Welcome to the French Today Blog

As you know, we are a small business: husband & wife, lots of work and good will. Running a small web based business in this economy is not easy, so if you like our blog and all our free resources, here are 10 ways you could help us out. Thank you in advance!

As I was looking over some stats yesterday, I realized that we had passed the 1 Millionth download of our French Today podcasts on iTunes!  

Most of these downloads are from our very popular Classic French Poetry podcast (itunes link).  With more than 40 poems read (and some analysed in depth), French Today has now become the number 1 resource on the web for listening to French Poetry (ever Googled "Classic French Poems"?)... and I thought that was a cool thing to share :-)

Camille and I would like to extend our sincere thanks to all of you that made this possible!

Deux jours à Zinal

Mon frère et moi sommes restés pendant trois nuits à l’hôtel Europe de Zinal.  Zinal est un minuscule village typique situé au cœur du Valais suisse, à l’extrémité sud du Val d’ Anniviers.  Il y a une rue principale avec quelques hôtels, des restaurants et des magasins, et c’est tout.

As in any language, French has a large and rich slang vocabulary that never stops from evolving.

You all have heard of " le Verlan" which consists of inverting syllables in a word (the word "Verlan" itself is an inversion of the word "l'envers" ('reverse').  This slang form is now very prevalent throughout the French language and some verlan words are even now found in French dictionaries.

Many of you have studied common French slang: "un bouquin" for 'a book', "un mec" for 'a guy'... All these are still used, but lately, a new form of slang emerged: "le parler d'jeunes".

Up we climb now to the top of Paris; up the butte de Montmartre, the hill overlooking Paris in the 18th arrondissement—a neighborhood of both sinners and saints.

Why not learn French with a little humor? I am happy to announce a new blog post series that will focus on jokes and puns in French. Laughing feels so good (you can see in the picture Olivier et Leyla cracking up... we love to laugh in our family!)
Mille mercis to Mostafa who volunteer to put this seri together, translate the jokes and explain the puns! And feel free to add jokes you know - stay PC of course - in the Disqus box below :-)