The French Language- things you don't learn in evening class

Today Eden, who is seven, asked me if it was obligatory to go to the pool.

You would never hear this in English. “ C’est obligatoire d’aller a la piscine?” she asked after I suggested I accompany her there.

An English child would say “do I have to go?” or perhaps “is it important I go?” or something like that.  In English it is not obligatory and never could be.  The health club I belonged to in the UK had a sign in the changing room: guests are requested to kindly take a shower before using the sauna.  The health club I went to in France had a similar notice: douche obligatoire avant sauna.

It is obligatory you belt up when in the car.  It is obligatory you show your passport at customs.  But not to go to the pool or anything like it.

Likewise the French will use to have the right.  Eden again, and today again, asked if she had the right to an ice cream.  ”J’ai le droit de prendre une glace?”  An English child would ask “can I have an ice-cream?”  An American child, I am told, would just help himself!  I remember when we first came to France coming across a car crash.  One side of the road was blocked and there was a long long queue, as traffic passed swiftly and constantly in the other direction.  After quite a wait, I got out of the car and asked the young man standing to one side (aged 35 or so) to stop the traffic one way so that the others could get moving.  “Je n’ai pas le droit”, he replied.  I haven’t the right, he said.  So I did it.  When the police turned up they looked mildly surprised at me, but didn’t guillotine me or fling me in to prison.  Phew.

Then there is the word interdit.  Forbidden.  I think it has something to do with Napoleon.  Even though he’s been dead a long time.  At a nearby chateau is a sign “il est interdit de marcher sur l’herbe” – in English this would be please keep off the grass.

French is such a beautiful language, yet they do have this “hardness” to many of their words and ways of saying things.

As usual, just as the pop in to my head (accents missing):-

jeux de societe – board games

un point, c’est tout! – and that’s that!

quelquechose qui cloche – something not quite right

planetere – out of this world

joli – yes, it means pretty but it can be used in a way we would never use it in English, e.g something that is badly done: ce n’est pas joli.  The hem on the curtain is badly done – l’ourlet du rideau n’est pas joli

double rideau – (while we’re at it) is a curtain, whereas a net curtain is un rideau

epingle a nourrice - safety pin

au bout de la langue – on the tip of my tongue

bete noire – pet hate

queter – to ask for money, but not begging, ie to ask for money for a charity.  There is no word for a collection box, so I suppose one would say “une boite pour faire la quete”.  To beg is otherwise mendier

je connais comme sur le bout de mes doigts – I know it like the palm of my hand.  However, in French this does not really apply to, e.g a town or a street, more to a book or some other intellectual situation or item

ecole prive – public school, though in English we tend to say “independent” school these days.  The public/independent school in the UK is more-or-less unique in Europe.  Our children went to an ecole prive here in France, but it cost a tiny fraction of what it would cost in the UK and had no where near the same connotations or anything like it

c’est du jamais-vu – I’ve never seen anything like it

c’est plus fort que moi – I can’t help it

il y en a la-haut – sort-of equivalent to “she’s not just a pretty face” – you need to tap your forehead as you say it, indicating there are brains up there

manger a la pouce – to eat on the go

chair de poule – goose bumps

erreur de frappe – typo

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist.  Her books are available on Amazon/Kindle worldwide or can be ordered from any leading book store or library.  Links below:-

https://payhip.com/b/tEva    “A Call from France”

https://payhip.com/b/OTiQ    ”French Sand”

https://payhip.com/b/BLkF    “The Man with Green Fingers”

https://payhip.com/b/1Ghq    “Saying Nothing”

or from Amazon (click below):-

http://goo.gl/XbkYVK  “Saying Nothing”

http://goo.gl/1RVEdr   “French Sand”

http://goo.gl/LZG63T  “A Call from France”

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Snippets of French History: Mrs Conqueror

I mean Mathilda of Flanders, Duchess of Normandy, Queen of England, wife of William the Conqueror.

She was born circa 1031 and died circa 1083. She was the daughter of Baldwin of Flanders and Adela of France, and the grand daughter of Robert II of France.  Almost nothing is known about her early life except that she had at least one brother and that she was almost certainly very wealthy**.  Any pictures and portrayals of her are results of the artists’ imaginations, and therefore ficticious.  We do know, after scientists exhumed her bones in the 1990s, that she was barely 5′ tall – but that was quite common for her day.

For this blog in full and more please see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/snippets-of-french-history-mrs-conqueror/

History in this part of France, Part 11

The little fortified town of nearby Brouage has a claim to fame from several angles.  One of its famous historical figures is Samuel de Champlain (1574 – 1635), the founder of Quebec and “Father of New France”. He was a navigator, a cartographer (he drew out the first accurate map of Canada), a politician, a mathematician and an explorer.

For this blog in full and more please see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/history-in-this-part-of-france-part-11/

History in France Part 5 - Joan of Arc

Goodness – how do I fit Joan of Arc in to one small blog ?  Well, I fitted Eleanor of Aquitaine in, which was sacrilege, so I suppose I can do the same for Joan.

Joan of Arc, or Jeanne d’Arc (sometimes Arques) would probably not interest me much, except that one of the many schools I went to was called Joan of Arc.  There was a dreadful school song : Joan of Arc !  For the love we bear thee!  which us girls, neat in our maroon gym slips and brettles, would shout out in to the great hall.

Joan of Arc was born in 1412 at the time of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1437) between England and France, when England owned vast areas of France and demanded a dual monarchy with the throne of France *.  Her parents were land-owning farmers, a couple of notches up from peasants, but almost certainly totally illiterate and simple folk. She was born in the village of Doremy (re-named Doremy-la-Pucelle**) in what is now the Lorraine.  Her childhood home is a museum these days.  She was extremely religious, and one can safely suppose that she heard her father and his friends vehemently discussing the English occupation and control of such large areas of France, and the poor state of mental health of the French king, Charles VI.  Impressionable and heavily influenced by strong family feeling, undoubtedly fired-up with hormones and quite possibly a tomboy, Joan decided she heard voices telling her to help the French army oust the English and replace the mad king with the Dauphin (heir to the throne).

There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not Joan was in fact schizophrenic (as she heard voices) or suffered from some other mental illness.  But I don’t think so.  There were already other women in the French army – and, oddly, one of the first things Joan did once she was in a position of power, was to ban women from the army – and anyway there is no evidence, either then or now, that she was anything other than bright, asute, controlled, sharp and sincere.  If you read through the transcript of her trial (sure!) you will see her replies are not those of an insane girl.

In a nutshell, French France was largely divided in to two factions: the Burgundians, who supported the English, and the Armagnacs who supported the French.  There was a great deal of in-fighting, intrigue, devious plots and anger, not to mention battle.  French France was in a terrible state as all the fighting for many years had taken place on French soil, the land was massively burnt-out by English troops and France had furthermore been ravaged by the Black Death.

At the age of 16, Joan asked an influential uncle to help her meet one Count Baudricourt, who in turn helped her (after much sarcasm and several refusals) meet the Dauphin.  It may be that the French authorities saw Joan, unusual as she was, as some kind of “sign” that they latched on to in desperation as their regime was close to total collapse.  Joan dressed up in armour and demanded to be placed at the head of the army, a request that was granted, one can only assume, in complete hopelessness when everything else had failed.

Joan was successful in that she had the Dauphin crowned the new king*** and she won an outstanding battle. But within three years she had been captured by the Burgundians and sold for a vast sum to the English. She was put on trial by the French pro-English Bishop Cauchon, and eventually burnt at the stake in the town of Rouen in northern France.  She was only 19 years old.

* the French king, Charles VI, was insane and the heir to the throne, Charles VII, was a child

** Joan was affectionately nicknamed la Pucelle, meaning “the little flea”.  Odd to an English ear, but ma puce in French it is common to this day

*** pictures portray him as an adult, but he was in fact barely 14 years old

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are on Amazon and Kindle, or can be ordered from most big book stores and libraries.  More about her, to include her entertaining blogs and short stories are on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

 There are no surviving pictures of the real Joan, so all illustrations are artist impressions, even this medieval one – which seems to me to be the more realistic and less romanticised.

History in France Part 4 - Vercingetorix 82-46 BCE

When I was a child growing up on the French South Pacific island of New Caledonia (my book “French Sand” is set there), the ancient Gaul leader, Vercingetorix, was the subject of a history lesson one day at school.

I have never liked the Romans because of what they did to him – much to my mother’s distress, as she was a classicist, a scholar of Roman history and a professor of Latin. How can you not admire the Romans ?!she would exclaim in exasperation.

Because they were rotten to Vercingetorix.  Quite a logical answer if one is only eight years old.

Vercingetorix was a cheiftan in Gaul during the time of Julius Ceasar’s Gallic Wars.  At that time Gaul was divided in to many little areas, each with its own chief. Vercingetorix, who was from Arvenis (now the Auverge) united the chieftans in a fight against the Romans.  They in turn made him King.  He won an outstanding victory in 52 BC against the Romans at the Battle of Gergovia but, later the same year, lost at the Battle of Alesia  and was captured.

He was kept in a small wooden cage for five years and paraded through the streets of Rome before his execution.  What little information we have about him comes from Julius Ceasar’s account of the Gallic Wars, and what statues and illustrations we have of him are, of course, fictive.  But he stikes an enigmatic pose, doesn’t he ?  Looks good.  I think it was a picture of him, squatting like an animal in his little cage, that I saw in a history book, and quite possibly a figment of the illustrator’s imagination, that made me always dislike the Romans …

Catherine Broughton is a novelist. Her books are available on Amazon and Kindle, or can be ordered from book shops and libraries.  More about Catherine Broughton and her work on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

History in France Part 3 - Royan

Royan is a holiday resort sitting on the Gironde Estuary, about half way down the Atlantic coast of France.  When we first came here, over twenty years ago, Royan was very much “an old folks’ town”, with a few elderly people enjoying the sun in the summer months and utterly devoid of any signs of life in the winter.

Nowadays, although it most certainly not my favourite town in the area, it is a lively and charismatic place all year round, with a very good selection of shops and restaurants, wonderful markets and huge sandy beaches.  People quite often rent our Chateau early in December in order to benefit from the excellent French-shopping, the way only the French can do it,  in Royan.

Archeologists have found cut flints in the area, so we know that there was a pre-historic settlement.  During Roman occupation, oysters were bred here, and vineyards planted.  Charentais wine is a bit mediocre, actually, but the vines dates back many hundreds of years.  Royan then came under English control in the days of Eleanor of Aquitaine (when her husband became Henry II of England in 1154, her lands passed under English control) and to this day there are English surnames – Bell, Moore, Tyler – that are the legacy of English soldiers in the area.

In 1789, shortly before the Revolution, this area of France was named Charente Inferieur, and it retained this name till the 1980s when, quite rightly, it was decided that the name was not very encouraging and, as tourism was vital, it was re-named Charente Maritime.  Much better !

During World War II the Germans occupied Royan and the surrounding area.  Well after the liberation of France, the Germans held on grimly to the town.  Following information from the French General Larminat, who stated that there were only Germans and collaborators left, on 5th January 1945 the British RAF bombed heavily and all but flattened the whole place.  The job was finished in April by the Americans.  By this time Larminat realized his mistake and send an urgent message to the Americans – but in French.  The signalman, understandably, didn’t speak French.  Over 1500 French civilians were killed or wounded.

Most of the old buildings were destroyed, leaving today just a small selection of absolutely exquisite Napoleon III (Victorian in the British world) houses to one side of the sea front.  The neo-Gothic church was destroyed and when the town was re-built in the 1950s a new church was built.  Apparently it is a classified historical monument, the Notre Dame, but I’m afraid I can’t see it.  Looks more like a monstrosity to me.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist. Her books are available on Amazon and Kindle, or can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries.  Catherine Broughton is also a published poet and an artist.  Go to http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk for more about her and her work, to include her entertaining blogs and short stories from around the world.

Frangi-Pangi

I have fond memories of playing, with my little sister, in a frangi-pangi tree in Nigeria when I was a little girl.  The tree was in the middle of the front lawn of our house in Ibadan, and my sister and I played – incredibly – “house” in the tree.

I suppose the tree must have been a good size, for we were aged something around 7 and 8, and we found areas of the tree that were the bedroom, or the kitchen and so on.  We wore just knickers – my mother had made them, blue and white stiped knickers with little roses in the stripes.  They had a wide frill of the same fabric around the edge of the leg. There were several pairs of them.  Looking back on it, I suppose my mother made them as something easy to replace, easy to wash and, although they weren’t shorts, they were not quite knickers either.  We were always barefoot.  We used to arrange the frangi-pangi in our hair and around the waist-band of our knickers.

We went to school, of course, driven there in a Landrover by a Nigerian called “driver”.  We thought that was his name.  I don’t remember anything about him except that he took us to school, along with my big brother, and then fetched us again when, as soon as we were home, we stripped off our school clothes and climbed in to the frangi-pangi tree.

The house was big with a wide shadey terrace running all around it.  We had a houseboy called Difon and a cook and a “gardener” – I use inverted commas because the garden was really just a dust bowl with a frangi-pangi tree.  The cook’s children often used to play with us.  We also had an English nanny called Valerie, who we all loved very much, even though we got spanked for using her make up.

At some stage another little sister appeared.  It seemed she was bright red.   She was seven years younger, and quite an oddity, bundled in a huge white nappy, and lying either in my mother’s arms or in a cot that seemed much too big for her.

One day there was a snake weaving its way through the upright slats of the cot.  The baby lay silently.  My mother read.  My brother, sister and I watched the snake for a while and then one of us felt it a good idea to mention it to our mother.

“Mummy, there is a snake in the cot…”

My poor mother!  It was only many years later she mentioned to me how she hated Nigeria, and that after the snake incident she begged my father (who was a doctor of tropical disease) to return to South Africa.  Four years in Nigeria is enough for any white woman even in those days when it was “British”.

From there we went to Switzerland for a few years, and then to the South Pacific – that was wonderful, and forms the happiest part of my childhood memories.  Along with the frangi-pangi tree.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist. Her books are available on Amazon and Kindle or can be ordered from major book stores and libraries.  Catherine Broughton is also an artist and a poet. More about her, to include her entertaining blogs and short stories from around the world, on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

Tonnay Boutonne-historical places in this part of France

We used to live just outside Tonnay Boutonne, so I know it well.  It is (with the best will in the world) just a stoney French village with a main road blasting through the middle of it.  I haven’t been for several years now and I have heard that it has been spruced-up and modernized, which is great.  Some of these villages have had by-passes built, which makes the place quieter but takes all the trade away.  Tonnay Boutonne boasts a pretty river, the Boutonne, an interesting old church and some pretty surrounding countryside.

Tonnay Boutonne’s main claim to fame (if it can be called fame) is that one Ganes de Ganelon ( 8th Century) was once Lord of it.  Never heard of him of course.  He was the chap who betrayed Roland, as in Roland and Charlemagne.  He was married to Isabelle de Taillefer, widow of the King Jean-sans-Terre, and her ghost is said to haunt the one remaining tower in the centre of the village.  She in turn was Countess of Taillebourg, another local village.

Tonnay Boutonne has two stories as to the origin of its name.  The first is that the ancient Celtic word for tower was tom, and the ancient Celtic word for river was bou.  The second story dates to the days of Eleanor of Aquitaine (12th Century), when there was a large population of English in the area and they referred to the town as the town on the Boutonne, which over the years became Tonnay Boutonne.  The truth is undoubtedly a mixture of the two.

There are the remains of a chateau, mostly within the grounds of a private house.  It seems there were three towers with drawbridges and a moat, and that the place was more of a fortification than a village.  The remains of the Chateau have been dated to the 8th Century, but the one remaining tower, in perfect order, seems to be several hundred years later.  Perhaps it was re-built.

Now, Roland is a vastly more interesting subject, even though he never went (as far as I know) to Tonnay Boutonne.   During medeival years there was a great culture for highly romanticized and embellished “true stories”, and La Chanson de Roland appears in a 12th Century Oxford manuscript, telling the story of Roland, nephew of Charlemagne and Defender of the Frontiers.  He and his army were betrayed by Ganelon in Iberia at the battle of Roncevaux, where they were ambushed and every last man slaughtered.  According to the legend, Roland had a horn ( called an olifant, which was a special message-horn) to blow if he needed back-up, which, with his dying breath he managed to blow, and Charlemagne and army came dashing to the rescue, arriving too late.

Roland also had a horse by the name of Veillantif and a sword that no other man could weild, by the name of Durandel.  These stories, and various versions of them, appear in medeival writings in Norway, Italy and Spain, as well as in England and France.  However, the one and only historic and accurate mention of Roland is in Charlemagne’s 8th Century “biography” (Einhart), where it is stated that Roland, nephew to the kind and prefect of all frontiers, was killed at Roncevaux in the year 778 AD.

What happened to Ganelon ?  Oh, I think Charlemagne killed him, which is why his wife’s ghost forever haunts the tower ….

Catherine Broughton is a novelist.  Her books are available on Amazon and Kindle, or can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries.  Catherine Broughton is also a publsihed poet and an artist.  Her web site, for her entertaining stories and blogs from all over the world, is http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

The Man with Green Fingers

I have received a fair few messages recently, asking me what made me think of “The Man with Green Fingers” and how in the world I came up with the plot.

To see full blog and more please visit www.turquoisemoon.co.uk