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Lesson Introduction
If there's one thing that all human beings have in common, it's a love for vacations. In today's podcast, we have a lesson on how to discuss plans on where to go for les vacances and also learn how to make a compromise in French.
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shoshanna says
August 14, 2008
Why do we not hear a "liason" when speaking the phrase "Pourquoi ne pas aller"? What is the rule or indication that would allow a liason? I would appreciate anyone's comment. Thanks
Susan
billkaulitzlover says
August 14, 2008
Merci beaucoup pour la leçon, comme d'habitude. :)
missworldtraveler says
August 15, 2008
Maintenant je veut faire des vacances.
bejebew says
August 15, 2008
oh no! les vacances vont finir bientot! aaaaa....
yes you're right about the french... on the ordinary day, everybody speaks french, personne parle l'anglais.... but... this month, specially en ete, everybody speaks english and other language... hahaha... all of the french go somewhere else searching for the sun...
my french teacher once said to me "les francais sont comme les oiseaux, ils cherchent de la chaleur!"
hehe...
chalky says
August 15, 2008
First lesson to look at - neat site, neat content.
Merci a toutes et tous.
ericat says
August 16, 2008
Bonjour Chalky and bienvenue à FrenchPod!
ericat says
August 16, 2008
Great question, Susan,
There are three types of liaisons in French: obligatoire (required), interdite (forbidden), and facultative (optional). Many of the liaisons fall under the optional category, which is why us foreigners sometimes get frustrated about it when we are learning French and trying to understand why there wasn't a liaison in what we just heard when we feel like there should be one, probably because something in our subconscious is telling us that we've heard one there before.
Pourquoi ne pas aller is one of those facultative cases. Amaury didn't use the liaison here but I did later in the podcast and he did not correct me. All the FrenchPod team said that they would not likely make a liaison in their natural speech when it comes to ne pas + verb starting with a vowel, but when I did it they didn't feel like I was making an error because it is not "incorrect" to make a liaison here, just maybe not as common.
ericat says
August 16, 2008
Alors, tout le monde,
Allez-vous en vacances cet été?
lapetitemantis says
August 17, 2008
Salut a tous de Michigan!
Je suis une etudiante nouvelle de FrenchPod mais deja j'aime cette site.
Je n'irai pas d'ailleur cet ete. Je resterais chez-moi. Mais, si je pourrais choisir, j'irais vous visiter en Shanghai. La Chine serait belle a ce temps d'annee.
Allez-vous ericat en vacances cet ete?
bejebew says
August 17, 2008
mais oui, je visite paris.. toujours! hahaha...
ericat says
August 17, 2008
Bonjour, lapetitemantis, and bienvenue à FrenchPod from a fellow Michigander :)
Non, malheureusement, je ne vais pas en vacances cet été.
Tu viens de quelle ville au Michigan?
auntie68 says
August 17, 2008
Hi everybody. I think that Erica hit the nail on the head with her comment about native French speakers being pretty relaxed about how the language is pronounced by non-native speakers. So don't worry too much, if they're not correcting you (and they WILL, if it's important, believe me!), just keep going and don't be self-conscious.
Even Erica herself sometimes pronounces things in a slightly "non-standard" French way. But that doesn't stop her from being amazingly fluent, by anybody's standards.
Eg. pronouncing "on peut" as "en peut" in this lesson, and "un peu" as "eun peu" a couple of times elsewhere; these sounds do tend to flow into each other if it's a learned language. Amaury is sometimes "aemorry", but he doesn't mind. And when Erica is doing banter in English, I think she tends to pronounce the "r" in a distinctively American way ("mer" here; "maire" in another lesson), but that is something which EVERYBODY does.
Sometimes I notice that Cristela, who is a native speaker, pronounces "d" very crisply, almost like a "dz" ("aujourzui" for "aujourd'hui"), but that is very common in France and Canada, it's just an individual thing. The important thing is communication, and Erica does that so well that it's well worth emulating her. Erica, I hope that nothing I wrote was out of line...
All the best to everybody in their French studies... I don't post very much here these days, but I do listen to every podcast, and I learn something new from every one. Thank you so much for that, FPOD.
m73hollis says
August 27, 2008
This lesson touched on a subject I've been wondering about for a while, the use of on versus nous. I had always been under the impression that on was more like the equivalent of the English one, a sort of generic third person, e.g.:
A Paris, on peut visiter la Tour Eiffel.
I've found it interesting, therefore, to see in the lessons that it's often used interchangeably with nous. And according to your comments in this lesson, it's actually more common to use on than to use nous. Is this primarily a conversational thing or is on also used frequently to mean we in written texts as well? Does using nous give a sentence a different tone, e.g. more formal?
sergefrench says
August 27, 2008
Hi m73hollis!
Yes, you've got it: the use of 'on' instead of 'nous' makes the sentence more familiar. I'm thinking of an example: a French soldier will say to the cameras: "Nous allons rester en Afghanistan encore quelque temps" and to his companions: "Il paraît qu'on va rester ici encore un moment..."
pinkjeans says
August 29, 2008
Je viens de rentre des vacances, à Singapour, en Malaisie, et aussi en Thailande. C'est pourquoi je n'ai pas laissé aucun commentaire pendant presque d'un mois. Désolée pour toutes les erreurs...j'ai manqué la pratique.
C'était de bonnes vacances. :)
bonnie01 says
January 28, 2010
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhha
amaurylibeer says
January 28, 2010
Et oui, c'est ce que doivent se dire les deux personnes qui se trouvent sur la photo qui illustre cette leçon bonnie01 (yes, that's what must say the two persons on the picture that illustrates this lesson : )