Cultivate your French : Slow French, at the right pace.

CYF 160 — Le Louvre Lens et les J.O. — mercredi 8 mars 2023

The holidays ended last sunday. How were those holidays for us? You have a clue if you are a subscriber and if you listened to the episodes posted during the last 2 weeks. 
It’s also during the holidays that we got the weblinks to order our seats for the J.O. , les Jeux Olympiques. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, I will highlight for you 3 expressions that are very natural in French and that you could use or hear in your own conversations in French. 
You will also find a vocabulary section on how to say that something is cheap to really expensive. 

To cultivate your French, you could subscribe to the transcript at www.cultivateyourfrench.com (4 €/ month)

CYF 159 — Flan et mousse au chocolat — mercredi 15 février 2023

On Sundays, in the morning, I join a group of walkers. We do nordic walking with Philippe a coach from the Club d’athlétisme de Courbevoie. I usually meet with Philippe at the stadium, and there Isabelle and Thierry give me a ride. 
This Sunday, Philippe told me about an experience and Isabelle too. Both of them linked to pâtisserie. This is what this episode is about. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, I will highlight for you 3 expressions that are natural in French and that you could use in your own conversations. We will also focus on a particular sentence that requires the use of the subjonctive. 

So to cultivate your French and read what is said, you could subscribe to the transcript at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

The transcript has an immediate effect on your listening comprehension of the spoken French. 

The subscription costs 4 euros a month and the transcript is sent by email. 

CYF 158 — L’éclipse de 1999 — mercredi 8 février 2023

Yesterday evening, Micaela, Felicia and I had dinner with some friends of the kung-fu club. We wanted to try an asian restaurant in our neighbourhood. The place was nice and quiet. We had a nice conversation. We came to speak about the Arte TV channel. Julien thought it was mainly historical documentaries on this channel. But I said that we were enjoying the great TV series too, as The newsreader that takes place in 1986, in Australia. In this series, the Halley’s comet is mentioned because it was visible in 1986. I said that I had seen it. As I had also seen the solar eclipse that occurred in 1999. This is what this episode is about and about some strange coincidence too. 

In the notes that come with the transcript I will highlight for you 3 expressions that are typical in French. We will also focus on a particular sentence that is typical of spoken French. 

So, to cultivate your French, you could subscribe to the transcript at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

 

CYF 157 — Un soir à Paris dans le 11e, se tutoyer ou se vouvoyer — mercredi 1er février 2023

On Saturday evening ten days ago, my friend Caroline and I met at Saint-Lazare. We had dinner in a nice pizzeria near the trendy and lively rue Oberkampf, in the eleventh arrondissement, in the east of Paris. But, did we really go that far to have pizza? Not really. We had a plan ! This is what you are going to hear in this episode. 
Caroline and I have known each other since our daughters Micaela and Juliette were only a few months old. We were leaving in the same Résidence. 
Do you think we started by saying « tu » or « vous » to each other the first time we met? We are almost the same age. Is it difficult to guess? Well, the answer is also in this episode. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, I will highlight for you 3 expressions that you could use in your own French conversations, they are simple but efficient expressions. I will also tell you how we use vous or tu in different everyday life circumstances. 
So, to cultivate your French, you could subscribe to the transcript at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

 

CYF 156 — On va déguster Paris, de François-Régis Gaudry et ses amis (Editions Marabout), présenté par Nathalie Iris — mercredi 25 janvier 2023

It was December the 30th 2022, I had an appointment with Nathalie Iris from the bookshop Mots en marge, in La Garenne-Colombes. 

Nathalie is a famous bookseller in France, you can see her on the TV show Télématin. We met during the confinement, during which Nathalie chose some books for my three daughters, Micaela, Felicia and Lisa.

She also became a regular guest to talk about books on the podcast One Thing In A French Day that I run beside Cultivate Your French.  

That day, in December, Nathalie presented a book that I totally fell in love with : On va déguster Paris. It’s a book written by François-Régy Gaudry a journalist that runs a radio show about food and good products on France Inter. He’s very famous in France. I love his voice and his way of saying things. 
With his friends from the radio show, François-Régis Gaudry has already written different books about France, Italy, etc. But this particular book about Paris is really good. It’s full of addresses, recipes, historical stories, pictures and drawings. 
In this episode, you are going to hear Nathalie Iris talking about it.
You can order this beautiful book from the website Decritre.fr at a fair price. I don’t have any commercial link with them, but I know their service is very good. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, we will have an eye on those questions asked at the negative form, on the expression « il y a » that teachers often ask us to avoid and we will see all the different vocabulary about a book page. 

So, to cultivate your French, and enjoy the transcript by reading what is said and enjoy the notes that come with the text, you could subscribe at

www.cultivateyourfrench.com

The subscription costs 4 euros a month ! 

CYF 155 — L’étrange balade à Paris au cours de laquelle j’ai rencontré Émile Zola ! — mercredi 18 janvier 2023

The weather is very bad these days in Paris, but it doesn’t stop me when I have the possibility to have a walk in Paris. 
Justement, I had an order to collect rue du Four. This led me to a strange encounter. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, I will highlight for your those expressions or words that are typical in French and that you could use in your own conversation. 
We will also focus on the vocabulary that I use in this text to talk about my itinerary . 
And I will select a particular sentence that you could repeat again and again to improve your pronunciation and your spoken French. 

So to cultivate your French, you could subscribe to the transcript and receive it by email. The subscription costs 4 euros a month. Rendez-vous at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

 

CYF 154 — Bonne année 2023 ! Les bons moments des vacances de Noël — mercredi 11 janvier 2023

During the holidays, we had the visit of an unexpected visitor : the flue ! Micaela and Felicia and me where its victims, so it ruined the joy of being on holidays. But we had some nice moments and we were the 3 of us well enough to enjoy the traditional Christmas meal with my parents. Pintade aux marrons, plateau de fromages, bûche au chocolat and Clairette de Die are what we enjoyed the most. 
But, there where also some nice and positive moments, this is what this episode is about. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, I will give you all the information on who is who and what is what in this list. We will also notice the tenses used in this list of moments. Eventually, we will focus on this sentence that starts with « Saviez-vous que… » and see how you could use it in your own French conversations. 

So to cultivate your French and improve your listening comprehension, I invite you to subscribe to the transcript, so you can get the text of the podcast by email with the notes and photos. The subscription costs 4 euros a month. You can subscribe at cultivateyourfrench.com

CYF 153 — Christmas episode : la place Furstemberg, Saint-Germain-des-prés — mercredi 21 décembre 2022

It was cold on that day, when my friend Pauline and I went to Paris for a day.

We went to Saint-Germain-des-prés to walk in the nice streets, enjoy the Christmas shop windows like the ones of Alix D.Reynis, Ladurée or Officine Bully. We also visited the very nice Eglise Saint-Germain-des-prés whose ceilings are as nice as the ones of La Sainte-Chapelle. We had tea at Le café des deux magots. And, we went to la Place Furstemberg, one of the most beautiful places in Paris.

This episode takes you to this nice little place.

This is a double episode, it’s twice longer than usual because next week and the week after the podcast will on holidays. 

In the notes that come with the transcripts, you will find photos with comments of the different places Pauline and I went to. 

So, to cultivate your French, and improve your listening comprehension, you could subscribe to the transcript and receive the text, notes and photos by email. The subscription costs 4 euros a month.

You can subscribe at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

CYF 152 — Shakespeare and Company, a famous bookshop in Paris — mercredi 14 décembre 2022

There were a lot of anniversaries in 2022 : the 4th centenary of Molière’s birth, the 2nd centenary of the deciphering of the hieroglyphes by Jean-Francois Champollion, the centenary of Marcel Proust’s death and the centenary of the publication of Ulysses by James Joyce, in Paris. 

Yes, in Paris ! It was the American owner of the bookshop Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach, that published the famous book in 1922. 
With my friend Françoise, a reader of Ulysses in English,  we went to different places related to James Joyce in Paris. A little odissey of our own.

The bookshop Shakespeare and Company owned by Sylvia Beach doesn’t exist anymore, though I’m sure you have heard about a famous bookshop, named Shakespeare and Company, near Notre-Dame. Haven’t you?

What is the story of this bookshop? This is what this episode is about. You can imagine Françoise and I in Paris on a cloudy day. 
In the notes that come with the transcript, we will focus on all the numbers and dates that this episodes contains. 

So, are you ready to cultivate your French? Then, you could subscribe to the transcripts and notes of this podcast at www.cultivateyourfrench.com.

The subscription costs 4 euros a month to receive by email the transcript, the notes and photos. 

2192 — La compétition de Kung-fu — mercredi 7 décembre 2022

Last Saturday, there was a Kung-fu completion near Paris. La coupe de France de Kung-fu. It’s opened to anyone belonging to a club. There was 4 of us from my club : Alistair, Julien, Paul (12) and me. 
Preparing a competition requires a lot of energy and in my case I have to deal with stress. I presented a routine without weapon (mains nues) and one with a sabre. 
What is the aim of going to a competition? This question might occur at some point. This is what this episode is about. In a way, I think we can make a link between this question and learning French. Learning French has the reputation of being difficult. Yes, it is. But step by step you can make progress and be proud of yourself ! I’m proud of you, my dear listeners. 
In the notes that come with the transcript, we will focus on natural French sentences and expression. Of course, there will be a special focus on a sentence I have chosen for you «  j’aurais pu sans doute faire mieux ». 

So to cultivate your French and improve your listening comprehension by reading the text, you can subscribe to the transcript at www.cultivateyourfrench.com