. Being so cryptic means that they are always up for interpretation, and some believe he correctly predicted events that occurred during the French Revolution. Nostradamus loved to predict apocalyptic phenomena, and most of his predictions dealt with war, murder, plagues, and other death-focused happenings. Some believe that he has predicted events ranging from the French Revolution to the development of the atomic bomb. Others believe that some prophecies are said to foretell future events that have not yet occurred. His writing’s vagueness has proven to be a fabulous vehicle to interpret and reinterpret what he has predicted. Think what you want about the validity of his predictions, but the man was a genius marketer whose written word left a legacy with viral staying power well beyond his body’s physical lifespan. Not sure what to think? Maybe it’s time to ask the stars.
Thanks for Reading!
Are you a fan of astrology? Comment down below, and be sure to share this article with a friend!
Thumbnail Photo by Josh Rangel
School Friends Are Cool Friends: My Time As A Language Assistant In France
What it’s like being an American in France during a pandemic.
Lille’s famous Belfry at Place de l’Opera
by Brian Alcamo
With Back-to-School season upon us, I’ve found myself reflecting on what it was like to go back to a high school for the first time since graduating college. This high school wasn’t my alma mater, and it wasn’t even in my home country. The school didn’t have lockers, it didn’t have cheerleaders, and it didn’t have mystery meat hamburgers.
More specifically, I was looking for a redo. A year prior, I had spent a semester in Paris. The experience was less than stellar. Bouts of anxiety and difficulty in navigating an unexpected culture shock translated into me angstily denying myself a proper study abroad experience. I refrained from exploring the country in which I was privileged enough to have an extended stay, and I missed out on so many adventures because I was so caught up in the anguish of being far away from home for the first time. Despite my lackluster time in Paris, I left France with the creeping feeling of unfinished business. TAPIF, I had thought, was the second chance I needed. I would finally have the experience I’d dreamed of having, filled with travel, meaningful surface-level one-off exchanges with strangers (you know the kind), and ample opportunities to practice my French while opening up my worldview. I proudly sent out my application and awaited the results while finishing my final semester of college... until a certain virus knocked the world as we knew it right out of existence.
After a move home, a rushed goodbye to my friends, and a quick foray into the challenges of distance learning (all combined with your typical senioritis), I practically forgot about my application to go to France. “No way would they let us head over there during a global pandemic,” I repeatedly told myself and others. I wanted this to be true, since I wasn’t ready to leave the community I had just re-entered. COVID had turned out to be a strange opportunity to reconnect with my family and my hometown, and I was deep in the fog of familiarity. I spent April, May, and early June wondering if the program would be cancelled before receiving my acceptance letter. Then, against all odds, my opportunity to escape pandemic mundanity arrived in my email inbox with an unseasonably joyous “Felicitations !”
I had been accepted to teach at the secondary school level with the Academie de Lille,
My life from June to early September was also characterized by the anxiety of not knowing whether TAPIF would even pan out.
Despite the rising coronavirus tides and a late-start to the immigration process, TAPIF eventually issued the go-ahead for my visa along with a stipulation stating that I had ample leeway to make it to l'Hexagone. I was allowed to arrive as late as December 31st, 2020, if my visa processing took that long. My wishy-washy decision making process kept me and my loved ones on edge right up until the date I left. No one, including myself, thought I would follow through with it, but there I was, presenting my passport to the AirFrance employee working at check-in. When I got onto the plane, I realized just how lucky I was. The entire back section of Coach on a flight from New York’s JFK to Paris’s Charles de Gaule was completely empty, as if I had the entire airplane to myself. I was alone for the first time since rushedly moving home from college, but I felt a sense of freedom I hadn't felt since graduating high school.
Arriving in Lille–sweaty as can be with two suitcases and horrific breath after wearing an N95 mask for upwards of twelve hours on a plane and then a train–I was quickly elated by the feeling that I had made the right decision. I had taken a risk during a time when taking risks felt all the heavier. I had given myself an opportunity for post-college closure after a cancelled graduation ceremony that made life feel like a foggy false-start. I was able to launch myself when many launchpads were closed until further notice.
The fact that schools were physically open was the reason why I could go to France in the first place. It was also the only way I was able to stay sane during my time in Lille, with almost no other outlets to meet and engage with public life available to me during my stay. School was where I made friends. School was where I could talk, laugh, and be reminded that people existed outside of my computer screen. It kept me tethered to the real world when a combination of increased internet usage and culture shock threatened to completely detach me from reality.
My job as an English teaching assistant meant that I was to work in tandem with teachers’ lessons. I worked at both a lycée (high school) and a collège (middle school).
At the high school, the job typically consisted of me pulling out half a class at a time to give a presentation, have a discussion about American current events, play games, or supplement what a teacher was doing during the main lesson. Sometimes, I would do speaking exercises with the high schoolers to help them prepare for the Examen baccalauréat, which students take throughout their première and terminale years.
During my hours at the middle school, the teachers and I worked together in the same classroom, typically playing games designed to get the students to speak. While the high school was running on a hybrid model, the middle school’s classes were at full capacity and had more or less an unchanged rhythm to the school day. They still had recess–which was of top priority for both teachers and students alike.
In my freetime, I was often alone, but I was rarely lonely. I lived at the high school where I worked, which had dorms available for all of the assistants. The close quarters and confinement policies ensured that we had plenty of time for roommate bonding activities. After the lockdown announcement that came one week after my late arrival, one of my new friends made us lasagna as a way to build morale.
The restrictions in France were tough at times, but I appreciated the fact that there were even restrictions to begin with. I spent my free time writing, walking around, and going to whatever kinds of establishments were open at the time. The types of places that were allowed to be open changed every few weeks, and at times my most exciting excursion would be getting a haircut. Other times, we were able to go to non-essential stores, and I would spend a large portion of my days taking long, winding walks into the Vieux Lille to go window shopping. Since my teacher friends couldn’t just pop by the assistant dorms, we would try to get together for drinks and Sunday lunches when we could, sneaking around and loosely interpreting the rules du jour.
There were periods when life was more free. While I couldn’t spend the every-other-month two-week vacations galavanting through Europe like I dreamed of doing, I could still move around a little bit. I went to Lyon with two friends during the winter break and had the opportunity to go to Paris a handful of times as well. Life maintained some semblance of spontaneity and joie de vivre. Once, my American friend (who had been serendipitously put in the same city as I was) and I got beers to-go and sat down on an empty sidewalk overlooking the Tour Montparnasse.
The people of the north seemed to take COVID-19 rules more seriously. On my weekend trips to Paris, it was easier to find people sneaking out for a clandestine drink in the park. Further south in Lyon, people proudly and openly toted their after-work drinks to the park right after curfew. Up in Lille, the city shut down right at 6 p.m. (or 7, or 8:30, or 9, depending on what week it was).
Despite being in the north of France, which gets a bad rap for having horrible weather, the winter wasn’t as bad as people said it would be. Sometimes it snowed, but mostly the temperature remained above freezing.
Sometimes I wonder what my time would have been like if I had come to France during a "normal" year. I'd like to think it would have been filled with parties, bars, traveling, and other kinds of ephemeral activities that people love to spend money on. Instead, it was filled with long, aimless walks through the same picturesque streets day after day. Lille confiné was not the amusement park I'd been hoping for. Instead of being my playground, Lille was my labyrinth. Week after week, I'd fester and ponder and reflect during my long, ambling walks up Rue Armand Carrel, toward Saint Sauveur, and finally make my way towards Place d'Opera. The city served as a backdrop to the many milestones of growth I accomplished as each new COVID-19 safety measure made my already quiet life there even quieter.
So what's the upside of living in a foreign country during a pandemic? The same as its downside: the quiet. Although painful at times, silence and social retreat can do wonders for someone looking to unwind from a period of heightened extroversion. I did not grow up a Francophile, but every time I go to France, I love it more. The longer I stayed, the more I felt like I was becoming myself. Seeing new places, trying new foods, and doing fun activities is all good and fun, but I believe one of the bigger benefits of traveling is being far enough away from home to let all the noise and expectations and internalized judgements fall away until a person is left with only themselves. So that each step in an undiscovered city is also a step inward.
But eventually we must return home, as I had to do three weeks early when France finally decided to close its schools for a month to avoid the worst of a once-again surging case count. After the announcement to close schools was made, I quickly said goodbye to my friends. I cried in my bedroom with each goodbye, tearful at the thought of not seeing the people who had made my stay worthwhile as I spent the next week packing up. While I was glad I got to experience the feeling of being a detached traveler, I found myself preparing to miss my friends much more so than my solitary walks. I had sought the life of a vagabond, but I had been handed a community.
While my time in the country wasn’t what it could have been if I went during a different year, it was still educational in its own right, and I know I was extremely lucky. Not only because I got to go to France when almost no non-EU citizen was allowed into the country, but also because my post-college plans went largely unscathed by the brunt of the pandemic. And perhaps I’m even luckier, because now I have another perfect excuse to go back for another “redo.”
by Brian Alcamo
With Back-to-School season upon us, I’ve found myself reflecting on what it was like to go back to a high school for the first time since graduating college. This high school wasn’t my alma mater, and it wasn’t even in my home country. The school didn’t have lockers, it didn’t have cheerleaders, and it didn’t have mystery meat hamburgers. A little under a year ago, I made the courageous and foolish decision to move to France right before a new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was given the opportunity through a program called TAPIF (Teaching Assistant Program In France) which I had applied to during my senior year of college back in December 2019, before COVID-19 was making national headlines. At the time, many of my friends were looking for or had already found their first post-college jobs, but I had my sights set on a different kind of experience: I wanted to live in France.
More specifically, I was looking for a redo. A year prior, I had spent a semester in Paris. The experience was less than stellar. Bouts of anxiety and difficulty in navigating an unexpected culture shock translated into me angstily denying myself a proper study abroad experience. I refrained from exploring the country in which I was privileged enough to have an extended stay, and I missed out on so many adventures because I was so caught up in the anguish of being far away from home for the first time. Despite my lackluster time in Paris, I left France with the creeping feeling of unfinished business. TAPIF, I had thought, was the second chance I needed. I would finally have the experience I’d dreamed of having, filled with travel, meaningful surface-level one-off exchanges with strangers (you know the kind), and ample opportunities to practice my French while opening up my worldview. I proudly sent out my application and awaited the results while finishing my final semester of college... until a certain virus knocked the world as we knew it right out of existence.
After a move home, a rushed goodbye to my friends, and a quick foray into the challenges of distance learning (all combined with your typical senioritis), I practically forgot about my application to go to France. “No way would they let us head over there during a global pandemic,” I repeatedly told myself and others. I wanted this to be true, since I wasn’t ready to leave the community I had just re-entered. COVID had turned out to be a strange opportunity to reconnect with my family and my hometown, and I was deep in the fog of familiarity. I spent April, May, and early June wondering if the program would be cancelled before receiving my acceptance letter. Then, against all odds, my opportunity to escape pandemic mundanity arrived in my email inbox with an unseasonably joyous “Felicitations !”
I had been accepted to teach at the secondary school level with the Academie de Lille, located in the extreme north of France, abutting Belgium and, by water, the United Kingdom. The schools I’d potentially be working at were in the best location possible, right outside of the city center. In the months leading up to my given start date, I toiled and tumulted over whether or not to leave the US. “Will it be worth it to go during a pandemic? I’ll miss my family and friends and not even be able to enjoy my time there. What if things lockdown?” My mind swam with what-ifs and worst-cases. Eventually, I began to receive emails from teachers I’d be working with. This communication, filled with humanity and kindness that hadn’t yet been part of the bureaucratic application process, was what kept my interest levels high enough to continue considering while all of the other data around me suggested I stay put.
My life from June to early September was also characterized by the anxiety of not knowing whether TAPIF would even pan out. I had dug my hands even further into my familial ties, relishing in outdoor reunions with childhood friends and my extended bloodline. By September, all of the rumors about a post-summer uptick in coronavirus cases were proving to be true, and I hadn’t yet received the green light to go ahead with the visa process. I felt like I was on call for an international move. I was stressed beyond compare, but a teeny tiny part of me loved to anguish over feeling like a diplomat waiting to be beckoned to a foreign land. At the same time, another teeny tiny part of me was desperate for the program to be cancelled out-right, so that I wouldn’t have to make my first big post-college decision for myself. I craved adventure, spontaneity, and detachment, but I was scared to be lonely, even more so because of pandemic restrictions. I watched the case numbers go up with a twisted sense of silent glee, hoping that the program would be cancelled and my fate would be taken out of my hands, and was nervous when France continued to insist that its schools were remaining open with in-person instruction.
Despite the rising coronavirus tides and a late-start to the immigration process, TAPIF eventually issued the go-ahead for my visa along with a stipulation stating that I had ample leeway to make it to l'Hexagone. I was allowed to arrive as late as December 31st, 2020, if my visa processing took that long. My wishy-washy decision making process kept me and my loved ones on edge right up until the date I left. No one, including myself, thought I would follow through with it, but there I was, presenting my passport to the AirFrance employee working at check-in. When I got onto the plane, I realized just how lucky I was. The entire back section of Coach on a flight from New York’s JFK to Paris’s Charles de Gaule was completely empty, as if I had the entire airplane to myself. I was alone for the first time since rushedly moving home from college, but I felt a sense of freedom I hadn't felt since graduating high school.
The empty airplane on my flight to France.
Arriving in Lille–sweaty as can be with two suitcases and horrific breath after wearing an N95 mask for upwards of twelve hours on a plane and then a train–I was quickly elated by the feeling that I had made the right decision. I had taken a risk during a time when taking risks felt all the heavier. I had given myself an opportunity for post-college closure after a cancelled graduation ceremony that made life feel like a foggy false-start. I was able to launch myself when many launchpads were closed until further notice.
The fact that schools were physically open was the reason why I could go to France in the first place. It was also the only way I was able to stay sane during my time in Lille, with almost no other outlets to meet and engage with public life available to me during my stay. School was where I made friends. School was where I could talk, laugh, and be reminded that people existed outside of my computer screen. It kept me tethered to the real world when a combination of increased internet usage and culture shock threatened to completely detach me from reality.
My job as an English teaching assistant meant that I was to work in tandem with teachers’ lessons. I worked at both a lycée (high school) and a collège (middle school). Regardless of grade level, the goal at both schools was simple: get the students to speak English.
At the high school, the job typically consisted of me pulling out half a class at a time to give a presentation, have a discussion about American current events, play games, or supplement what a teacher was doing during the main lesson. Sometimes, I would do speaking exercises with the high schoolers to help them prepare for the Examen baccalauréat, which students take throughout their premiere and terminale years.
During my hours at the middle school, the teachers and I worked together in the same classroom, typically playing games designed to get the students to speak. While the high school was running on a hybrid model, the middle school’s classes were at full capacity and had more or less an unchanged rhythm to the school day. They still had recess–which was of top priority for both teachers and students alike.
In my freetime, I was often alone, but I was rarely lonely. I lived at the high school where I worked, which had dorms available for all of the assistants. The close quarters and confinement policies ensured that we had plenty of time for roommate bonding activities. After the lockdown announcement that came one week after my late arrival, one of my new friends made us lasagna as a way to build morale. We would usually have drinks on Thursday nights, communing in our tiny windowless kitchen to discuss the week’s events and our cultural differences. Sometimes we would cook together, each of us preparing each other food or snacks from our country of origin. For Thanksgiving, I made them a pecan pie made out of almonds and walnuts because pecans were so hard to find in France.
Lille’s Botanical Gardens or Jardin des Plantes
The restrictions in France were tough at times, but I appreciated the fact that there were even restrictions to begin with. I spent my free time writing, walking around, and going to whatever kinds of establishments were open at the time. The types of places that were allowed to be open changed every few weeks, and at times my most exciting excursion would be getting a haircut. Other times, we were able to go to non-essential stores, and I would spend a large portion of my days taking long, winding walks into the Vieux Lille to go window shopping. Since my teacher friends couldn’t just pop by the assistant dorms, we would try to get together for drinks and Sunday lunches when we could, sneaking around and loosely interpreting the rules du jour.
There were periods when life was more free. While I couldn’t spend the every-other-month two-week vacations galavanting through Europe like I dreamed of doing, I could still move around a little bit. I went to Lyon with two friends during the winter break and had the opportunity to go to Paris a handful of times as well. Life maintained some semblance of spontaneity and joie de vivre. Once, my American friend (who had been serendipitously put in the same city as I was) and I got beers to-go and sat down on an empty sidewalk overlooking the Tour Montparnasse.
The people of the north seemed to take COVID-19 rules more seriously. On my weekend trips to Paris, it was easier to find people sneaking out for a clandestine drink in the park. Further south in Lyon, people proudly and openly toted their after-work drinks to the park right after curfew. Up in Lille, the city shut down right at 6 p.m. (or 7, or 8:30, or 9, depending on what week it was).
Despite being in the north of France, which gets a bad rap for having horrible weather, the winter wasn’t as bad as people said it would be. Sometimes it snowed, but mostly the temperature remained above freezing. I did have to take Vitamin D, because it was only sunny every few days (this wasn’t as depressing as it sounds).
Place de l’Opera in the snow
Sometimes I wonder what my time would have been like if I had come to France during a "normal" year. I'd like to think it would have been filled with parties, bars, traveling, and other kinds of ephemeral activities that people love to spend money on. Instead, it was filled with long, aimless walks through the same picturesque streets day after day. Lille confiné was not the amusement park I'd been hoping for. Instead of being my playground, Lille was my labyrinth. Week after week, I'd fester and ponder and reflect during my long, ambling walks up Rue Armand Carrel, toward Saint Sauveur, and finally make my way towards Place d'Opera. The city served as a backdrop to the many milestones of growth I accomplished as each new COVID-19 safety measure made my already quiet life there even quieter.
So what's the upside of living in a foreign country during a pandemic? The same as its downside: the quiet. Although painful at times, silence and social retreat can do wonders for someone looking to unwind from a period of heightened extroversion. I did not grow up a Francophile, but every time I go to France, I love it more. The longer I stayed, the more I felt like I was becoming myself. Seeing new places, trying new foods, and doing fun activities is all good and fun, but I believe one of the bigger benefits of traveling is being far enough away from home to let all the noise and expectations and internalized judgements fall away until a person is left with only themselves. So that each step in an undiscovered city is also a step inward.
But eventually we must return home, as I had to do three weeks early when France finally decided to close its schools for a month to avoid the worst of a once-again surging case count. After the announcement to close schools was made, I quickly said goodbye to my friends. I cried in my bedroom with each goodbye, tearful at the thought of not seeing the people who had made my stay worthwhile as I spent the next week packing up. While I was glad I got to experience the feeling of being a detached traveler, I found myself preparing to miss my friends much more so than my solitary walks. I had sought the life of a vagabond, but I had been handed a community.
While my time in the country wasn’t what it could have been if I went during a different year, it was still educational in its own right, and I know I was extremely lucky. Not only because I got to go to France when almost no non-EU citizen was allowed into the country, but also because my post-college plans went largely unscathed by the brunt of the pandemic. And perhaps I’m even luckier, because now I have another perfect excuse to go back for another “redo.”
Thanks for Reading!
What do you think of the idea of spending lockdown in a foreign country? Comment below, and be sure to share this post with a friend!
Québec: Taking Climate Change Into Its Own Hands
The region refuses to heat up without a fight.
(Photo by Mercedes Schulz )
by Brian Alcamo
Regardless of which language you speak, one thing is certain: the world is heating up. The climate crisis continues to shape the international conversation on all fronts, influencing discussions ranging from how long we should shower to how we should equitably allocate resources.
One region that continues to pull focus when discussing climate change is Québec. The francophone semi-autonomous Canadian province has a particular passion when it comes to tackling climate change. It comes as no surprise, considering that some of the region’s islands are falling into the ocean as we speak.
In terms of their opinions about climate change, Québecers have continually been some of the most staunch believers in its harmful and rapid effects. For starters, seventy-nine percent of Québecers (as opposed to the national average of nine percent) believe that their province has already felt the negative effects of climate change. Taken from a recent study by the University of Montréal, sixty percent of Québec residents believe that climate change will harm them personally. This is thirteen percentage points above the national average, illustrating the point that les québecois feel more in touch with climate change on an individual level.
Where does this personal sentiment towards a problem that we tend to see in the abstract stem from? Some theorize that it all started back during the Quiet Revolution, or la Revolution tranquil. The beginning of Quebec residents’ use of the term Quebecois, The Quiet Revolution was a period of wide-scale sociopolitical and cultural change in Quebec that involved the secularization of its government (away from the Catholic Church) along with the establishment of a welfare state. During this time, the region also nationalized their power system, HydroQuébec. Along with the Quiet Revolution and Québec’s ensuing history as a semi-autonomous region, HydroQuébec’s presence has engendered a sense of pride and self determination to create an eco-friendly power grid by and for Québecers.
Vocabulary for Your Fight Against Climate Change
Changement climatique - climate change
Rechauffement climatique - global warming
Neutre en carbone - carbon neutral
Durable - sustainable
Ecologique - environmentally friendly
HydroQuébec’s symbol of an energetically independent Québec continues to make francophone Canadians proud. However it’s not only in attitude, but also in action that Québec has shown its eco-minded spirit. Today, the region is home to the Montreal Climate Partnership (le Partenariat Climat Montreal), which builds upon a previous partnership from 2018 and 2019. A cooperation between the city of Montreal and the organization C40 Cities, the initiative attempts to center Montreal’s future around a transition towards a world-class ecological city. You can find their Twitter account here.
One of the partner organizations in the Montreal Climate Partnerships centered around community engagement is Mission 1000 Tonnes, whose goal is to improve the health of oceans and bodies of water around Quebec by organizing clean-up events focused on removing trash from these bodies of water. As their name suggests, the organization’s hope is to remove at least 1000 tons of waste from the world’s bodies of water. They would also like to inspire and educate individuals, corporations, and governments about concrete solutions to cleaning up our world’s water supply and preserving the aquatic habitats of myriad flora and fauna. The organization also collaborates with other committees to further their goal of improving the conditions of our global ecosystems. They’re holding multiple cleanup events this summer and fall, in what they’re calling their “Tournee Quebecoise.”
Québec is not only a fabulous place to practice your French, it’s also a guiding light on our journey towards an eco-friendly future.
Thumbnail photo by Delia Giandeini
The Guillotine: A Revolutionary Blade
The story behind the infamous chopping block.
by Brian Alcamo
This week, France celebrates le Quatorze Juillet. In the United States, we know this day as Bastille Day. While the actual storming of the Bastille happened two years after the start of the French Revolution, it is one of the movement’s defining moments as it kicked off an era of violence and upheaval that inevitably overturned the French monarchy. The violence and havoc typical of the French Revolution was defined and symbolized by one special device: la guillotine.
Let’s Explore This Hauntingly Iconic Instrument Of Revolution!
If you think capitation by guillotine sounds gruesome, you should know that things used to be much worse. In pre-guillotine 1700s France, people were executed by having their four limbs stretched (and eventually ripped) apart by four oxen that would each run out from the executé’s body. Members of the upper-class could upgrade their execution to a less painful hanging or beheading. Luckily, people eventually caught on to the idea that this style of execution was perhaps a bit much, and in 1789, French physician Doctor Joseph Ignace Guillotin pushed for the invention of a new machine that would behead criminals “painlessly” (yeah, right). Not only did the doctor wish to make persecution less painful, he also wished to make it equal amongst the social classes. The doctor wished for the end of the death penalty entirely, and believed that a standard beheading device done in private could bridge the gap between the rather theatrical and brutal public dismembering and the eventual end of capital punishment.
Despite Doctor Guillotin’s supposedly revolutionary dream of an equal-opportunity beheader, other European countries had already beaten him to the punch (or, chop). In Scotland, a predecessor of the guillotine, known as the Maiden, was in use. but France’s guillotine was the first to be used at the institutional level. Doctor Guillotin worked with German engineer (and harpsichord maker) Thomas Schmidt to build the first guillotine, opting for a diagonal blade as opposed to a round one.
The invention of the guillotine came just in time for the French Revolution. After the storming of the Bastille on July 14th, 1789 (the Revolution’s peak), a new civilian code crafted by the National Assembly was put into place, that equalized the death penalty among France’s social classes. While this isn’t the ideal way for a campaign of equality to start out, it did make the earthly gateway to the Great Equalizer a bit more egalitarian. The first guillotining took place at Place de Greve in Paris on April 25th, 1792 when Nicolas Jacques Pelletier, a highway robber, got the inaugural chop. This kicked off the Reign of Terror, or la Terreur, which was a period of time in which thousands of people were sentenced to death. Despite only lasting about two years, this era is usually what people imagine when they think of the French Revolution. Many notable aristocrats died during this time, with King Louis XVI suffering a blow by the merciless blade on January 21, 1793.
Credit: Julia Suits
Some Revolutionary Vocab for Your French Flashcards:
Un citoyen - a citizen
La monarchie - The monarchy
Un.e paysan.nne - a peasant
Imposition - taxation
La peine capitale - Capital punishment/the death penalty
After the Revolution
After the Revolution, the guillotine remained as France’s capital punishment method of choice. Other European countries such as Greece, Sweden, and Switzerland also continued to use the guillotine, although the device never made much of a splash in the Western Hemisphere. Parisian guillotine sites moved around a bit before ending up in Grand Roquette prison in 1851. In 1870, a man named Leon Berger brought much-needed changes to the machine’s design, adding a spring system, a locking device, and a new release mechanism for the blade. These redesigns set the standard for all new guillotines moving forward.
This was the period of time where a study known as Prunier’s Experiment took place. Researchers had been trying to figure out if the head maintained some level of consciousness after decapitation. Scientists obtained the consent of Monsieur Theotime Prunier in 1879, a death-row sentence, and poked and prodded his head after he was struck by the guillotine. All they could note was that the face maintained an expression of astonishment after the death, but it did not respond to any stimuli.
By 1909, the guillotine was being used behind La Santé Prison. The final execution by guillotine was on September 10th, 1977 in Marseille when murderer Hamida Djandoubi was put to death. While he was the last execution in France, he was not the last to be condemned to execution, with those condemned afterwards being exhumed after the election of François Mitterand in 1981.
The guillotine’s roughly two centuries of notoriety may have come to a close, but its memory lives on as a symbol of what can happen when a thirst for wide-scale violence supersedes enlightened revolutionary thought.
Thanks for Reading!
How do you feel about the French Revolution? Tell us in the comments below, and make sure you share this post with a fellow French-fanatic!
Le Marais: "Gay Paris" and the Construction of an LGBTQIA+ mecca
Where are the hottest gay clubs in Paris these days? The Marais.
by Brian Alcamo
If you’ve ever been to Paris, you’ve most likely heard of and been to the Marais. Originally a swamp (the English translation of the word marais) and a home to poorer inhabitants, the neighborhood was quickly gentrified into one of Paris’s most sought after commercial zones. It is also Paris’s most well-known gay neighborhood.
For those not in the know, the Marais is located in Paris’s 3rd and 4th arrondissements, on the Right Bank, or Rive Droite, of the Seine. The main gay areas of the neighborhood are concentrated along and around Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie. Rue du Temple and the Rue Vieille-du-Temple are considered the quarter’s other main arteries. While the area today is easily identifiable with old architecture, expensive boutiques, and rainbow flags, the Marais wasn’t always the prime Parisian locale for LGBTQIA+ culture. It also wasn’t always a hot tourist destination.
Originally, from the mid 13th to 17th Century, le Marais was the place to be in Paris for French nobles. They built their urban mansions, or hotels particuliers (literally “private hotels”) around the modern-day Place des Vosges, then called the Place Royal. Eventually, the Marais’s popularity declined before turning to complete disarray during the French Revolution. For a long time, the Marais wasn’t filled with much in the way of fabulous queer nightlife. It was a place of poverty, and notably served as Paris’s Jewish neighborhood for decades (specifically in the part of the neighborhood known as the Pletzl).
The Place des Vosges
But just because the Marais wasn’t the place to be gay in Paris, doesn’t mean a gay neighborhood didn’t exist. During the twentieth century until the end of the 1970s, Paris’s queer center of gravity moved a few times. Paris first became a gay capital in the 1920s with its first “golden age” of gay life. Its status as a gay haven was (and is) rivaled only by Berlin on the European continent. Many notable queer artists and writers (such as Colette, Satie, and Gertrude Stein) championed the city as a gay paradise, particularly for gay women. This first gay neighborhoods were centered on La Butte Montmartre and Pigalle. During German Nazi rule in the 1930s, Berlin ceased to be queer friendly, and thus Paris was the number one destination for LGBT Europeans. After the war, Paris’s in-vogue gay neighborhood shifted for the first time to Saint-Germain-des-Prés (on the Left Bank of the Seine).
Towards the end of the 1950s, the neighborhood then migrated back to the Right Bank, this time near the Place de l’Opera and Rue Sainte-Anne. This location was considered by some to be Paris’s first gay neighborhood, since its existence was the first to be “known to Parisians.” Beforehand, the neighborhoods were more clandestine, even if they can be traced back to by historians and academics today.
After spending two decades near l’Opéra, Paris’s first gay bar, Le Village, opened on Rue du Platre in 1977 just south of the Marais. One theory as to why the neighborhood moved was because people were fed up with the increased commercialization and door-checks happening. Regardless of the reason, gay businesses and life began to flourish just a few blocks northeast in Marais proper afterwards.
It’s important to note that it was gay businesses (notably thanks to entrepreneur David Girard) that created the Marais-As-Queer-Capital, and not the migration of queer people’s living quarters. Not that many gay people live in the Marais. In fact, the Marais isn’t even necessarily thought of as a residential gay neighborhood, rather a gay center. Its shops and bars cater to a gay clientelle, but the residential real estate wasn’t and isn’t overwhelmingly populated by gay people. Unlike New York’s Hell’s Kitchen (previously Chelsea, and the West Village before that), the Marais was always a place LGBT people, notably gay men, spent their free time. They’ve used the area as a transient space, as their own playground before going back to their apartments all over the city.
Helpful Vocabulary When Talking About Gay Life in Paris
Un marais - A swamp
Un hôtel particulier - A French mansion or
literally “a private hotel”
L’âge d’or - The Golden age
Un bar - A bar
Aller boire un verre - To go get a drink
Prendre un verre - To have a drink
Aller en boîte - To go to the club
Faire la fête (teuf*) - To party
Research has shown that the number of same-sex households holding PACS (pacte civil de solidarité, or civil unions) is evenly distributed throughout the city, indicating that gay people live everywhere throughout Paris, not exclusively in the Marais. Perhaps this residential decentralization is why Paris’s gay community is considered to be less overt and less organized compared to New York’s or Berlin’s.
Despite the Parisian gay scene potentially being thought of as less “out there” compared to other queer capitals, its existence is still crucial to LGBTQIA+ identity and community in France and around the world. Regardless of where the “gayborhood du jour” is, these queer spaces help create a collective queer identity where people can be who they were born to be.
Thanks for Reading!
Thinking of visiting Paris anytime soon? Be sure to check out the Marais. Please leave this article a “like,” and share it with a friend (or two)!
Thumbnail photo by Sophie Louisnard.
L'Académie Française: Making Sure Learning French Is Never Too Easy
The birthplace of your favorite rules and regulations!
by Brian Alcamo
France is governed by the French government, but French is governed by L’Academie Française (in French, it is spelled L’Academie francaise, the French don’t seem to be big fans of titles with too many capital letters). This centuries-old body is the reason why French learners (and native speakers, too) spend countless hours trying to remember painstaking rules such as having to make a past participle agree in gender and number with a direct object if said direct object is placed before the verb. For example:
Est-ce que tu as acheté le livre ? Oui, je l’ai acheté.
Est-ce que tu as acheté les fleurs ? Oui, je les ai achetées.
This particular rule is something that not even some computer spell check systems can get right. To be fair, this is pretty cool. You can make a computer learn to do plenty of things, but it will never score a 20/20 on its comprehension écrite. That being said, it goes to show just how many French writing rules are no longer supported by the modern day spoken language. The two verbs, ai acheté and ai achetees, are pronounced the exact same way.
But what’s this Académie’s whole deal anyway, and why does it seem to have a proverbial stick up its proverbial you-know-what?
How the Académie Française Came to Be
The year is 1635. The king is Louis XIII. Cardinal (de) Richelieu continues to exercise his control over the young king, and gets himself named “le chef et le protecteur,” or “Chief and Protector” of the newly created Acadmie Française. This novel language-governing body may be today’s most notorious, but it was not the first. Richelieu was inspired by Florence’s Accademia della Crusca, an Italian organization
The flowery language of the organization’s mission statement declares that the Academie’s function is to create certain rules for the French language that will render it “pure,” “eloquent,” and “capable of engaging with the arts and sciences.” The mission statement also likens a nation’s arts and sciences to its arms. This link between language and military prowess is a reminder that at the end of the day, l’Academie is still a government body looking to exercise power.
Given that the Académie Française was constructed during the monarchical phase of France’s history, you might be wondering about what happened to it during the Revolution. From 1795 to 1816, the Academie Française ceased to exist. Along with other royal academies, it was abolished by the National Convention before being reinstated by some guy named Napoleon Bonaparte. Since the dawn of the French Republic, the original role of “Le chef et le protecteur” is fulfilled by the sitting French President.
Who’s Who and What’s What
The Académie is made up of forty nerds members, know as Les Immortels. Some of these members have been literary powerhouses: Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Eugene Ionesco among them. To become a member, you have to apply to fill a vacant position, rather than applying to be a member in general. If someone is fit for the role, they are voted in by the current immortels. At meetings, members have to wear l’habit vert, a special green outfit. Funnily enough, the color green was chosen out of process of elimination, according to Henri Lavedan.
Over time, the organization has changed its mission to be a more holistic one, with the goal of creating a language and writing system that is to be used by everyone, not just arts and sciences hotshots. France’s national love for its languages means that L’Académie Française remains a culturally relevant part of the government. Whole swaths of people react viscerally whenever the Académie changes something, and it's not only French teachers who are startled.
Back in 2016, the Académie made it acceptable to leave the accent circonflexe (the carrot) off of certain words. They also recently changed the spelling of the word “onion” (from oignon to ognon) for some quirky reason. After some people expressed concerns about the changes, the academie has ensured that both old and new spellings will be considered “correct.”
More controversially, the Académie has also contested the feminization of French nouns. It insists that regardless of a person’s gender, they must always use the masculine form of a noun if there is no feminine form readily available. Le ministre will always be le ministre, never la ministre, regardless of the gender of the ministre.
Now, don’t get us wrong. Languages do need some sort of decided-upon rules for governing spelling and grammar (mostly spelling). But problems arise when these rules are decided by an elite group of educated people. It can create issues of class equality, with spelling rules easily becoming arcane because of natural changes in pronunciation. When spelling and grammar no longer reflect spoken language, and instead represent literary achievement, who do these rules really serve?
Thanks for Reading!
Thanks for reading this blog post. Next time you get upset about a mispelled word that still “looks right,” or are thrilled by a beautifully written French novel, you can thank the Académie Française. Be sure to give this post a “heart,” and to share it with a friend!
What’s the Word? Exploring French Word Games and Puzzles
Build your vocabulary and score big!
by Brian Alcamo
French speakers love their language, so naturally they’d gravitate towards games that deal with it on an intimate level. Les jeux de lettres, or word games, are a great way to practice your French vocabulary and spelling while putting on your critical thinking cap. Just don’t confuse jeux de lettres (word games) with jeux de mots. The latter simply means wordplay, such as the puns of vocab geeks everywhere. Regardless of which game you try first, you’re sure to have a fun time practicing and playing at the same time. Not convinced? Keep reading to find your new favorite jeu de lettre.
A Quick Rundown
France is no stranger to word games and brain teasers. For starters, there are crossword puzzles. Invented in New York in the early 20th Century, crosswords, or mots croisés, made it to France in 1924. They made their debut as la mosaïque mystérieuse, and were made popular by novelist Tristan Bernard. He and others became notorious verbicrucistes (or cruciverbistes), a French word for a crossword puzzle enthusiast.
French-language crossword puzzles are typically smaller than their English-language counterparts. French crossword puzzles also eschew accent marks. For example, the words être and été may intersect. This means that there are more options for intersecting words, and even more of a challenge to your francophone brain. French crosswords attempt to limit the number of black squares, don’t have to be square or symmetrical, and they allow two-letter words. Notably, they number their grids using a chess-style grid system instead of number “Across” and “Down” lists.
If you want to mix things up, try checking out mots fléchés. Mots fléchés, or arrowwords, are arguably preferred to crossword puzzles in Europe. They are effectively still crossword puzzles, with a more accessible twist. Mots fléchés are typically considered to be easier than crossword puzzles, a sort of “gateway puzzle” if you will. Originating in Sweden, mots fléchés came to France by way of linguist Jacques Capelovici. Mots fléchés take the clues and put them directly into the puzzle, thus integrating the two in one neat grid. You can also try mots mêlés (also known as mots cachés), which are classic, tried and true word searches.
Word games and puzzles are a great way to increase your phonotactic awareness in your target language. Put simply, phonotactics are a language’s specific rules that govern where sounds, or phonemes, can be placed in a word or sentence. For example, English words cannot begin in [ŋ] (this is the International Phonetic Alphabet symbol for -ing). Playing word games and puzzles will help you pick out rules like this in French, which in turn will help you in deducing and constructing French words like a native speaker.
Watch Real Frenchies Play
Des chiffres et des lettres, is a French game show that’s a bit like wheel of fortune, except it also includes math. The show is an updated version of the old show Le mot le plus long, which is French for “the longest word.” The first round involves doing exciting things involving basic math. The second round is a bit like Wheel of Fortune-meets-Boggle.
Get Started!
Luckily, there’s no shortage of word games online. Le cruciverbiste has a ton of free mots croisés, mots fléchés, and mots mêlés. If you’re looking for a more modern game, look no further than your phone. The iOS App-Store has oodles of games to play. A notable stand-out is SpellTower Francais, a word game that plays kind of like Boggle-meets-Tetris. It’s a fun way to flex your word-crafting muscles while clearing rows upon rows of letters. All of these word games will force you to put your thinking cap on and while building your vocabulary. Pro-tip: keep a dictionary nearby to look up new words as you play, you’re bound to come across plenty!
Thanks for Reading!
What’s your favorite word game? Be sure to comment below, and share this post with friends.
(Thumbnail photo by Brett Jordan)
Lights, Camera, Action! A Primer on French Cinema
Pass le popcorn !
by Brian Alcamo
Agnès Varda, Bridget Bardot, François Truffaut, do any of these names ring a bell? If not, they should! France has a huge cinema culture. Not only is the country home to one of the largest film industries outside of the US, it was also the birthplace of many of the cinematic technologies we take for granted nowadays. A history of the artform runs deep in this hexagonal country, and it’s time to check it out.
A Super-Brèf History of French Cinema
So where does that history begin? It begins in Lyon, with les Frères Lumière. Auguste and Louis Lumiere, also known as the Lumière brothers, were kind of like France’s Wright brothers, in that they were brothers who invented something together. Growing up with a father in the photography industry, this dynamic duo took what they learned while growing up and developed the cinematograph. This three-in-one device was used to shoot, print, and project film.
In late 1895, the brothers released 10 very-short films at the Salon Indien du Grand Cafe in none other than Paris, France. The films dazzled their audience, who had never seen anything like it before. However, the film that embedded itself into the modern cinematic tradition the most was L’Arriveé d’un train en gare de La Ciotat, or “Arrival of a train at La Ciotat,” This film was not part of the original ten, but was instead showed for the first time in January 1896. The audience members were so new to the concept of cinema that they purportedly ran away from the screen, thinking that the train would come barrelling towards them!
A second early-cinema film that took the world by storm was Le voyage dans la lune (1902), which is widely considered the first science fiction film. Directed by magician-turned-filmmaker Georges Méliès, the film was the first to use many techniques and special effects that are the building blocks of modern editing methods.
After the dawn of the cinematic artform, French film went through several artistic movements: German (yes, German) Expressionism, La Nouvelle Vague, Left Bank Cinema, Le Cinéma Vérité, Le Cinéma du look, and others. It’s consistently evolved on its own, and in response to work being put out by Hollywood. Some say that the infamous Nouvelle Vague was created out of a reaction to the formulaic, studio-based films coming out of Los Angeles at the time.
French Cinema Today
French film is a strong industry, and receives substantial amounts of financial support from the government. Movie theaters are typically used as a refuge from sometimes unbearable summer heat, since so many french dwellings don’t have air conditioning. If you’re ever in France during a canicule, be sure to catch a movie to cool off while experiencing some culture.
To keep up with the latest in French entertainment news, you should keep your eyes on AlloCiné, a French website that combines elements of IMBD and Variety. You can search for information on your favorite shows and also get updates on the industry as a whole, all while your comprehension écrite.
If you want to get a romanticized glimpse into the French film industry, check out the series Dix Pour Cent. Named after the percent of money that agents typically get from an actor’s contract, the show follows the lives of four stressed-out Frenchies as they make deals with France’s biggest vedettes. The show is a great primer on the names of French movie stars, since every episode features a different big ticket actor playing a fictionalized version of themself. In the US, the show is known as Call My Agent! and is available on Netflix. If you need subtitles, try putting them in French instead of English to push your language learning to the next level.
Take a Dive into Some French Classics!
Thanks to streaming platforms, French-language movies and television are easily available online. They’re also a great way to practice your French, and to get a glimpse into the specificities of French culture. What’s your favorite French film? Be sure to comment below, and give this post a heart!
(Thumbnail photo by Michał Parzuchowski)
13 Signature Dishes for Each Region of France
Go on a food tour of the regions of Metropolitan France!
by Brian Alcamo
As centralized as the French government is, it still gives some powers to regional authorities. Metropolitan France is home to 13 administrative regions. There used to be 22, but reforms reduced that number down to 13, combining historical regions into larger, modern ones. Many people still identify with their smaller, pre-2015 regions, but we’re modern here at JP Linguistics.
French regions don’t have as much legislative power as US states, but they each have their own cultural specialties, especially when it comes to food. Read on to learn about each of metropolitan France’s 13 regions and a few of their iconic dishes.
A Map of the New 13 Regions of Metropolitan France (since 2015)
Northern France
Hauts-De-France
Hauts-De-France is France’s northernmost region, sharing a border with the sometimes-francophone Belgium. Home to Calais, a major French port city, this region features damp, rainy weather and tons of mussels. When you’re in Hauts-de-France, be sure to grab some moules frites. You won’t be disappointed.
Normandie
Normandy is known for two major exports: apples and Camembert cheese. It's a region that combines seaside culture with the best that Northern France has to offer. Try yourself some moules à la crème normande to get all that Normandy has to offer in one bite. It features local mussels cooked in white wine, garlic, cream, and specialty Norman cider (made from all of those apples).
Île-De-France
Being the political and cultural center of France, Paris and the surrounding Île-De-France region are home to cuisines from all over France and the world. But what about a food native to Île-De-France? Unlike the two other Northern French regions, Île-De-France is landlocked, so seafood is less of a historic culinary staple here. That being said, Île-De-France is known for its deserts. Centuries of entertaining kings and courts means that les sucreries have been well developed here. Try a Paris Brest on your next trip to the capital. It’s a delicate pastry filled will praline cream.
Eastern France
Grand-Est:
The Grand-Est region of France is characterized by its gradient of Germanic culture. The further east you go, the more German the region feels. It should then come as no surprise that the capital city of Strasbourg has a cuisine that competes with its architecture for the most German thing in town. When you’re tired of the Quiche Lorraine, be sure to try some baeckeoffe, a casserole made with potatoes, mutton, beef, pork, and white wine. Astuce: we’re pretty sure this is not vegan friendly.
Bourgogne-Franche Comté
Bourgogne, or Burgundy in English, is well known for its wine. Think: chardonnay and pinot noir. The region is also famous for its mustard, being home to capital city Dijon. If you’re in the area, be sure to try some bœuf bourguignon or coq au vin, depending on your meat of choice. Beef or chicken, both taste delicious when cooked in a local red wine.
Auvergne-Rhône Alpes
Auvergne-Rhone Alpes’ capital city of Lyon is often referred to as the gastronomic capital of the world, which means there’s plenty of good food to go around. If you get tired of the haute-cuisine and experimental restaurants, though, try to grab some tartiflette. This potato-based dish from Savoy features lardons, onions, and Reblochon cheese, all served up in a hot skillet.
(If you’re trying to make tartiflette at home in the US, you’ll have to substitute another cheese for Reblochon. The local delicacy is sadly unavailable in the US because it’s made with unpasteurized milk. Some recommend using delice du jura.)
Central France
Centre-Val de Loire
Centre-Val de Loire is France’s central-most region, and was a hot spot for royals and riches back in the day. This region is characterized by châteaux and nature galore, home to 3 regional parks and the massive Orléans Forest. To get a taste of this region, try some rillettes, a type of confit made from meat, most commonly from braised pork.
Western France
Bretagne
We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: if you’re in Bretagne you better get yourself a crêpe. It’s the homeland of the crêpe. Get one. If you’re looking to change things up, get it made from buckwheat flour. Afterwards, fix it up with savory fillings and call it a galette.
Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Nouvelle-Aquitaine, a region on the Atlantic coast and home to Bordeaux, is known for its rich cuisine. Foie gras is a local delicacy, and so is anything made with duck, really. Nouvelle-Aquitaine is also where the French Basque country lies. If you want to sample a taste of Basque cuisine, try cooking some piperade or poulet basquaise. You won’t be sorry.
Pays de La Loire
The Pays de La Loire region is known for its seaside cuisine, with the long Loire river bringing fish-able territory far into the region. Nantes, the capital, is famous for its beurre blanc, a sauce that now indispensable to many fish meals in and outside of the region. It’s a sauce made from simple, easy-to-find ingredients: shallots, wine vinegar or white wine, unsalted butter, salt and black pepper. Make your own and drizzle it over the fish of your choosing for a DIY nantais meal.
Southern France
Occitanie
Occitanie, west of Provence, is the southernmost region of mainland France. Its cuisine is influenced by Spain to the south and the wide open Mediterranean sea to the East. When you’re there, be sure to try the cassoulet, a stew made of white beans, lard, pork, and other meats.
Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
This region is known for its Mediterranean flare. If you weren’t hearing French all the time, you might even think you were in Italy. Lighter on the lard and heavier on the herbs, la cuisine provençale will make your mouth water. Yes, you can (and should) indulge in a ratatouille, but what about trying a pan bagnat? It’s a sandwich that can be fixed up with tuna, hard boiled eggs, and whatever vegetables you have lying around. The key here: let the sandwich sit for a bit so that the bread can soak up all the flavors from the ingredients.
Corse
Corse, or Corisca, is an island off the coast of France in the Mediterranean. Its cuisine is even more indicative of the Mediterranean lifestyle and diet than Provence. Expect to find plenty of fish, olives, and citrus. Its cuisine is often more similar to that of Italy than of France. Either way, it’s delicious. For a very-Corsican meal, try eating some pulenda, which is polenta made from chestnut flour. It’s a denser component of the Corsican palate, but will leave you perfectly satiated.
That’s It!
Thanks for reading! Which French region has your favorite cuisine? Comment below, and be sure to share this post with your friends.
(Thumbnail photo by amirali mirhashemian)
Hauts-De-France: Where Dutch and French Collide
Things get a little Flemish north of Paris.
You may be thinking that Dutch and French happily coexist in one country and one country only: Belgium. Unfortunately for map-makers everywhere, nothing about language is that simple.
France is a country that shares borders with eleven other countries. Naturally, these borders have shifted over the course of centuries due to both the whims of the nation’s ruling class and international politics. Years after international borders have mostly hardened, these two languages continue to intermingle and influence each other in the far north of France. They do so many miles (or kilometers) away from the birthplace of the Latin language that gave rise to the French that we know, love, and study.
The map of present day France does not do that great of a job reflecting the linguistic diversity of the country. We are left with a rough hexagonal shape, L'Hexagone (not to mention the les DOM-TOM) in which accents, dialects, and languages span a country that is roughly the size of Texas. In order to create a stronger sense of nationalism and make governing easier, French rulers have taken on a policy of strong standardization when it comes to the nation’s language. This blog post over at talkinfrench.com notes that French (Parisian) replaced Latin to become the standard language of law and administration back in 1549, but it wasn’t until the 1880s when the French government began to impose French in educational settings.
Hauts-de-France
The Hauts-De-France region of France is at the tippy top of the aforementioned hexagon. Created in 2015, it’s a combination of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy. Two of its biggest attractions are the capital metropolis of Lille, a reborn vestige of a once-thriving French rust belt, and the port city of Calais, which welcomes ships coming from all over the world and is known for its proximity to England.
Lille resides roughly 125 miles away from Paris, the city that has centralized and standardized the French language over the past few centuries. The city is also just a few miles from the Belgian border, a country whose official trilingual status— Dutch, French, and German are all official languages there- makes it an outlier among many monolingual European countries.
Languages Up North
The Hauts-de-France region hadn’t always been so monolingual, and up until recently was home to a thriving landscape of Standard French, Picard, and Flemish (or Western Dutch). Its regional accents are so iconic that there’s a movie dedicated to satirizing them, Bienvenue Chez Les Ch’ti’s. Ch’ti is a more common name for Picard, the language of the north. Picard is a Romance Language, and is spoken in Picardy and in parts of Belgium. Native-level speech is typically only found in for older populations. Picard has no official status in France, but it was granted recognition as a regional language in Belgium by its Wallonia-Brussels Federation. If you want to check out some written Picard, there is a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights translated by the UN. Picard’s spelling was never standardized, but many people looking to record and study the language have gravitated towards the Feller-Carton orthography.
Lille has such a Flemish history that it even has a name in the language, Risjel. It resides in a region that was historically called French Flanders. Flemish, a variant of Dutch (a Germanic Language), was spoken in French Flanders up until 50 years ago by some accounts. Unfortunately, Flemish isn’t as popular as Picard among academics, so its legacy is not being as actively preserved by scholars. Unlike Picard, there is no standardized system of writing. Years ago, though, there used to be a yearbook called De Franse Nederlanden/Les Pays-Bas Français that was marketed towards the country’s Flemish-speaking population. It documented life in French Flanders, but is sadly no longer in print circulation. Both Picard and Flemish are predicted to be extinct by the end of the 21st century.
A map from the 1994 issue of De Franse Nederlanden
What the Future Holds
Hope for preserving Flemish culture remains! A newer website called Les Plats Pays is the successor to the print-editions of De Franse Nederlanden, and its team is working hard to keep Flemish life alive in the Hauts-de-France region. Some people even believe that knowledge of Dutch will help keep Flemish alive in academic and scholarly settings. Regardless, brushing up on your Nederlands will help you to fully appreciate the local life and culture on your next trip to Northern France!
Thanks for Reading!
Planning a trip to Flanders anytime soon? Brush up on both your French and your Dutch! Be sure to share this article with your friends, and give it a heart.
(Thumbnail photo by Dimitri Houtteman)
Emmanuel Macron loves La Technologie
From Silicon Valley to Silicon… Vineyard?
When you think of European high-tech, you probably think of Germany. Or maybe you think of Sweden, home to Spotify. You may be less likely to think of France, a country whose name evokes the smell of warm bread and too much red wine. But everyone wants a slice of the tech pie (pi?), and if there’s one person who wants more France-based high tech activity, it’s President Emmanuel Macron.
Emmanuel Macron has loved the hope of a high-tech France since before he was President.
Le président de la République française is spearheading multiple initiatives to help startups, such as a new tech visa and government subsidies. He and other European leaders are also fighting back against Big (mostly American) Tech monopolies. Facebook even recently agreed to pay the French government $125 million in back taxes. Reigning in these massive corporations will promote healthy competition in the tech sphere. France, however, had been struggling to position itself as a place for global high tech innovation, despite being home to renowned engineering schools, like École Polytechnique. To remedy this difficulty, Macron wants to bring more talent to France. This shouldn’t be too hard, considering the country promotes a work-life balance filled with enough joie de vivre to counterbalance the intellectually demanding work.
The historical entrance of the École Polytechnique (Hany J Art)
Macron wants to create a third, European model for generating tech companies. This third model would act as a middle ground between what he believes to be the US and Chinese models, with the former not being regulatory enough, and the latter being too authoritarian towards its citizens. France, and Europe, could be a theoretical Goldilocks zone for fostering sustainable and successful technological enterprises.
A recent article from France-Amérique describes how the French president is keenly looking to promote the development of “unicorns.” The French word for “unicorn” is licorne, but like with many terms in the tech world, English remains the dominant lingua franca (a term whose use is pretty ironic, given the languages being discussed). A unicorn is a startup valued at or above one billion dollars: think of companies like Uber, AirBnB, and Vice Media. France so far only has eleven unicorns, trailing behind the likes of the UK (25), China (94), and the US (182). Emmanuel Macron wants to change that.
Macron isn’t just about bringing new industry into France’s borders, though. He and the rest of the French government want to make sure that the future of tech is geared towards human interests, not simply innovation for innovation’s sake. As testament to this desire, Paris hosted the 2018 Tech for Good Summit, which featured discussions on inclusivity in the tech world. Another theme of the conference was opening up conversations about how governments and private enterprises can work together.
France believes that one of the best ways the government can aid in the progress towards an innovative and humane future is through open data. This approach to information takes the French stereotype of brutal honesty to a whole new level, with the government practicing active transparency in how it discloses data to the public. Back in 2016, the French government signed into effect La Loi pour une République Numérique, which made government data public by default. To see this law working in action, check out data.gouv.fr, which hosts over 40,000 publicly available datasets.
So how is all of this going? Well, France currently has over 18,000 startups, 11 of which are unicorns. La French Tech is a sleekly-branded organization that seeks to standardize and promote French technology to the world. The site makes it easy to search through the myriad startups and corporations that have brought French technology so far. Ironically, one of the hottest locations for French-led tech isn’t in France: It’s in New York City. France, though, has been home to myriad innovators and inventors during its time as a republic, and it will continue to be part of the innovation conversation for centuries to come.
Thanks for Reading!
Would you move to France to get a mix of Old-World charm and high tech change? Comment below! Be sure to share this blog with friends and give it a heart.
(Thumbnail photo by Dorian Hurst)
"C'est quoi, Dunkin'?" The French Language in New England
In New England, there’s more to French than just the fries.
by Brian Alcamo
When you think of New England, a few things may come to mind: fall foliage, seafood, and Dunkin’ Donuts. You might even think of (Old) England, with its linguistic, architectural, and cultural influences displayed all over the northern tips of the Eastern seaboard.
What you might not think of, though, is France. It turns out that the French language has a long-rooted history in the region (which, to be fair, also exists in England proper). French was originally part of New England way back in 1604, when the New France colony of Acadia (Acadie, en français) stretched into parts of present day Maine. It turns out that French culture in the United States isn’t limited to Louisiana.
The First Wave of Francophones
Almost a million French Canadians came to New England from the mid 19th to mid 20th century to work in the region’s many mills. The New England Historical society states that “Between 1840 and 1930, about 900,000 residents of Quebec moved to the United States. One-third of Quebec moved to New England to neighborhoods called Little Canadas.”
Historically speaking, French was discouraged by local English speakers, and tensions grew along both religious and linguistic lines. New England was historically home to a strong Puritan tradition, and the region’s staunchest Protestants were typically quick to defend the culture. Francophones often declared “Lose your language, lose your faith,” (“Qui perd sa langue, perd sa foi”) and French was upheld in many of the region’s Catholic churches. However, despite religious ties with the region’s Irish, the two groups did not get along.
Years after the industrial revolution’s end, a dip in Francophone activity occurred as many communities left New England and were conscripted to fight in World War II. WWII and its aftermath contributed to a new speed of assimilation of New England francophones. Many families left New England for both the war effort and for new career prospects as industry moved South and West (source). Despite these demographic changes, a francophone identity remained in Maine and other parts of New England. The culture stayed strong enough to even be part of the childhood of Maine’s previous governor, Paul LePage, who grew up speaking French.
A New Wave of Immigration
In recent years, cultural regeneration programs have begun to elevate French and Quebecois culture in New England, especially in Maine. Serendipitously, these programs have aided in the integration of new immigrants hailing from Africa.
These immigrants are typically asylum seekers from Angola and Congo. The state of Maine has been welcoming migrants with open arms, and is certain that the influx of new young adults and children will be a boon for the state’s economy in the long run. Though the rapid population increase has proved to be a challenge, many state officials are excited by the new diversity in the historically very-white state. Besides hundreds of new workers, the integration of these new francophones has led to a hopeful consequence: older Francophones now have a reason to use their language in a public setting.
These older white speakers who immigrated from Canada and younger black speakers who are now immigrating from Francophone African countries are using French to close generational and racial divides. Jessamine Irwin, a French teacher at JP Linguistics and Mainer says that she has “definitely found that French has been key in building bridges between the aging French speakers of Maine and the newly arrived French speaking African community.” While the intricacies of the dialect may change over time, the fact that French has remained and will remain in the region for a long time is a rarity, Jessamine says.
Planning a Trip
With New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine all being neighbors with Quebec, Canada’s semi-autonomous Francophone province, you can bet that frequent trade and travel occur between the two regions, whose histories have been and remain intertwined since European settlers arrived in North America. French can be heard all the time, especially during New England’s busy summer tourist season.
The tourist industry is even beginning to capitalize on the renewed interest in French-speaking culture, with a new initiative called the Franco Route starting up in 2019. The Lewiston Sun Journal reports that it is part of a new form of tourism called “heritage tourism.” The route runs south from the Twin Cities region of Lewiston-Auburn to Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Catherine Picard of Museum L-A has put together a two hour tour of the northernmost cities on the route, including sights of old mills and Franco-inspired architecture.
The official Franco Route website says that tourists will “discover the motivations, struggles, dreams and achievements of these newcomers” along with visiting “the museums, churches and genealogy centers that preserve this history, as well as the theaters, restaurants and microbreweries that creatively express that heritage today.” The route is a way to connect with the multicultural past and present of the United States, and is proof that people don’t need to leave the country to experience a certain je ne sais quoi.
Like This Post?
Make sure to share, and comment below what you think about practicing your French up North!
(Thumbnail photo by Mercedes Mehling)
The Best and Most Authentic French Toast Recipe - Le Pain Perdu
Learn how to make great Pain Perdu, or French Toast with JP Linguistics. A recipe from a French chef with a South of France touch…
Pain Perdu is a great breakfast or brunch dish that is easy to make, doesn’t ask for much, and taste so good! This French dish, associated with a luxurious and decadent breakfast in America, has not always been so historically. Let’s dive into the history of the French Toast, and look at how to make an authentic Pain Perdu
French Toast or Pain Perdu?
To answer this question, we need to understand the origin of the dish. People have invented le pain (bread) to live a saucy life! Well, in any way, bread is life, we know it. The symbolism attached to bread is deeply anchored in religion making the disposal of bread in the trash, sacrilegious.
To this day, French people have specific ways of treating bread. There's a way to cut bread, with a special knife (couteau à pain), bread cannot be turned on it’s back, and bread should never been thrown in the trash. Bread can be reused to make breadcrumbs (de la chapelure) to be used in other recipes.
But we are degressing. The creation of the wonderful dish is said to come from this one baker, who was not able to sell his bread and the bread became stale. Since he did not want to throw it away and waste a potential income. Instead, the baker developed a recipe based on eggs and milk and turn the stale bread into a delicious treat, giving it’s name or Pain Perdu (lost bread). So, yes, it is a French invention, but it is not a typical toast. There is a reason behind it. So the real name should be Pain Perdu, but let’s be honest, marketing this name would be a little harder…
An Authentic Recipe of Pain Perdu
Inspirée d’une recette par Jean-Pierre Coffe
So let’s see what the hype is all about with this recipe and let’s learn a neat secret ingrédient to make the recette more French.
Ingrédients
25 cl de lait (1 cup of milk);
1 cuillère à soupe d’extrait de fleur d’orangers (1 tablespoon of orange flower water);
50 g de sucre de canne roux deux cuillères à soupe (2 tablespoons of brown sugar) ;
un sachet de sucre vanillé (vanilla sugar or vanilla extract) ;
six tranches de pain blanc (6 slices of white bread);
trois gros œufs entiers (3 large eggs);
25 g de beurre (1/3 cup of butter);
1 pincée de sel fin (1 pinch of salt) ;
confiture ou gelée au choix (marmelade or jam).
Recette (Recipe)
Dans un saladier, ajoutez le lait, le sucre de canne, le sucre vanillé, et l’eau de fleur d’oranger. (Start by adding the milk, the orange flower water, and sugars in a bowl)
Placez les tranches de pain dans un plat creux, mouillez avec le lait sucré, retournez-les pour qu’elles absorbent l’excédent de lait. Laissez reposer pendant quinze minutes. (lay the slices of bread in a hollow dish and pour the sweet milk on the bread, turning them to absorb the excess of milk)
Dans une assiette creuse, battez les œufs en omelette avec la pincée de sel et deux cuillères à soupe de sucre. (in a hollow plate, beat the eggs with a pinch of salt and 2 tablespoons of sugar)
Faites chauffer un peu de beurre dans une poêle sur feu doux. Trempez six tranches de pain dans les œufs battus, déposez-les dans le beurre chaud ; laissez dorer, retournez et faites dorer l’autre face. (Heat a little bit of butter in a pan). Dip each slice of bread in the beaten eggs and place them in the hot butter. Let them get golden and turn them over.)
Servez aussitôt avec les pots de confiture posés sur la table. (serve as soon as possible with your favorite Jam or marmelade)
Option: vous pouvez les saupoudrer de sucres glace. (You can also add confectionner sugar on top of a classy effect).
Bon Appetit!
Let us know how your Pain Perdu turned out! Leave a comment and send us your pictures! Dont forget to tune in on July 14th at 9am for our French Toast demonstration. You can fine the complete line up of events with Time Out New York in this article.
How to Make Croque Madame and Croque Monsieur?
Learn how to make and authentic French Croque Monsieur while learning some French vocabulary!
This cheesy and simple sandwich is the perfect Sunday dinner. It goes perfectly with a side of salad and pourquoi pas some home fries. This is a classic bistro food and the easiest way for parents to make dinner or lunch for the kids. In this recipe we are going the classy way and learning how to make a traditional Croque Monsieur with the famous Sauce béchamel!
Where Does Croque Monsieur Come From?
Well, it does come from France and is a typical dish in French Bistros, because it is fast to make. By the way, did you know that the word Bistro comes from the Russian word býstro, meaning “quickly”? When France was occupied by Russia in 1814, Russian soldiers use to come to French restaurants and asked for the food to be made quickly, hence the creation of bistros. So Croque Monsieur made their apparition around 1910 in several bistros and were mentioned by Marcel Proust himself in his book À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs.
This simple sandwich evolved from a simple cheese sandwich to a more exquisite recipe when béchamel sauce was added. It also developed a feminine counterpart with the Croque Madame, which adds an egg à cheval (on top). Some families (AKA mine) used to prefer to put a slice of tomato on top instead of an egg, to make it “healthier”.
Recipe of Croque Monsieur with Béchamel Sauce
Ingrédients (ingredients)
Pour la béchamel (for the béchamel sauce)
25 g de beurre (1.5 Tbsp of butter)
25 g de farine (1.5 Tbsp of flour)
50 cl de lait (2 cups of milk)
sel, poivre, muscade (salt, pepper, nutmeg)
Pour le Croque Monsieur
8 tranches de pain de mie complet (8 slices of whole wheat bread)
125 g de Comté fraîchement râpé ou Cantal ou gruyère (1/2 cup of Swiss Cheese)
30 g de beurre (2 Tbsp of butter)
200 g de jambon blanc (8 -10 slices of ham)
Noix de muscade (nutmeg)
Sel (salt)
Commencez par la sauce béchamel. Dans une casserole, faites chauffer le beurre et une fois fondu, ajoutez la farine. Mélangez jusqu’à l’obtention d’un roux. Ajoutez le lait tout en remuant et continuer de mélanger pour que le mélange épaississe. Ajoutez du sel, du poivre et de la muscade salon votre got. Start with the Béchamel Sauce. In a sauce pan, heat the butter and use a whisk to make it melt. Keep on high heat. Once the butter is melted, quickly add the flour and whisk until all is turning into a roux. Then add the milk while whisking and keep mixing until it thickens. Then as salt, pepper and the nutmeg to taste. Set aside.
Placez 4 tranches de pain de mie et beurre-les. Ajoutez une fine couche de sauce béchamel et placez le jambon et le fromage rapé. Placez une autre tranche de pain pour fermer le croque monsieur. Lay 4 slices of bread and butter them. Add a thin layer of béchamel sauce, then add the ham and put the cheese on top. Put another slice of bread on top.
Ajoutez de la sauce béchamel sur le dessus du sandwich et ajoutez-y du fromage râpé. Faites cuire 10 minutes à 180 degrés Celsius. Add béchamel on top and grated cheese and put in the over for 10 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Envie d’un Croque Madame? Ajoytez un oeuf (au plat) sur le dessus et voilà ! Want to make it a Croque Madame? Add an over-easy egg on top and voilà!
Bon Appetit!
Let us know how much you love Croque Monsieur in the comments below and don’t hesitate to ask questions or add fun facts, and share with a friend!
Celebrate Bastille Day 2020 While at Home
Join JP Linguistics and Time Out New York to celebrate Bastille Day 2020 along with amazing and authentic French Brands in New York City!
Bastille Day - A Symbol of Freedom and Liberty
Have you ever wondered what the big deal with Bastille Day and the French was? Well, you are in luck because on Tuesday, July 14th we will explain all virtually during a full-day celebration we have planned. Although this year marks the first time that Americans are banned from travelling to Europe because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we partnered with Time Out New York to bring you authentic French experiences in NYC that you can enjoy by tuning in to their Instagram account, @timeoutnewyork, starting at 9:00AM on July 14th. Our event is also including in United for Bastille Day, organized by the Consulate General of France. Keep scrolling for a brief history of Bastille Day and more details about the event.
Gravure de la Bastille, par Jean-François Rigaud, XVIIe s.© DEA PICTURE LIBRARY https://www.geo.fr/histoire/la-bastille-400-ans-d-histoire-161952
What is Bastille Day?
Bastille Day or Le 14 juillet is the national day of France. It is on July 14th 1789 that the Bastille was destroyed and marked the beginning of the Fall of the Monarchy and of the French Revolution. The Bastille was build in the 14th century to protect the city and it became a symbol of Tyranny that people wanted to take down, as it had become a prison for people who opposed the political system in place. Most of the people who were emprisonned in the Bastille did not even received a proper judgement, instead, they received a lettre de cachet from the King who would condemned them right away. The Bastille was therefor a symbole of Tyrannie and not one of Freedom. This is why French people do not refer to this day as Bastille Day but as Le 14 Juillet. On this day, French people celebrate the abolition of a Monarchie and the creation of a Republic with the current French Motto “ Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”
How to Celebrate Bastille Day In 2020
Celebrating Bastille Day during a pandemic might seem like an impossible thing to do. But as we say in French, impossible n’est pas français (impossible is not French)! This year, JP Linguistics has partnered with Time Out New York to bring to you the best of French Culture in NYC, showcasing a true mark of Fraternité and Solidarité. Make sure to tune in on Tuesday, July 14th starting at 9:00AM via the Time Out New York Instagram account, @timeoutnewyork, to celebrate with us. You can see the full program below including LIVE streams from JP Linguistics, Albertine Bookstore, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, DJ Stoon, French Cheese Board, Maille, Bertrand Demontoux, BLVD Wine Bar, and Delice & Sarrasin.
Bastille Day 2020 Celebration Schedule:
9am: Learn how to make authentic French Toast during this kickoff event with JP Linguistics
10am: Take a tour of the adorable Albertine bookstore and settle in for a live children’s book reading
11am: Join Metropolitan Museum of Art art historian Kathy Galitz and Time Out national culture writer Howard Halle for a discussion of Monet's La Grenouillère
12pm: Say bonjour to some sick beats during a Bastille Day livestream set with DJ Stoon
1pm: Make the perfect cheese board with French Cheese Board
2pm: Maille’s official Mustard Sommelier (yes, that’s a real job) demonstrates how to cook two delicious, simple French recipes: A warmed raclette-and-chicken baguette sandwich and a berry hazelnut galette
3pm: We’re back with JP Linguistics for a look at the history of French fashion in both Paris and New York
4pm: Grab a glass for a virtual French Rosé wine tasting with Sommelier Bertrand Demontoux at BLVD Wine Bar in Long Island City
5pm: Learn how to prepare a vegan Cassoulet Toulousain with the inventive West Village restaurant, Delice & Sarrasin
Let us know if you can make it or have any questions in the comments below and we will answer them on the lives! A bientôt !
An Authentic French Crêpe Recipe
A simple and delicious recipe for authentic French crepes.
(Missed our Instagram Live crêpe-collab with Time In New York? No problem! Watch it on our IGTV.)
Crêpes are more than just super thin pancakes. They can come dressed up in sweet goodies, like strawberries, sugar, and Nutella. They can also be served up as a savory meal, filled with meat and cheese.
Although you can buy one on practically every Parisian street corner, the crêpe actually originated in Brittany. If the name sounds familiar, it should! Brittany is a region in the northwest of France, and is French for “Little Britain”). Geographically, Brittany is both smaller and further south than its etymological cousin, La Grande Bretagne, “Great Britain”).
(A Map of Brittany. Zoom out to see how close it is to Great Britain!)
Origin of the Word
The word crêpe comes from the Latin word crispus, which means waved or curly. It’s the origin of words like “crisp.” Nowadays, we associate the word crispy with a crunch. However, it used to mean curly, which points to the curled up sides indicative of a well-cooked crêpe.
Lingo Lookout: Here’s a hint for those of you learning how to read French. If you see a French word with an accent circumflex (the ̂ above a letter), it’s a little reminder that the word used to contain an extra consonant— typically an s. Look at the word crêpe, and the word crisp. Very similar words, except the modern French version has gotten rid of that telltale s that English and many Romance languages maintain. (Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese all use the word crispo).
The Recipe
Here’s our recipe for the perfect unadorned crepe.
Ingrédients
300g of flour
3 eggs
3 tablespoons of sugar (optional)
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
50g of melted butter
60 cl of milk
5 cl of rum or 5cl of orange flower water
Utensils
A salad bowl
A whisk
A strainer
A non-stick pan
A ladle
A spatula
Preparation
Put flour, eggs, sugar, vegetable oil, and butter into a salad bowl.
Combine the ingredients with a whisk
· Add the milk little by little, stirring with whisk until you achieve a slightly thick mixture.
Add rum or orange flower water and mix
Tip: Run the dough through a strainer to filter out any clumps
Cooking
Heat the pan and lightly oil.
Pour a ladle of crepe mix onto the pan.
Wait until the crepe is cooked on one side. Then, flip and wait again.
That’s it!
While this recipe is simple, the real fun comes with adding ingredients into your crêpe. What are your favorite crêpe mix-ins? Comment them below!
Thumbnail photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash
Autism Awareness in France
Rebecca McKee, owner of The 13th Child Autism & Behavioral Coaching, Inc., weighs in on the support for people with Autism in France. (Guest Blog!)
Currently, the whole wide world, as well as the world wide web, is experiencing a unique
moment. We are all dealing with COVID-19. Toutefois (however) the whole wide world and
the world wide web has been united with another probleme de santé (health problem) for decades. Autism, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Asperger’s Syndrome, PDD (Pervasive Development Disorders), PDD-NOS (Pervasive Development Disorder Not Otherwise Specified): all of these names fall under the same parapluie (umbrella). The entire world has an autism problem.
Photo by Leo Rivas
Autism Spectrum Disorder (sometimes referred to in French as Trouble du Spectre de l’Autisme) has become one of those “things” now: “I know someone with autism,” “I have a friend who has someone in her family with autism,” “My neighbor’s daughter has autism,” ainsi de suite (and so on). Some countries are at the top of their game in their advocacy and support of les personnes autistes (people with autism). Unfortunately, France is not one of the leaders in this fight. But things are getting better.
The Council of Europe, basé a Strasbourg (based in Strausburg), focuses on droits
humains (human rights). Between the years 2004 to 2014 France was cited cinq fois (five times) for discriminating against people with autism spectrum disorder. According to the Council of Europe, France violated the rights of people avec (with) ASD to be educated in mainstream schools, as well as receiving vocational training. In 2016, The Committee on the Rights of the Child (a United Nations organization) expressed concerns that children with ASD continue to be subjected to violations of their rights within the borders of France.
There are many good ideas and great brains in France, and les gens veulent aider (people want to help). The French government is starting to take small steps to improve the situation for people with ASD. In 2005, France created ‘The Autism Plan’. This plan offered new dépistage (screening) and diagnosis recommendations for ASD. It also created ‘Autism Resource Centers’ in each of the nation’s administrative regions to screen children. These centers also offered advice to families about possible treatment options. Financial assistance information was also made available.
Une étape importante (an important step) was that the ‘Classification Française des Troubles Mentaux de l’Enfant et de l’Adolescent’ (French Classification for Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders) stopped defining autism spectrum disorder as a psychose (psychosis). This semantic change will ouvrir la porte (open the door) to hope, help, and a sense of community among families living and loving someone with autism spectrum disorder. This change also puts France on the same playing field of other countries with international diagnostic standards. Additional government plans have introduced specialized teaching units within some mainstream schools.
Further initiatives include: measures to increase access to specialized classrooms, better job training and housing options for adults with ASD. It is hopeful that France will rise to the occasion. We will surely see the effects of their efforts.
Guest blogger: Rebecca Mckee
Rebecca McKee is the owner of The 13th Child Autism & Behavioral Coaching, Inc. Rebecca has a Master’s Degree in Special Education, with a Concentration in Autism Spectrum Disorders. She is also a Board Certified Behavior Analysis (BCBA). Rebecca’s clients have ranged from babies to adults.
The philosophy of The 13th Child Autism & Behavioral Coaching, Inc. is for all people to enjoy a high quality of life including achievement, creativity, friendships, spirituality and wellness. Services can take place at the child’s home, school and community. Rebecca McKee lives in Brooklyn New York
Thumbnail photo by Ryoji Iwata
French Tenses: The Recent Past and the Near Future
How to talk about what you just did, and what you’re about to do in French.
by Brian Alcamo
Here’s a situation:
You’ve just finished your first semester (or two) of French, and you’re looking to practice with a native speaker. Since no one can meet in person right now, you schedule a Zoom session. You’ve got your passe compose, imparfait, and futur simple memorized to a T, and things are going well (aka you said “bonjour” with a passable r). Suddenly, you hear a phrase je viens de sortir, which translates literally to “I come from to go out.”
“You viens de what?”
Or, in a different conversation, they say “je vais sortir,” which literally translates to the (more intuitive) “I am going to go out.” But maybe you’re still confused. Even though you’re not allowed to gather in public, you worry that sortir could be an amazing club that you’re missing out on.
“Where is sortir? Can I take the subway there?”
In the first conversation, it turns out that your friend is coming from nowhere, but they just went out. In the second, they are going out soon. Not only are you hurt because you weren’t invited, but you and your lost brain are now way behind in the conversation.
What tense did they just use?
Those two tenses are called the passé récent (recent past) and the futur proche (near future), and they’re both extremely useful in day to day conversation.
Luckily, even if you’re not physically coming from or going anywhere during times of corona, you can still practice conjugating the verbs venir and aller. That’s because French (and other languages, including English) uses the same verbs for movement through space as they do for movement through time.
A Refresher on Time
Before we talk about grammar, let’s try to get a grasp on time. No one can get a grasp on time, but let’s try. Pictured below is the present moment:
The recent past and near future (right before, and right after, you have a conversation) are pictured here.
The areas marked off in orange are where we’ll be spending most of our time for this discussion. The orange arrows are to show the forward motion that is inherent in the passé récent and the futur proche. Don’t fret that there are no easy to use verbal constructions for talking about movement back in time. We doubt you’ll need to talk about the process of unbrushing your teeth or ungoing to a party (unless you’re writing a scifi/fantasy movie, in which case, our headshots are ready).
Now that we’ve got time as figured out as possible, let’s talk about tense #1, le passé récent.
Le Passé Récent
The passé récent is formed with venir + the preposition de + a verb in its infinitive form. It’s used to mean that you’ve just done something. Here’s an example:
Je viens de quitter le bureau. “I just left the office”
The French textbook Contraste: Grammaire du Français Courant calls venir a “semi auxiliary,” which is a verb that sometimes behaves like an auxiliary verb. Être and avoir are examples of true auxiliary verbs.
Here’s a refresher on how to conjugate venir in the present tense.
Je viens “I come”
Tu viens “You come”
Il/elle/on vient “He, she, we come”
Nous venons “We come”
Vous venez “You (pl) come”
Ils, elles viennent “They come”
If you’re telling a story and using the past tense, you would simply conjugate venir in the imperfect, saying something like:
Il venait de quitter le bureau or “He had just left the office.”
If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around it, think about it as if you’re walking on a timeline. You’re “coming from” the activity that you just did right before the present moment.
Now that we’ve come into the present from the past, let’s continue into the future with the futur proche.
Futur Proche
In the futur proche, you use the verb aller which means "to go.” You conjugate aller and tack on an infinitive. In this construction, aller functions as a semi-auxiliary verb, just like venir in the passé récent.
So "Je vais danser ce soir," means "l'm going to dance tonight." (Sounds fun!)
In case you need it, here’s a quick repeat of how to conjugate aller in the present tense:
Je vais “I go”
Tu vas “You go”
Il, elle, on va “He, she, we go”
Nous allons “We go”
Vous allez “You (pl) go”
Ils, elles vont “They go”
The future proche is a bit more flexible than the passé récent, because you can say that you're going to do something pretty far into the future. "Je vais aller à Lyon dans six mois" ("l'm going to go to Lyon in 6 months") is a perfectly acceptable sentence. This is because the futur proche can also convey a meaning of intention. With regards to its cousin the futur simple, things stated in the futur proche are usually thought of as more certain to happen.
There are a few other phrases that can be used to convey a similar meaning to aller + infinitive:
être près de + infinitive - “to be close to”
être sur le point de + infinitive - “to be on the verge of”
s’apprêter à + infinitive - “to be about to”
avoir l’intention de + infinitive - “to mean to”
If you're telling a story and using the past tense, you can conjugate alter in the imperfect and add an infinitive, saying something like:
“Nous allions sortir en boite, mais il a commencé à pleuvoir”
“We were going to go out to the club, but it started raining.”
In the past tense, this structure conveys a sense of planning that gets interrupted. Notice that even though you’re using aller to talk about this plan, you’re conjugating it using the imperfect tense, and throwing that futur straight into the past.
Devoir + infinitive when used in the past tense has a similar meaning to the futur proche in the past tense. The meaning here is “was supposed to” or “must have.”
Getting a grasp on time is tough, and the current environment of social distancing has left many people struggling with how to keep track of it. The passé récent and futur proche are wonderful examples of how our brains use the same structure for movement through time as they do for movement through space. And as with a lot of movements, the only way “out” is “through.”
Merci !
We hoped you enjoyed this blog post. Be sure to “heart” it, and to share with your friends. Keep the conversation going in the comments.
Want to review what you learned? Take our quiz down below!
(Thumbnail Photo by Djim Loic )
3 French Wines You Must Try This Summer
Looking for the best wines to sip this summer? Look no further than these 3 French bottles.
Looking for 3 delicious French wines to sip this summer? Check out these ridiculously yummy bottles below, hand-selected by our wine expert, Jessamine, who studied at Le Cordon Bleu. Below you will find some important tasting notes along with French vocabulary that you can use to impress your friends while saying santé (you can also check out our separate Guide to Saying Cheers in French if you want to the full scoop on a proper santé). One of the best parts of the wines below is that they are available for delivery across the U.S.A. thanks to Scout & Cellar which offers clean, chemical-free wines produced by farmers from around world. We spoke further with one of their consultants, Anne Reilly (also known as Pure Pours), who included some helpful tasting cards so you can clearly see what each bottle is made of. She also let us know that orders over $99 get free U.S.A. shipping and the brand offers quantity discounts. Happy tasting!
Image by Zan
Rosé
One of the most trendy wines of summer has become the popular Rosé, which is made of handpicked organic red grapes.* You’ll notice its soft pink color, which is created when the juice from those grapes makes contact with the skin during production. This particular Rosé, the ‘2019 L’Original Rosé’ from Provence, France, has an overall fruity* vibe with notes of strawberry*, peach* and white flowers*. If you are sitting under the summer sun, it has just the right amount of crispness so you won’t be feeling like loads of sugar are dampening your tongue. The bottle features grapes that were handpicked at a winery situated within a French national forest in Provence, then placed in temperature-controlled tanks before being bottled. Each bottle costs $22USD and, for our 21+ readers, you can order one to be delivered by visiting Scout & Cellar.
*French terms you should know:
Grape = Raisin, Fruity = Fruité (pronounced [frɥite]), Strawberry = Fraise (pronounced [frɛz]), Peach = Pêche (pronounced [pɛʃ]), Flower = Fleur (pronounced [flœr])
Image: Scout & Cellar
Sémillon
You may not be immediately familiar with this wine type, but it surely is an underdog that will steal the scene at your next dinner party*. This ‘2018 Soleil Vent Âme’ has a golden greenish tone to its color* which reflects the youth of this grape variety. It has a delicious fruity flavor profile with aromas of fresh-cut mango, green papaya* and nectarine*, all offering a lively experience to the tongue*. The grapes themselves are grown on a 500 acre vineyard located in southwest of France in a region called Aquitaine. In this part of the country, the earth* has a clay-limestone soil which helps retain water and control temperature as the grapes grow. After being handpicked, the grapes are placed in a pneumatic press and fermented for 3 weeks. Just after this process, the wine ages for 15 days on a lees (the yeast deposits that sink to the bottom of a vat) before being bottled. Each bottle costs $25USD and, for our 21+ readers, you can order one to be delivered by visiting Scout & Cellar.
*French terms you should know:
Party = Fête, (pronounced [fɛt]), Color = Couleur (pronounced [kulœr]), Mango = Mangue, Papaya = Papaye, Nectarine = Nectarine, Tongue = Langue, Earth = Terre
Image: Scout & Cellar
Red Wine (Cabernet Sauvignon + Grenache)
For many people, a bold* red wine is the ticket to savoring the summer. If you are one of those people, this Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache blend is just what you need. A deep cabernet color, this tasty red* wine has bold, earthy notes with hints of strawberry and cherry* offering pleasant acidity,* silky tannins, and a slightly bitter* finish. The grapes themselves are handpicked on a vineyard in the Rhône Valley (in Southern France) and, through production they maintain their earth-like quality without any added chemicals* making this a vegan wine to satisfy all of your guests. Each bottle costs $26USD and, for our 21+ readers, you can order one to be delivered by visiting Scout & Cellar.
*French terms you should know:
Bold (flavor) = Saveur Prononcée, Red = Rouge, Cherry = Cerise, Bitter = Amer, Acidity = Acidité, Chemical = Chimique
Image: Scout & Cellar
Santé
If you enjoyed this article, don’t forget to tap the little heart icon at the top and share it with your friends. If you are looking for more French tips, be sure to check out our Online French Classes at JP Linguistics or follow us on Instagram for unique LIVE streams and posts that help boost your language and culture skills. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter below to get tips delivered directly to your inbox. À bientôt!