Time for another round of curious translations of American movie titles into French. Interestingly, some of these movies are being released contemporaneously; others were released in the U.S. back in January and are only now showing in France.

By contrast, the titles of Inception, Night and Day, Salt, Twelve, andToy Story 3 are exactly the same in France as in [...]

My default position has always been to use “vous,” as a safeguard against offending anyone with whom I might be talking. I always just figured that it’s a better bet to be on the more formal side. But there’s a trap. You should never “vous” a child, for example. And yes, I’m the idiot talking [...]

Le French Boyfriend and I speak a bizarre mix of Franglish or Français – normally, he speaks French and I reply in English, which never fails to bring up some bizzaro language peculiarity. A few weeks ago it was a gorgeous, sunny day, and we were walking down the Ile St. Louis in search of [...]

Pretty much everyone assumes that after almost three years in Paris, all of us are fluent French speakers. And oh the disappointment when I tell them “no.” And oh the clucking when I mention that we put the kids in international school where all their courses (except of course French!) are in English.
Let me [...]

You’re finally in Paris. The scenery almost feels familiar. Yet the rush of city life is disconcerting—plus, those famous restaurants seem a little . . . intimidating. If only, you think, I knew a Parisian.
Well, there are actually locals who would like to meet you, share a glass of wine, a movie, even a game [...]

One evening after arriving here I was told that I had a lot of hair on the back of my shirt. I tried to respond with a little humor, but it didn’t quite work. What I said was, “Je suis une chienne.” What I meant was, “I am a dog.” What I really said was, [...]

I was horrified to learn in my first French course that there existed no word for “hug.”“But embrasser?” we naively asked. “Surely that must mean to embrace?”
“No,” our kind teacher informed us, “embrasser means to kiss.”
“So this,” we said, wrapping our arms around ourselves. “What do you call this?”Surely a simple demonstration would quickly clear up [...]

I heard an interview with a French person yesterday. They pronounced ”Happy” as “Appy.” Do they not have the “H” sound we have when it is at the beginning of a sentence? How do they ever say “Woo Hoo!!”?

This made me laugh. The French have adopted the English term, “brunch” but as far as I know, there’s no meal called “slunch.” Actually my favorite creative use of English by the French is “relooking” which means remodeling when applied to a building or makeover when applied to a person. Say that with your best [...]

Time magazine recently published an article about the challenge of learning English in France. Students pay high fees to private schools for English lessons after failing to learn the language despite years of studying in public schools.
But what’s really interesting is the reaction of many French readers to any discussion of how to improve English learning.
Articles in Le [...]