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Chris

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Posts posted by Chris

    Laguiole corkscrew

    in French Food and Wine

    Posted

    I live in England and want to buy a Laguiole corkscrew as a special present. I read this week that much of that brand is mass-produced in China versus the traditional hand-made French products.

    Does anyone know of a website featuring the latter?

    Cheers

    Chris

    The times they are a changin'?

    in French Food and Wine

    Posted

    One out of every two sandwiches sold in France last year was a hamburger, but the German-American classic's runaway success has not been attributed to fast-food restaurants.

    The hamburger, a food often associated with the unrefined American palate, is taking French restaurants by storm. Around 970 million meat patties on a bun were sold in France in 2013, a figure that represents half of last year's sandwich sales, according to a recent study.

    www.france24.com/en/20140205-france-hamburgers-trend-sales-sandwiches-restaurants/

    Hopeless!

    in French Language

    Posted

    In management training, its widely taught that 70% of all communication is non-verbal. Body language helps in communicating for sure, and I found it that bit easier face-to-face than over the phone.

    Hopeless!

    in French Language

    Posted

    Thanks, Betty. Your last point was interesting also: as I mentioned earlier, the French I talked with on holiday last month using my one year of study could not have been more encouraging. I had to dive in head-first, given no-one spoke English, and and nervous as I was at first, the fact I was communicating and getting comprehensible answers back gave me more confidence to do more.

    I also got the gist of a number of replies without understanding a number of the words, by knowing enough and getting it from the context.

    Step by step...

    Hopeless!

    in French Language

    Posted

    Thanks, Ron - a very picturesque description and it sounds idyllic. It also resonates with my Catholicism. I'll do my best to replicate that in England and who knows, one day perhaps en la France.

    Hopeless!

    in French Language

    Posted

    Thanks for the replies and encouragement, everyone. I love the language (and culture) and study every day, despite working full-time in a job that is mentally taxing. Coming from me, that's saying something!

    Hopeless!

    in French Language

    Posted

    Living in the UK and learning French for just over a year, I've picked up some very useful tips from the early part of this thread, especially Betty's verb tip.

    I've never liked grammar to put it mildly, but with the help of my tutor, have stared to grasp the nettle and not only see the rationale and logic of it, but weirdly, am starting to enjoy the challenge of it.

    The very daunting aspect of the thread is the obvious fact that unless one lives in France, fluency is never going to happen.

    I'll just have to settle for learning as best I can under the circumstances and aim to be better each time we holiday there.

    We were in the Alpes-Maritimes recently, and my extremely basic French was crucial to communicate. The locals were charming in the extreme given my efforts to communicate and reciprocated with amazing generosity.

    We love France!

    Know your facts before taking the moral high ground

    in Other Topics

    Posted

    [quote user="Théière"]

    All this moral stuff from an organisation that won't allow women to become Bishops?

    Still if they earn from it they can fix all their churches without taking off the congregation.............

    [/quote]

    Again, focusing on the positive aspect - he's not only condemned an average of 1,600% interest rates, but focused on the commercial alternative (credit unions) that offer an average of 24%. If you're living on the breadline with a lousy credit rating, you would thank him for that and worry less about the other aspects of his organisation perhaps?

    Know your facts before taking the moral high ground

    in Other Topics

    Posted

    None of us is perfect. He has the moral high ground on this issue, given the obscene interest rates Wonga charges - typically, 1,600%. His motives and methods are sound; i.e. not just to condemn, but to out compete them. http://www.itv.com/news/2013-07-25/welby-aims-to-compete-wonga-out-of-existence/

    At least as a businessman, their chief exec respected his rationale:

    "The Archbishop told Total Politics magazine: "I've met the head of Wonga and we had a very good conversation and I said to him quite bluntly 'we're not in the business of trying to legislate you out of existence, we're trying to compete you out of existence'. He's a businessman, he took that well."

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10201272/Archbishop-warns-Wonga-that-Church-wants-to-force-it-out-of-business.html

    Tour de France, not a word

    in The Complete France Post Bag

    Posted

    [quote user="dwmcn"]On the other hand, can you edit a message and delete the gobbledygook?[/quote]

    Like this?? You're a genius. Allegedly... ;)

    (Edited post) - It worked perfectly on preview but looked worse when posted.

    What the heck - I'll copy/paste and put quotes around it. Just like the old days of carbon paper and pre-fax. Yes, I remember it well...

    Tour de France, not a word

    in The Complete France Post Bag

    Posted

    Off topic to a small extent: the forum owners need to sort out the quote/gobbledygook thing. It's an unusable facility. (I use Safari, but it was also a problem when I used Google Chrome.) Yes, I did report it through the channels.)

    Re previous posts: two of my siblings were born in the States to my folks who are born and bred English. They have dual nationality. Having spent 11 years in the States and had close links through business since, I know that one's nationality is more a state of mind than a fluke of where one is born.
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