Foreign Language Study : French

The French you learned in school won’t get you far! Pardon My French is an entertaining and useful guide to the words and phrases every Francophile, traveler, student, and word maven should know, with fascinating lore and tidbits that make sense of the Gallic mind-set. Englishman Charles Timoney was thrown into French life headfirst twenty-five years ago when he and his wife moved to her native France. He had studied French in school, but his memory of vocabulary list and verb-conjugation drills proved no match for day-to-day living and communicating with French coworkers. As he blundered toward fluency, he collected the idioms and phrases that no one ever taught him in a classroom and that wonderfully (sometimes wickedly) epitomized l’esprit francais. Pardon My French includes insider’s language tips for dining, shopping, understanding French slang, and more. Selections include:. • Faire un canard, which literally means “to do a duck,” but also refers to dunking sugar lumps in coffee and is the preferred way to get a kick of sugary caffeine in France. • Tablette de chocolat, which literally means “chocolate bar,” but is also the term for a finely muscled male stomach in France, Since the English equivalent is a six pack,” it’s a splendid example of how differently we see things! more...

Price: $20.00

This groundbreaking volume highlights the work of contemporary women writing in French whose cultural links, ethnic identities, and historical roots lie outside France. The writings of these women emanate from the cultures of Africa and the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Quebec and other French-speaking regions of Canada. more...

Price: $108.00

Reading Proust focuses on the specificity of Proustian writing, revealing the patterns of thought and play of words peculiar to Proust's language, and showing how these metamorphose throughout La Recherche du temps perdu. Her work offers a new model for reading fictional prose, one that replaces the critical "why?" with the more practical and productive "how?" more...

Price: $60.00

Schaum's Outline of French Grammar delivers a comprehensive and efficient review of French grammar, with exercises, quick drills, and helpful verb charts. The fifth edition includes the latest usages and carefully explains challenging grammatical topics. more...

Price: $18.95

Prudence Steiner's lively prose translation of Molière's great comedy remains close to the original French, while casting the speech of characters in a slightly compressed and formalized way that comes very close to the original effect created by Molière's verse. This edition includes translations of Molière's three appeals to the king, as well as an introductory essay by Roger Herzel, which discusses Molière's life, Tartuffe and the comic tradition, and the setting, language and style of the play. more...

Price: $10.95