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Flesh That Was Chrysalis
(enjoy some poems)
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French Links
French Links
 A link can be a bridge |
About.com
has a terrific website for learning French. I cannot say enough good
things about it. Here are some resources from that
site, as well as from Kristin worth exploring.
-- Mot
du jour (about.com) (archive),
Mot
du jour (Kristin) (archive)
-- Leçon du jour (lesson of the day
-- Citations du jour, proverbe de la semaine (famous quotes and proverbs, with search engine)
-- Leçon du jour (lesson of the day
-- Citations du jour, proverbe de la semaine (famous quotes and proverbs, with search engine)
And a thrice weekly French word site (from Kristin)
Oral French
For French television, TV5 and TV Bistro.com are fantastic. It's a new world now with the internet, and the ability to hear, and learn to better appreciate spoken French, even in the United States, is very much possible. Also see TSR Video -- Télévision Suisse Romande -- for a wide range of video.
 petrified
in Avignon | Learn French with TV5Monde (listening exercises) Sons en français (learning the spoken language) with a great range of materials to choose from Ma France -- 24 Interactive French Videos from Stéphane Cornicard of BBC.com RFI (Radio France International) -- It has a daily journal of news in easy French (you can see the text if you want), and other learning exercises. |
Learn French in Boston -- A French poetry web site, formidable, with podcasts by Camille on various famous French poems by Baudelaire, Hugo, Verlaine, Apollinaire, and others.
3 Semaines en Provences avec Camille -- 3 podcast episodes, and 7 web pages with pictures.
Télérama radio for a wide range of readings, lectures and other presentations in French on a range of fascinating subjects.
Archivox has a lot of interesting literature that is read from poetry, to short stories, and more.
France Info -- current events, audio and text
Listen to French Radio -- Europe 1 (French and European News). See list of stations provided by About.com
Mango -- a painless registration, and then begin some work on French pronunciation (from a beginning level)
RosettaStone -- lessons with an emphasis on the spoken language, levels 1 and 2
Champs Elysée Audio Magazine -- an audio magazine for intermediate to advanced.
Computer generated voices -- I have Acapela's French female voice Julie, 22khz. (You can sample the voices here to help decide what you like). Using Julie, I can highlight text in Firefox, or IE7, and listen to her read it in French. (Any other browser can also be used by copying the text you want read into special TextAloud software). Her pronunciation is -- for my purposes -- pretty good, so I can clear up knotty issues I might have. To use Julie, or any of the other computer voices (from AT & T Natural Voices, NeoSpeech, Cepstral, Nuance RealSpeak, and Acapela, at this site), you do need to purchase the TextAloud software from NextUp.com (which comes with two At& T natural English voices -- Mike and Crystal -- maybe for the time you just want to lay back on the couch and let an article be read to you in English). The technology here has really improved, and playing with some of these voices can be fun, as well as, in terms of working on French pronunciation, quite helpful.
| Translation Instant translations (via browser). Firefox has an extension called gTranslate, where you can translate any word in a webpage just by selecting and right-clicking over it. The extension, Dictionary Search in Mozilla's SeaMonkey does the same thing (though the user must configure it). Opera has a similar feature, that comes as part of the main browser download. As far as I know, as of 10/1/07, no such feature is currently available in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, whether versions IE6 or 7. For a definitive treatise, there's the TLF (It has everything, so is excellent to have bookmarked, but be prepared for that fact that it's all in French). The same with the Dictionnaire de l'Académie. |  Biscuiterie et Pâtisserie |
A more modest translation
tool from wordreference.com is a French-English
and an English-French
dictionary, from french linguistics, a French-English
dictionary, and an English-French
dictionary, and the same from google
(beta).
And try TV5's multi-function dictionary, which translates French words using relatively simple french, and also serves to give synonyms, and to conjugate. See Dictionnaire de la langue française (French definitions). Also, try the Internet Picture Dictionary, if you like to learn words by associating them with an image. It's more than a bit "word" challenged, to wit, too few words, but it's nice if what you are looking for is there.
For a thesaurus function, I love these two dictionaries of synonyms -- the first at synonyme.com (look up a word, and you get antonyms also), and here's another good dictionary of synomyms at dico.isc. They can help you find the right word, for that important e:mail or letter in French.
Inclined to translate a block of text, then Babelfish, Reverso or Google (beta) may fit the bill. Or with this Google (beta) search for a subject in a French article, and have a translation into English ( a bit rough, but . . .). It also with other languages.
And try TV5's multi-function dictionary, which translates French words using relatively simple french, and also serves to give synonyms, and to conjugate. See Dictionnaire de la langue française (French definitions). Also, try the Internet Picture Dictionary, if you like to learn words by associating them with an image. It's more than a bit "word" challenged, to wit, too few words, but it's nice if what you are looking for is there.
For a thesaurus function, I love these two dictionaries of synonyms -- the first at synonyme.com (look up a word, and you get antonyms also), and here's another good dictionary of synomyms at dico.isc. They can help you find the right word, for that important e:mail or letter in French.
Inclined to translate a block of text, then Babelfish, Reverso or Google (beta) may fit the bill. Or with this Google (beta) search for a subject in a French article, and have a translation into English ( a bit rough, but . . .). It also with other languages.
Conjugation
A conjugation site by Le Conjugueur, if you write in French, and need to remember the different tenses of verbs, even those tricky irregular ones. You'll make the receiver of one of your e:mail missives (courriels) think that you know French. See another conjugation site at about.com.
Typing French Accents
A good approach with Windows Vista and Windows XP is to set up the international keyboard through the control panel. See the About.com instructions at the link above. They also provide at the same link instructions for Mac users.
For something simpler, here is a page at lexilogos and another at french.typit.org, where you type in your accented text in an available box, and just copy and paste it from there into your e:mail or other application. This is very easy for the occasional time you need to use accents. [I can't quite figure out the "keyboard shortcuts" part at the second link, but the cutting and pasting works quite well].
Forums.
About.com Forums can be a valuable help in learning words and grammar. So check them out.
Also there are the WordReference.com forums for vocabulary, grammar, themed lists, and français seulement.
Francophilia (beta), an on-line community -- It's just starting up, seems ambitious, so stay tuned.
Newspapers, Magazines, and Blogs
Newspapers and journals include: Le Figaro, Le Monde, libération.fr, Le Soir (Belgium), Lalibre (Belgium), Le Devoir (Montreal) and France Daily (English)
And for more more politics: L'Express.fr, Le Point.fr, and French Politics (a blog in English).
For literature and film: (1) Bibliobs from NouvelObs.com (2) Le Monde.fr, Livres, (3) Figaro.fr, Litteraire, (4) La Libération.fr Livres, (5) Magazine Littéraire, (6) Le Blog des Livres, and (7) filmsdefrance.com. For all of French culture, there's evene.fr.
A site for Francophiles in English: The French Journal (in the nature of a blog on French history, culture, geography, and much more). Also see The Paris Blog, Paris Daily Photo, L'Amerloque, Polly Vous Francais, Badaude, IVY Artist Network Paris.
Newspapers and journals include: Le Figaro, Le Monde, libération.fr, Le Soir (Belgium), Lalibre (Belgium), Le Devoir (Montreal) and France Daily (English)
And for more more politics: L'Express.fr, Le Point.fr, and French Politics (a blog in English).
For literature and film: (1) Bibliobs from NouvelObs.com (2) Le Monde.fr, Livres, (3) Figaro.fr, Litteraire, (4) La Libération.fr Livres, (5) Magazine Littéraire, (6) Le Blog des Livres, and (7) filmsdefrance.com. For all of French culture, there's evene.fr.
A site for Francophiles in English: The French Journal (in the nature of a blog on French history, culture, geography, and much more). Also see The Paris Blog, Paris Daily Photo, L'Amerloque, Polly Vous Francais, Badaude, IVY Artist Network Paris.
In the United States, French Language Book Boutique, European Book Co., Petite Librairie, and Pierre Books (My experience on this last link is that the search engine on the page may miss things, and it can help to call the toll-free number, and explain orally what you're looking for).
From France, French Amazon, FNAC, alapage.com, and Chapitre.
French Search Engines
French Yahoo, Google France, and French Lycos. See also, Search Engine Colossus
Conversion and Travel Sites
Temperature Converter -- fahrenheit to centigrade, and vice versa
Currency Converter
Centimeter Converter (Converts to feet and inches)
Miles to Kilometers and kilometers to miles
Pounds to kilograms and kilograms to pounds
Air France
France Guide -- official website of French Tourist Office
Paris live, Eiffel Tower Web cams
Paris by the Numbers
Paris Metro
SNCF (French Railroad)
Adventures around the world and wonderful photos with zarkass.com (Internet Explorer recommended here)
French History and Quotes.
Wikipedia on French History and Timeline of French History
See Wikiquote on the writing life. Also, excellent for French quotes in general.
Accommodations in Paris, and throughout France
Good Morning Paris, Bed & Breakfast in Paris (1), (2), Une Chambre en Ville (a room in the city), Hotels in Paris, Accommodations for couples (throughout France)
Organizations
Alliances Françaises (national) and Alliance Française de Washington, DC.
Notes
The image of the bridge at the top of the page is of the Pont du Gard, which means literally bridge of the Gard (river), and is, in fact, an aqueduct constructed by the Roman Empire, located in the town of Vers-Pont-du-Gard in southern France. That image and the ones, "petrified in Avignon" and "Patisserie" were taken by me. The images of the French flag, baguette, LeMonde and Figaro are permissible for use on this page.
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