Paris’ Google Street Map – being filmed now !

If you want to get filmed on the streets of Paris so you can appear on Google’s detailed street map of the city, you have until August 20! If you want to see how the pix get taken, check out:
http://tinyurl.com/n2b8bm

Bike Worries Realized in Paris Rental System

A French friend wrote me recently about the success and dangers of the previously-promising Paris rental bike system. (cf., fall ‘07 post) Ten days later, the dangers had hit home: a woman she knew was killed on one of those bikes!
On July 10, she wrote: “Personne ne sait comment se conduire à vélo dans un espace qui n’est pas prévu pour cela.Les vélos doivent-ils rouler sur les pistes cyclables? Mais il y en a peu, et elles sont interrompues. Donc souvent ils empruntent les trottoirs, au grand dam des piétons, surtout des enfants, des vieux, des étourdis, qui n’ont plus une sécurité totale sur le trottoir. S’ils ne marchent pas droit, le cycliste derrière eux qui s’apprête à les dépasser peut les heurter. Il y aura nécessité d’apprendre des règles, peut-être d’en édicter.”
On July 20, she wrote: “Il y a eu, dans mon entourage, un drame.” A truck driver had run over her 30-year old acquaintance because she was in his “angle mort” so he couldn’t see her.
My friend concluded: “il vaut mieux faire du vélo à la campagne où il y a des pistes cyclables. Mais pour aller au travail, c’est dangereux!”

French words that don’t exist in English

Wow, I just learned 2 new words on the French news. They could have been around for years, but I’d never heard them before. The anchor talked about this weekend (July 31-Aug. 2) being “le weekend le plus chargé de l’année.” The reason? The “juilletistes” and the “aoûtiens” will both be on the road at the same time – to and from vacation. Does anyone know when these words came into usage?

Paris Bikes’ Down Side

The French bike rental system discussed here over a year ago is still an overall success but has caused some deaths. At the beginning, my friend, Michèle, found the program ecological, economical, healthy, and well organized. A few months later, she noticed problems stemming from a lack of traffic rules for bikes:

“Personne ne sait comment se conduire à vélo dans un espace qui n’est pas prévu pour cela. Les vélos doivent-ils rouler sur les pistes cyclables? Il y en a peu, et elles sont interrompues. Donc souvent ils empruntent les trottoirs, au grand dam des piétons, surtout des enfants, des vieux, des étourdis, qui n’ont plus une sécurité totale sur le trottoir. S’ils ne marchent pas droit, le cycliste derrière eux qui s’apprête à les dépasser peut les heurter. Il y aura nécessité d’apprendre des règles, peut-être d’en édicter.”

A month later, her worries were realized among her own friends. A 30-year old woman she knew died, riding a bicycle in Paris. She was “écrasée par un camion qui ne l’avait pas vue.”

That wasn’t the only death, she adds: “Cest déjà arrivé plusieurs fois car il y a ce qu’on appelle un ‘angle mort’ – un angle où les camions ne voient pas ce qui est à côté et au dessous d’eux.”

Her sad conclusion: “Il vaut mieux faire du vélo à la campagne ou au bord des canaux, là où il y a des pistes cyclables. Mais pour aller au travail, c’est dangereux.”

L’Anglais est atomique – le Français est moléculaire

My French friend, Eric, sent me a passionately irritated message about the evolution of the French language. He’s particularly upset by the young immigrants who don’t use the French we have all learned and who make up their own words. It gives one pause as to the essence of a living language. Should it preserve its rules or adapt to the changes in its culture?

Should we proper Americans use ‘whom’ when appropriate and avoid ‘judgmental’ and ‘hopefully’ or talk like the rest of the country?

Below is the French rant followed by the responses of two of my advanced and exceedingly bright students.

Let me explain three things before regular French students dive in:

1) Michel Serres – a contemporary French philosopher

2) L’Ecole Normal Sup’ is a prestigious learning institution

3) ‘le verlan’ – a current language invented by French young people, often of North African origin, the reverses the syllables similar to our Pig Latin. The name of the dialect itself, ‘le verlan,’ is an example. It comes from ‘l’envers,’ which means backwards, upside down, inside out.

Eric Jabouille’s rant:

“Grâce à une conférence de Michel Serres à l’Ecole Normale Sup’, je viens de comprendre pourquoi on se trompe complètement en pensant que la rupture de la syntaxe et la création de nouveaux mots (le rap, le verlan, etc.) prouvent que le français ne se porte pas si mal, alors qu’il est en train de rendre l’âme. C’est que le français n’est pas une langue de mots et que ces crétins, en cassant la syntaxe, sont en train de tuer la langue et donc la civilisation française. Voilà ce que dit Michel Serres”:

“Racine utilisait très peu de mots. Pourquoi ? parce que la langue française n’est pas une langue de mots. L’anglais est une langue atomique : l’essentiel de l’anglais c’est le mot. L’essentiel, l’unité de sens de l’anglais, c’est le mot. L’unité de sens du français n’est pas le mot. L’unité de sens du français c’est la phrase, la proposition. Et par conséquent avec très peu de mots, Racine utilise des propositions extraordinairement souples, raffinées, nombreuses et sophistiquées ; de telle sorte qu’il parle un français d’une richesse exceptionnelle. Le français est, disons, une langue moléculaire : elle associe des atomes. Ceux qui savent l’allemand savent que le choix de l’allemand – le choix de l’unité de sens de l’allemand – est juste au milieu entre l’anglais et le français ; c’est à dire que l’allemand adore coller des mots ensembles pour en faire une unité un peu plus compacte, c’est à dire des mots composés. L’allemand choisit comme unité de sens non
pas l’atome, non pas la proposition, mais le milieu entre l’un et l’autre. Et donc l’originalité d’une langue n’est pas forcément dans la sémantique. Quand on pose la question “quelle langue parlons-nous ?”, ou “combien de mots parlons-nous”, on oublie cette idée profonde que le génie du français, l’unité du sens du français n’est pas forcément dans la prolifération du vocabulaire. Et lorsqu’à l’Académie Française nous faisons le Dictionnaire, je rouspète régulièrement en disant : “nous ne nous occupons pas de la langue Française !”. La langue française est grammairienne, elle n’est pas sémantique. La langue française n’est pas dans les mots, elle est dans les phrases. Par conséquent la syntaxe est plus importante pour nous que la sémantique”.

(Extraits d’une conférence de Michel Serres à Normale Sup’)

Following are 2 responses from advanced students of mine.

- From Stephen R.:

“I doubt Kan, or Goethe is remembered for his genius with compound words.  And I think Shakespeare or Samuel Johnson, or V.S. Naipaul and Zadie Smith, have some pretty neat phrases.  Even if the continuum your friend describes has validity, I suspect it would be more valid for classifying writers within given linguistic traditions, not whole cultures vis-à-vis one another.  What does one make, for example, of someone like Conrad, who wrote flawless English in beautiful sentences, though his native language was Polish?”

- from another student, Michael C.:

“I found this article illuminating and interesting.  I would have preferred some examples of phrases.  But intuitively, the way he describes English, German, French makes sense.”

French on American Prime Time TV!

There were two beautiful comments in authentic French in the growing romance on Hawthorne. The handsome doctor is actually played by big French box-office actor, Michael Vartan.

When he surprised Christina, played by Jada Pinkett Smith, with his French inner thoughts, I went into my vigilant mode of trying to detect a non-French accent in a supposed French character. No way. This guy’s accent was legit. And when I checked the show’s credits, I saw the actor’s name and recognized it from French TV. (He also starred in Alias and other American shows since he’s bilingual and multi-national.)

In any case, Christina was also impressed by his French and ended her meeting with him by purring a seductive: “All that French? Yeah, you need to do more of that around here!”

I agree, imagine there will be more, and recommend you watch it to hear more delicious French.

What Will the French Think of Us Now ?

The French think Americans are naive prudes because we disapprove of philandering politicians like Senator Hart (remember?) and ex-President Clinton. What must they think of us now?!

http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/amerique/cowboy-nu-contre-milliardaire-a-new-york_776152.html

A Good Film at the MFA French Film Festival

LA BELLE PERSONNE (THE BEAUTIFUL PERSON)

Eight of us watched The Beautiful Person (La belle personne) tonight at the Museum of Fine Arts French Film Festival. After the end of the film, we had to be shooed out of the salle de cinéma and then the lobby because of our eagerness to discuss the film together, on the spot. Luckily, they couldn’t shoo us away from their front steps!

Only one of us was unenthusiastic. The rest of us thought the film said so much about French youth, French culture and French cinema, that we ended up talking about all those things as well as about the film itself.

Paris is speeding past us !

Proof that Paris has changed over the last few years is this new Paris phenomenon, rollerblading across Paris by night with people of all ages, nationalities, and kinds:   http://www.pari-roller.com.

If you ever saw a woman wearing running shoes in Paris 20 years ago, you could be sure she wasn’t French. Probably American. French women wore nothing but high heels and elegant outfits. No one would have dreamed, at that time, that Parisians could ever wear “les baskets” or “les tennis.”

Today, we even see Parisians riding bicycles in Paris! In their rush to get athletic and green, they have now even beaten America, by renting public bikes at easy-to-use bike stands spread out over the city.

And for the past 15 years, they’ve usurped us completely by celebrating rollerblading across the city! Every Friday night, they have something Americans can only dream about now. If you’re adventurous and athletic – and in Paris! – you too can participate in it. Check out the website and don’t miss the photos of Paris by night!

Paris’ future

To read about Sarkozy’s ambitions for Paris, you can check out this article in L’Express.