chessfou

Thanks for the corrections. I think arrivé(e) must have been a typo, as for presbytère, I always work on the assumption that any word ending in e is feminine (unless I know different, e.g. ...age) since 75% are ... ;-) Oh yes, quite old enough, although I don't remember it (and I don't think I've forgotten it).

Doesn't work for me. The greatest difficulties of speaking a "foreign" language come when suffering from being tired ane emotional or just plain tired (even worse is a combination of the two). Best way to improve a language? Depends what your level is but one thing is sure and that is the need to speak. Learning a language at school is generally a waste of time since most students at most schools will have the chance to speak the language for about 4 minutes per week (work it out - divide lesson time by 2, 'cos the teacher will be speaking, then divide the rest of the lesson time by the number in the class and you have a maximum time of about 1 min/lesson). For me the best, though exhausting way is to do half-day coaching sessions (a full day is too much) as that guarantees that I will be talking to the students for at least half of half a day.

[quote]Your gain from a cheaper council tax in France is completely wiped out by the need to pay a mutuelle for healthcare top up.[/quote] It is important to work with precise figures because everyone's case will be different. Our Taxe d'habitation (fantastic value @ only € 301) + mutuelle (€ 1400 for two of us) add up to just 63% of our last UK Council Tax bill (and the houses are pretty much like-for-like: 4+2+2 but here, in a village, we have pluses like big garden, cave, sous-sol and outsize garage to offset against the town location in UK). The overall €1000 p.a. saving is worth having. Of course, exactly how the numbers will work for the OP I have no idea.

[quote user="Just Katie"][quote user="chessfou"][quote]mais ou sont donc ces accents, cedille, etc? Puis-je avoir une lecon d'informatique SVP.[/quote] Oui, bien sûr. Il y a beaucoup de possibilités mais, à mon avis, la meilleure solution (surtout pour un ordinateur avec clavier QWERTY) c'est d'utiliser "Type French Characters" d'Avisoft: [/quote] Non, pas de tout.  Comment on dit "lazy" en francais? [:)] [/quote] Alors, qu'est-ce que votre solution de facilité pour les paresseux ? "Etre faineant" et les accents font cruellement défaut ... PS. Je suis aussi un tire-au-flanc ...

Here's one I prepared earlier: Ce sont les gens d'Hyères, ceux dont nous avons parlé hier qui produisent la bière "Pierre d'Hyères," si populaire à la presbytère avant de monter en chaire. Ce ne sont pas ceux dont nous avons parlé avant notre arrivé avant-hier à Hyères. "monter en chaire" = "to go up into the pulpit"

I thought the standard, at least administratively, was to count the whole of Aquitaine and Midi-Pyrenées (and therefore all of Aveyron) as S-W.

[quote]mais ou sont donc ces accents, cedille, etc? Puis-je avoir une lecon d'informatique SVP.[/quote] Oui, bien sûr. Il y a beaucoup de possibilités mais, à mon avis, la meilleure solution (surtout pour un ordinateur avec clavier QWERTY) c'est d'utiliser "Type French Characters" d'Avisoft: http://www.avisoft.co.uk/FrenchChars/TypeFrenchCharacters.htm Les avantages de ce logiciel: 1. c'est gratuit (pas mal comme début); 2. ça marche mieux que les autres (et c'est très facile pour l'utiliser).  

There are a few pitfalls that can apply to the guarantee: 1. Can your bank provide one? Ours (Caisse d'Epargne) could not  (not would not, could not), so we had, hurriedly, to set up an additional (more expensive) account with Crédit Agricole Britline (they're not the only bank that can do this but they were the only ones who ould undertake to do so late on a Friday afternoon); 2. It was a real pain to put £10k into an account that paid nothing (well, a pittance but charges were deducted from the pittance, so we were lending the bank money essentially for free); 3. The Immo will probably ask for a ridiculous length of time for the guarantee (as did ours) but we negotiated them down to a year (I forget whether they wanted 2 or 3 years - £20 or £30k of guarantee, not deposit, which would be illegal). Nonetheless, we got what we wanted from the deal (our home) but it was hard work to convince the Immo that, unlike their previous UK clients, we were not going to just hand in the keys (if they were lucky) and disappear back to Blighty or Spain or Cyprus or wherever.

Baisser les bras ? Non, je n'ai pas envie d'être un bras cassé en langue française donc je ne reste pas les bras croisés mais j'allonge mes bras vers le perfectionnement de mon français et si quelqu'un essayerait de m'empêcher je lui ferai un bras d'honneur (je suis prêt à toutes les bassesses). [;-)]

Well, not exactly but I can't quite get a phrase in this morning's Le Monde. Writing about Michael Phelps' victory in the semis of the 200m butterfly, the journalist scribbles: « ... facilement qualifié pour la finale, remportant haut la main sa demie. » OK, so he won (or carried off) his semi « haut la main » ? « Haut les mains! » from many a Western ("hands up") « avoir la haute main sur qqch » "to have supreme control of something" I'm going to answer my own question! I had searched fruitleslly in Le Robert & Collins (French section) for the answer but, while I have been typing, thought of tackling it the other way round and looked up "hand" in the English-French half and sure enough it's there: haut la main = hands down

Thanks for the Pennac suggestion. My local Médiathèque (catalogue on-line at long last) has a copy (plus one in the junior section), so I'll aim to pick it up when I take the Orsenna books back. That Pennac book even has an entry* to itself in Wikipedia, from which I have gleaned (at least temporarily) another two words for my card file: grappiller & la désacralisation. * http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comme_un_roman

I've finished "La grammaire est une chanson douce" so now it's on to "Les chevaliers du subjonctif." You (Odile) are certainly right about needing a good grasp of the language in order to tackle Orsenna. I always carry around with me a couple of 15x10 cards (a.k.a. 6"x4") in order to jot down new words (or those I've forgotten) and I usually get through two or three cards a week but I used 12 (150+ words just for this small book of no more than about 25,000 words total)! They're mostly quite interesting words, such as s'esclaffer, turlupiner, renâcler, cahot, gazouillis, foviner, échauboulure, fredonner and so on ...

Not sure I like "indispensive" although it is also somewhat interesting - it conjures up ideas of illness and lack of thought - "indisposed" and "indisposition" to "pensiveness".

What a lovely new word "inexpensible" is - for me it conjures up the twin ideas of being not only inexpensive but also an area where it is difficult to spend money. A serendipitous "typo".

You might also try the novel novels by Erik Orsenna. These are like nothing I've ever come across in any language. I think they are best described as adult books for children or, even more appropriately, children's books for adults. Orsenna loves words, especially French words and the French language. His books will certainly widen your vocabulary (I now look up no more than 1% of the text in Le Monde but at least 5-6% of the words Orsenna uses). I have just (yesterday) acquired his first three books and am currently 2/3 of the way through the first: La Grammaire est une chanson douce Here is a little of what Orsenna has to say about this book: Mais c'est la colère qui m'a poussé à écrire. Une colère de papa : je ne comprenais plus les questions posées en classe de français à mes enfants. Un jargon inconnu de moi leur était tombé sur la tête, comme par exemple la " focalisation omnisciente ". Pourquoi ces complications inutiles ? Les enfants de sixième ou de cinquième ne doivent pas être des linguistes ! Ils doivent seulement savoir lire et écrire. Et aussi apprendre à savourer la langue, à y trouver des surprises, des ravissements. http://www.erik-orsenna.com/grammaire_bienvenue.php

[quote]Perhaps I am wrong, nobody knows, the UK property market may in the future change and not behave as it has in the last twenty years.[/quote] Nobody knows but I doubt very much that human nature is going to change any time soon. The UK property market will surely continue to yo-yo: 20 years ago* was just about the peak of the market which was followed by a sizeable crash (ca. 1989-1995), bumped along the bottom a bit (1995-1998), then another huge hike (1999-2006/7) and now we're (or, rather, you're) on the downslope of the helter-skelter again. When it again reaches bottom (2012/13??) it will splash through the water for a bit and then presumably rise again like a phoenix (out of water?). * and 20 years before that was about the start of an enormous boom (until 1973/4), followed by a big bust (largely hidden by huge annual RPI inflation of 20-25% p.a.) before prices edged up again and then there was another bust (rather mild) about 1980, then they bumped along the bottom for a bit before prices took off again ca. 1985. Of course, such helter-skelters are absolutely normal for the price of anything - land, houses, food, oil, wine, postage stamps, antiques, art, ... Even if it is your home, aim to "buy low, sell high" rather than the other way round.

[quote]You may have noticed how many people add "quoi" at the end of a sentence????  That's a bit like saying "y'know".[/quote] My wife and I prefer to render that as "innit?"* * not to be confused with "inuit" ... [:)]

Of course, Sweet17 is correct (vis-a-vis ams). Markets are not logical - for instance, at the moment (and this applies even if oil prices drop by 50%) it is cheaper to drill for oil on the Bourse, the LSE (not the one that awards degrees) or Wall Street than it is to drill for it in the ground. Houses are no different - sometimes they sell for "more than they're worth" and sometimes less (where "more" and "less" can be a million miles apart). My own hunch is that house prices will drop (peak to trough) by more than 30% in UK, Spain, Ireland, USA, Australia ... but by less than that in France (in general; any areas relying on foreign buyers, especially British and Irish, can expect bigger falls). Of course, if you have bought, none of this really matters. On the other hand, if you are renting from a bank (a.k.a. "bought" with a mortgage), then it might. If you are renting from a normal propriétaire (as are we) then you can (probably) expect rents to rise slowly (in line with the French index).

Why not try? No idea what the demand would be but there is clearly a need.

The strict borrowing limits here should save France from the worst of it; although prices will drop here they shouldn't drop remotely as much as in Spain, Ireland and UK where almost limitless borrowing was available ("self-cert" a.k.a. "liar" mortgages and "my pension's a BTL" or two) will drop much more. Serious commentators suggest 40-50% falls which would seem eminently reasonable - that would take prices back (from peak) to where they were in 2001 and about double what they were in 1993. That still represents about 5% p.a. compound growth or, looked at another way, standing still at inflation+GDP growth (roughly 2.5% each over that period - bit more for inflation, bit less for GDP growth). That is still distinctly better than the Stock Market and suggests that stocks are undervalued at the moment while UK, Irish and Spanish housing is greatly overvalued (for the moment).

and a peat-bog is « la tourbière » so a quick Google should turn up something.

Today's lunchtime « Journal » had a brief item about Vouvant, where 10% of the population is English (acc. TF1's intrepid reporter). The poor sap they interviewed (about his ability at the game of Palets) stumbled through : « quand j'ai jeu bien, c'est un miracle. » (or something similar). The reporter added (my loose translation) : « Nope, the language of Molière is not a great success, far from it, in the hands of the subjects of Her Gracious Majesty who live in France -  more's the pity.  »  . « eh non, la langue de Molière ne fait vraiment pas recette, moins s'en faut, auprès des sujets de sa Gracieuse Majesté qui vivent en France - dommage. » . We'll just have to try harder, especially those who live in the Vendée ... [:)]

[quote] Beware, we are a few French posters on here,........................., we could do the same with the UK, would be interesting by the way ! [Frenchie] [/quote] Yes it would be interesting (or at least amusing [:)] ), so please do ... On another tack, Maria-Letizia Ramolino [;-)]  was officially known under the title of « Madame Mère » which I think is rather quaint.

Crikey!!! That is cheap. We live in the middle of nowhere and thought (most, exc. electricity*) of our costs were low: THab: €301+116 redevance audiovisuelle = €417 total water: ca. €15/month (but that was before they put in the mains drainage, which should be completed soon) electricity: ca. €140/month ordures ménagères: €8.5/month So, our THab (inc TV) is 40% more, water about the same (but there are costs for the fosse septique which, presumably, must apply to the quoted figure), electricity and rubbish double (we have no TFon). *Usually only the two of us in a 4 bed 2 recep but we have several "pet" PCs, as well as electric heating/climatisation. [edit: decided 40% is a bit nearer the mark than 50%]

Oops, forgot to mention that most of the Swiss Emmental in uk supermarkets is as miserable and tasteless as much of the French production (at least it was in Sainsbury's and Tesco's up until 2006).