I'm kind of excited about this weeks book but I'm not quite sure how to read a Frenglish book. "Je Ne Sais What?: A Guide to de rigueur Frenglish for Readers, Writers, and Speakers" by Jon Winokur, who also authored "The Portable Curmudgeon" that I want to find because I love the word curmudgeon. It's essentially a French to English dictionary full of idioms as well as other useful words and sayings. Totally helpful.
Only problem, I have no French background whatsoever. I've taken a year of German here at Northern, which has a zero percent helpful rate. Actually I think it has a negative effect because I pronounce everything with a German accent, as my roommate so kindly told me. She's taken three years of French so I'm gonna trust her judgement on that one. I've been to Europe, including Switzerland and France, but the only thing I picked up was 'What is...' in Italian. Granted the book gives pronunciations but my eyes still sort of skip over the French part and go straight to the definition part.
So I think I'm going to leave what I learn up to you guys. Give me a page number from 1 to 155 and I'll pick one saying or word from that page and learn it. Or try to at least.
Side note: I randomly opened up to a page and the first thing I stumbled upon was cache-sexe (kahsh seks) "hide sex"; a breechcloth or G-string. Now you all learned something new.
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Hm... how about page 38?
ReplyDeletecache-sexe is so hilariously blunt!
ReplyDeleteit's helpful though when words are like that when you're learning them for the first time. german words like "hackfleish" (hacked flesh = ground beef) or handschuhe (hand-shoes = gloves) are so honest and funny that they're easy to remember.