If you’re thinking about becoming a student at Oxford, one of the best ways to find out what you’ll be letting yourself in for is the Oxvlog project on Youtube. It’s a student-led project to try and let people know what it’s like to apply here and to live and study in Oxford. There are a huge number of videos online, covering all aspects of the Oxford experience, including useful tips for people thinking of applying to study here. They’re also good at giving you the complete, unvarnished truth in a way you probably won’t find in official brochures and university websites (as you’ll quickly see if you click on the videos below…). We’ll be linking to vlog posts by modern linguists from time to time. A couple of the modern languages students on Oxvlog are from my own college, Somerville: Miriam studies philosophy and Spanish and Connor studies German. Here’s a sample post from each of them:
You can find the Youtube channel here, where you can browse for videos that look interesting, or subscribe to a particular vlogger who’s studying on a course that you might be considering.
While the Intelligence Services may not recruit their spies with a tap on the shoulder and a whispered conversation any more, they’re still very interested in modern languages graduates. If you’re interested in languages, you might as well bear them in mind as a career option…
Not long ago, The Guardian published an article on the topic. The full article is here, but here’s an extract:
If Kim Philby or Guy Burgess were able to stroll today around the famous Great Court of their old Cambridge college, Trinity, they might raise an eyebrow at the scruffiness of some students, but otherwise little has changed. It’s not just the surroundings that are remarkably consistent; so is one of the job opportunities: spying.
Top universities remain a useful place to find new entrants, not just linguists but also those with increasingly vital technology skills, or with the more varied and nebulous talents needed to be an agent in the field.
However, these days the net is cast far wider. For a couple of days this week if you entered “Russian language” and “university” into Google’s UK search engine, above the results popped a jaunty, paid-for advertisement. “Understand Russian?” it asked. “Help protect the UK.” A link took you to MI5’s careers website.
One Cambridge student said she knew of a handful of the 20 or so final-year Russian linguists who were contemplating the security services. She thought it an unlikely path for her, but still asked to not be named in case she changed her mind.
Another student, in her second year, who received the same email and also asked to speak anonymously, said it was a tempting route for students facing an uncertain economic landscape and laden with significant debts. “It’s probably an attractive career for a lot of people. Everyone is so concerned about not getting a job at all, so if you’re being offered something so secure, why wouldn’t you think about it?”
As a modern job it is not just secure, but also a very different working environment from the often lonely, drink and cigarette-fuelled world of the 1950s traitors. Characters such as Burgess – who spent much of his time during a posting in Washington drunk and was described in an FBI file as “louche, foul-mouthed … with a penchant for seducing hitchhikers” – would not be tolerated for long.
MI6 declined to comment on its recruitment policies but pointed the Guardian to the careers section of its website. This now includes a “wellbeing” page, which stresses a commitment to health and safety, and talks of counsellors being available to staff. Anonymous profiles of intelligence officers include a woman who recently took maternity leave and praises the work-life balance.
MI5 also declined to comment but GCHQ, the Cheltenham-based communications and interceptions centre, said it was “always looking to recruit those with language skills relevant to the world today”. A spokesman said: “A combination of workforce changes and the requirement from government that GCHQ continues to deliver on its mission to keep the UK safe means that we are currently looking for those with skills in a number of languages, one of which is Russian.”
Among ways to attract new people was through “regular engagements with universities”, the spokesman added.
Sitting in a cafe in one of the university’s modern buildings, the Cambridge students who spoke to the Guardian said many more of their peers were applying for the Foreign Office fast-track scheme for budding diplomats, now also much changed, with a first round consisting of internet-based aptitude tests.
Both said returning to Russia as an intelligence operative rather than a diplomat could prove difficult.
“If you’ve spent time in Russia and got to know Russian people it could almost feel a bit strange returning there as a spy,” said the second-year student. “It’s almost as if you’re betraying the Russian people you know, or at least your relationship with them might be very different.”
Her friend echoed this point: “When I was in Moscow I volunteered at a fostering commune, which was amazing. It would be very different going back there as a spy. If you like the country and like the people it could be difficult to do that sort of job.”
She added: “When I started my course Russia wasn’t the big enemy. It’s strange how it’s all changed so quickly. I didn’t expect my degree to be so in demand like this.”
Yes, it’s that time of year again: the daffodils have come and gone, the lily of the valley is blooming, the lambs are frolicking in the fields and… the Eurovision song contest is upon us. As you may know, the French are fiercely patriotic about how much time is given to French chansons on their airwaves. Armed with knowledge of past Eurovision successes in la langue de Molière, like Patricia Kaas’ S’il fallait le faire [If it had to be done] (2009), Marie Myriam’s L’enfant et l’oiseau [The child and the bird] (1977), France Gall’s Poupée de cire, poupée de son [Wax doll, rag doll] (1965) or Belgian Sandra Kim’s J’aime la vie [I love life] (1986), not to mention Céline Dion’s 1988 winner for Switzerland, Ne partez pas sans moi (Don’t leave without me), all of which can be found here, https://eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com/specials/rankings/best-eurovision-song-ever/, I trawled the internet to find out what countries which count French amongst their official languages were sending as their musical message to the world. I was in for a severe disappointment. Switzerland is going for The Last of our Kind by a Canadian called Rykka, Belgium for Laura’s What’s the pressure and Luxembourg is not entering this year. France has, perhaps uncharacteristically, gone for a long bilingual song called J’ai cherché [I have looked for] which is here http://www.eurovision.tv/page/stockholm-2016/all-participants. One presumes that the singer, Amir, is hedging his bets and trying to appeal to different constituencies by choosing to sing both in French and in English. Overall, it is a meagre crop for les francophones, you may say. Indeed, so let’s hear it for one candidate who comes from an exclusively German-speaking land, Austria, and is singing in French: Zoë, with Loin d’ici [Far from here].
Zoë Straub is 19 and attended the Lycée Français in Vienna so her French is perfect. Try listening to the song first to see how much of it you catch. It is about a faraway land which is a sort of paradise we should strive for.
Here are the lyrics, with a couple of words explained at the bottom of the page:
Et quand tu chantes, oui moi je chante aussi Quand tu t’élances, je suis Et quand tu voles, oui moi je vole aussi Si tu t’élances, j’te suis
Dans un pays loin d’ici A la recherche du paradis Dans un pays loin d’ici On chante, on chante Dans un pays loin d’ici A la recherche du paradis Dans un pays loin d’ici On chante…
Et quand la route nous semble sans issue Sans aucun doute, j’te suis Sans aucun doute, même si on s’ra perdus Sans aucun doute, j’te suis
Dans un pays loin d’ici À la recherche du paradis Dans un pays loin d’ici On chante, on chante Dans un pays loin d’ici À la recherche du paradis Dans un pays loin d’ici On chante, on chante
On chante et on danse et on rit, on s’élance, réuni, enivré, dans l’imprudence
Dans un pays loin d’ici À la recherche du paradis Dans un pays loin d’ici On chante, on chante Dans un pays loin d’ici À la recherche du paradis Dans un pays loin d’ici On chante, on chante Dans un pays loin d’ici À la recherche du paradis Dans un pays loin d’ici On chante, on chante
On chante, on chante, on danse, on danse Dans un pays On chante, on chante, on danse, on danse Loin d’ici.
You will notice the elisions in the sung version (j’te instead of je te; on s’ra for on sera).
Je suis here is the first person of the verb suivre, to follow, not of être.
S’élancer is to rush or dash forward.
Enivré is the past participle of the verb enivrer. Être enivré is to be drunk (ivre). It is used her metaphorically.
A quick note on the title of this post. Tout finit par des chansons: this is the last line of Beaumarchais’ famous Mariage de Figaro. In the play, it more or less means It all ends happily. Literally, it means It all ends with songs.
Typical title page of the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, the era’s most popular children’s periodical.
What kind of books defined your childhood? In Canada where I’m from, it was all about Robert Munsch, but I personally also enjoyed Franklin, Horrible Harry, Goosebumps, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and of course Harry Potter. When you’re a Master’s student in literature at university, you can feel nostalgic about your childhood reading practices; mostly the fact that you didn’t feel compelled to analyse every passage until all pleasure was lost from reading! Remember when going to the library was part of the class schedule in elementary school and for literally two hours a week the librarian would read to you? Yes, you didn’t even have to read the books yourself! Those were the days!
Fast forward to 2016, and yours truly needed to find a nifty topic for her History of the Book project. I combined my nostalgia with my period of specialization and BAM! the topic ‘Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth Century’ was born. It was a good thing I’m a nineteenth century enthusiast, because as I conducted my research, I found out that Children’s literature didn’t even exist prior to this period. ‘But how is this possible,’ you ask? Surely kids were reading before then? The answer is yes – but they were reading books that were originally destined for adults! Even the Fables by Lafontaine were written for adults (if you ever get a chance to read Émile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he goes on quite the spiel about how inappropriate it is for children to read the Fables).
Remember this song from when you were a kid? They were teaching it in the 19th century too!
At the end of the eighteenth century, the literature available to children ranged from school books dealing with arithmetic, grammar and history, didactic short stories and dialogues written by (mostly) governesses, or whatever kids could find in their parent’s library (they took a strong liking to Robinson Crusoe). Among the literary circles of high society, it was generally accepted that children were not worth writing for. Furthermore, those authors that did write stories for children were not considered ‘real’ writers, and were often ridiculed for their incompetence or shunned from literary gatherings.
Learn about France’s heritage in this segment called ‘Vues et monuments de France’.
Two things happened in the nineteenth century that were to change the way people perceived children and writing. Firstly, the literacy rate amongst the young was skyrocketing due to the introduction of new education laws that established new schools, subsidized the costs of supplies, secularized the curriculum and introduced mandatory attendance. Children suddenly became thirsty for new books, and publishers took the opportunity to monetize on the phenomenon. This brings us to point number two: industrialization. Thanks to inventions of new presses and cheap paper, books could now be mass-produced at lower costs. A new network of railways made transporting these inexpensive books to eager children all over France much easier and sooner than later, books for children were the era’s top bestsellers.
Issue in memorial to P.-J. Hetzel, following the editor’s death.
During my research, I kept coming across the name of one specific publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Out of all the publishers specializing in children’s book, he stood out for me due to his respect, genuineness, and compassion for his audience. Remember how I said that children’s authors were perceived as ‘inferior’ to other writers? Hetzel worked very hard to change that consensus in France. As a publisher of books destined for adults as well, Hetzel commissioned some of the greatest writers of the period to write children’s stories for his first magazine: Nouveau magasin des enfants. Surely you’ve heard of George Sand, Alfred de Musset, and Balzac, but did you know that they wrote stories for children too? Yup! And it may have never happened without Hetzel’s determination to change the face of children’s literature in France.
Notice the footnotes designed to help the young readers with new vocabulary.
Hetzel was a fascinating man and I encourage you to read about his life. For the purpose of my study, I concentrated on what is arguably his greatest accomplishment as an editor: the Magasin d’éducation et de récréation. The title says it all: Hetzel wanted to create a publication that would combine practical information with entertainment. He wanted it to be a high quality project written by renowned authors and academics, and illustrated by the best artists in France. It is important to note that while children’s literature was expanding as a genre, most publishers were purely profit-driven, using the smallest fonts, the cheapest paper and certainly not spending the money to commission illustrations. But not Hetzel. He felt that children deserved better and would be more inclined to learn if you gave them quality material. The paper he used was thick and glossy. The size of his books was large in-8o and hundreds of pictures were featured in each volume. Hetzel’s books were literally works of art.
So what could you read about in this magazine, you ask? Literally everything regarding the arts and sciences. Top academics from the nation’s most reputable schools were invited to contribute factual articles and entertaining fiction. Over the course of nearly forty years of existence, the Magasin included numerous topics including architecture, astronomy, anatomy, geography, family life, history, chemistry, folklore, charity, poetry… you name it! One thing you wouldn’t find, however, was detailed discussion about God and religion. This was demonstrative of Hetzel’s republican values, and his promotion of a secularized society long before the Ferry Laws made it common practice. Another unique aspect of this magazine was that it contained content for all reading levels, meaning that the whole family, from newborns to parents, would enjoy and benefit from it. The most successful writer Hetzel discovered was undoubtedly Jules Verne whose scientific novels first appeared in the Magasin in serials before later becoming classics in their own right. Verne was a perfect example of an author who could appeal to both younger and more mature audiences.
Typical title page of the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, the era’s most popular children’s periodical
Short poems to teach the letters of the alphabet. Can you see the letters hidden in the pictures?
As you can probably imagine, the Magasin was an immense project that consumed Hetzel until the day he died. But why did he care so much about it? Why did he personally check every manuscript submitted and rework it until he thought it was absolutely perfect? Considering the success of the publication, he probably could have retired early and moved to some exotic, sunny place, right? Well, that was inconceivable for Hetzel. The man was a fervent republican and truly believed in the progress of humanity through literature. He saw that science and knowledge were the avenue through which people would make the world a more comfortable and just place to live in. He also saw that children, if given a good education and taught to respect and help each other, would be the ones capable of bringing real change in the world. Sounds like someone should be giving this man a peace prize!
I’m not sure about you, but to me this magazine seems pretty downright cool! Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong era and fear for my own future kids who will be reading books on tablets! They will never know the joy of unwrapping a beautifully illustrated keepsake book on Christmas day (and actually being happy to receive it) or waiting by the mailbox for the next chapter of a Jules Verne novel. Or maybe you think I’m crazy and just want to surf the internet. Regardless of how you read literature, hopefully this little post has enlightened you on children and their literature in nineteenth century France. Don’t forget to let us know your favourite book from your childhood by leaving a comment!
P.S. If the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation sounds really neat to you, you may wish to check out Volume I available for free online through Google Books. While you’re at it, why not check out the Bodelian Library Special Collections website to find out what other gems of the past are hiding in the basements of Oxford.
Alina Ruiz is a postgraduate student in French at Oxford University. This post was developed from her research into the History of the Book as part of her Masters degree.
So, the annual QS World University Rankings have been published for 2016. One of the most respected and widely noted university rankings, QS independently rates over 900 universities around the world on their academic reputation and the employability of their students, and ranks them overall and for the individual subject they offer.
Modern language departments are rated for the ‘academic reputation’ of their teachers and researchers, and the ’employer reputation’ of the students who graduate their courses, and the two ratings are then combined to provide a Top Fifty ranking of modern languages around the world. You can see the full list of fifty here, but shall we just take a peek at the Top Five?
OK, in ascending order, at Number Five we have…
… Stanford University in the US. Up from 8th place last year, it has an Academic Reputation score of 92.3 and an Employer Reputation score of 86.4. Its overall score is 90.5.
In fourth place we have…
… UCB, the University of California, Berkeley. Holding steady in 4th place for the second year running, it has an Academic Reputation score of 95.7 and an Employer Reputation score of 83.6. Its overall score is 92.1.
And then in third place…
Harvard University, ranked the best university in the US for modern languages. Unchanged from last year in third place on the global rankings, it has an Academic Reputation score of 99.9 and an Employer Reputation score of 95.5. Its overall score is 98.6.
In second place…
Cambridge University, here in the UK. Steady in 2nd place from last year, it has an Academic Reputation score of 99.7 and an Employer Reputation score of 99.3. Its overall score is 99.6.
Which leaves the QS-ranked Number One modern languages faculty in the world…
Yes, it’s us. Oxford University is number one in the world for the fourth year in a row. Our Modern Languages Faculty has an Academic Reputation score of 100.0 and an Employer Reputation score of 100.0, giving an overall score of 100.0.
We offer a world-class education from world-leading academics. And we’d like you to come and study with us. You can check out our courses here. You can find details of open days and summer schools here if you’d like to check us out in person. And all the information on how to apply to study with us is here. We’re waiting to hear from you.
Some verbs are special. Learning French, you soon get to know about the small list of verbs that don’t behave like the others when you put them in the passé composé. They conjugate with être instead of avoir, and their past participle agrees with the subject of the verb. So rather than ‘ils ont donné’ or ‘elle a fait’, you get ‘ils sont partis’ or ‘elle est tombée’. They are the Mrs Vandertrampverbs, and they are these:
Monter (elle est montée)
Retourner (elle est retournée)
Sortir (elle est sortie)
Venir (elle est venue)
Aller (elle est allée)
Naître (elle est née)
Descendre (elle est descendue)
Entrer (elle est entrée)
Rester (elle est restée)
Tomber (elle est tombée)
Rentrer (elle est rentrée)
Arriver (elle est arrivée)
Mourir (elle est morte)
Partir (elle est partie)
Good old Mrs Vandertramp, the helpful mnemonic-lady made up of the initial letters of all the special verbs. Except… something about her has always bothered me. Why is there only one ‘D’ in the name, when both descendre and devenir are on the special-verb list? Presumably it’s because devenir is just venir (which is in the name), plus a prefix. But in that case, why does the mnemonic include both entrer and rentrer? And if it includes rentrer, why not revenir, remonter, redescendre, redevenir, retomber, repartir, ressortir (note the extra ‘s’ in that one), and renaître? Adding in Mrs Vandertramp’s husband to make ‘Dr & Mrs’ (as in the image at the top of the post) is hardly going to solve that problem.
No, if you want a mnemonic that covers all the subject-agreeing être-conjugating verbs, you’re going to have to memorize this one:
Arrrrrrrrrrr, Stamp DVD Men !
…which, funnily enough, is also the official motto of the International Association for Video Piracy.
A video pirate yesterday
There is another version of the Mrs Vandertramp mnemonic which I learned at school: the less memorably named Mrs Daventramp, who just includes a letter for each of the thirteen basic verbs, missing out any which are the same with an added prefix. It means you don’t have to include any of the endless ‘re-‘ prefixes, but also means you still have to be careful not to forget about devenir and redevenir (to become again or turn back into), which are included in the V for venir. Alternatively, if you want to strip out all the ‘re-‘ prefixes and leave in all the rest, you could acquaint yourself with Mr D. M. Vaderpants, who has descendre and devenir in his name, but none of the superfluous ‘re-‘ derivatives.
Mr D. M. Vaderpants yesterday.
The problem with all of these mnemonics is that in some ways they actually make things more difficult than they really are. The special verbs naturally form into groups, either by being opposites in meaning or by adding prefixes, and the mnemonics split up these groups and shuffle everything around randomly. In fact, with a bit of fiddling about, we can reduce the Mrs Vandertramp verbs to a simple list of five, plus the related verbs to each of them. The verbs are Naître, Sortir, Partir, Aller and Monter. Behold, the N-Spam verbs!
Naître, plus its opposite, mourir, and with a prefix, renaître.
Sortir, plus its opposite, entrer, and their prefixed versions, ressortir and rentrer.
Partir. What’s the opposite of depart/leave/go? Obviously, it’s arrive/return/stay. The three verbs arriver, retourner and rester are all opposites of partir. Plus, there’s the prefix version, repartir (to set out again, not to be confused with répartir, to share out).
Aller, plus its opposite, venir, and the two prefixes, devenir and revenir.
Monter means to rise or ascend, and also has two opposites: fall (tomber) or descend (descendre), plus a prefixed version of all three: remonter, redescendre, retomber.
N-Spam. Like N-Dubz, but with spam.
Really though, unless you’re going to carry a piece of paper around with you and refer to it whenever you need to say something in the passé composé, these lists are only useful to get you started. What you need to do is keep speaking, listening, and reading in French until ‘elle est tombée’ sounds right and natural to you, and ‘elle a tombé’ sounds weird and wrong. Once you get to that point, you’re thinking like a French person. Mrs Vandertramp has become a part of you, and will live somewhere inside your head for evermore.
ADVANCED VANDERTRAMPING
To finish with, a few extra notes and complications, as Mrs Vandertramp is never quite as straightforward as people might like her to be.
1. All the Vandertramp verbs are intransitive, meaning they don’t have an object: you can go, but you can’t go something, in the way that you can do something, eat something, see something. Some of the verbs on the list in fact have a transitive version. ‘Monter’ can be used intransitively as a Vandertramp verb, ‘elle est montée’ (she went up), but also transitively, meaning either to go up something, or to take something up. In that usage, it’s no longer a Vandertramp verb, but conjugates with avoir: elle a monté l’escalier; elle a monté les valises dans la chambre. You can also use five other verbs from the list in the same way: (re)descendre quelque chose (go/bring down something), remonter quelque chose (go back up something/wind something up), rentrer quelque chose (bring something in), retourner quelque chose (turn something over), and (res)sortir quelque chose (take something out).
2. Retourner gets a proper place on the Vandertramp list, unlike rentrer, revenir, remonter, redescendre, redevenir, retomber, repartir, ressortir and renaître, which are optional extras. That’s because the others are all Vandertramp verbs even without the re- prefix, but not retourner. The verb tourner does exist in French, but it’s conjugated with avoir: elle a tourné la clef/la clef a tourné.
3. There’s one more Vandertramp verb we haven’t mentioned. Décéder, a more formal synonym for mourir, is not as commonly used as the other ones, so often gets overlooked, but it works in just the same way as the rest of them.
4. There are four other verbs in French, which, while not actually being part of the Vandertramp list, might perhaps be described as Vandertramp-ish. Accourir (to rush up) and apparaître (to appear) can take être or avoir, as you prefer, with no change in meaning. The same goes for passer (to pass), which is more often treated as a Vandertramp verb than not. (The exception is the phrase ‘passer pour’, to pass as or be taken for, which always takes avoir: ‘il a passé pour intelligent’ – ‘people believed he was clever’.) Lastly, demeurer is a Vandertramp verb when used in the sense of ‘remain’ (elle est demeurée fidèle), but not in the sense of ‘live (somewhere)’ (elle a demeuré à Marseille).
5. Oh, and one other thing about monter: as well as taking avoir when used transitively, it can also take avoir when it means that the level of something has risen: le fleuve a monté; les prix ont monté. In this sense, it’s being the opposite of the non-Vandertramp verb, baisser, rather than of descendre.
6. Lastly, there are no other Vandertramp verbs. Reflexive verbs take être in the passécomposé too, but they don’t agree with the subject, as we talked about here.Also, you may occasionally think you’ve come across an extra Vandertramp verb in a sentence like ‘la ville est tout à fait changée’, but that’s because past participles can sometimes be used as adjectives, just as you’d say ‘la ville est tout à fait différente’. In the passé composé, changer takes avoir and doesn’t agree with the subject: elle a beaucoup changé récemment.
To assist you, you will be provided with a state-of-the art kitchen, plus a glamorous French movie star to pass you the ingredients as you need them. You can choose between Gaspard Ulliel or Ludivine Sagnier:
GaspardLudivine
There are two slight issues with Gaspard and Ludivine. The first is that neither of them speaks a word of English, so all your instructions will have to be in French. (To be fair, Gaspard is able to tell people in English that he’s nert going to be ze person ′e is expected to be any more, but that’s frankly more of a hindrance than a help in a baker’s assistant. You should maybe have gone for Ludivine.) Secondly, like many film stars, they’re actually not that bright, and need to be told clearly and precisely what to do and when to do it.
To start with, then, you’re going to have to show them each of the ingredients. Go through the list below with your chosen assistant.
Voici le sucre. (the sugar)
Voici la tablette de chocolat. (the chocolate bar)
Voici les pépites de chocolat. (the chocolate chips)
Voici un bol. (a bowl)
Voici une cuillère en bois. (a wooden spoon)
Voici des oeufs. (some eggs)
Voici du beurre. (some butter)
Voici de la farine. (some flour)
That list, as you may have noticed, covers all the articles French uses. There are definite and indefinite articles for masculine and feminine, singular and plural, countable and uncountable nouns. If you’re not familiar with that last distinction (also known as ‘count’ and ‘mass’ nouns), it’s simply that in English and French, some things can be counted (one egg, two eggs/un oeuf, deux oeufs) and some things can’t ( you can have some flour/de la farine, but you can’t have two flours/deux farines).
As in English the definite article le/la gets used for both countable (the egg/l’oeuf) and uncountable (the flour/la farine) nouns. The indefinite article un/une can ONLY be used for countable nouns (an egg/un oeuf), which is why we need to use the alternative du/de la, sometimes called the partitive article, for uncountables (some flour/de la farine).
Now it’s time to get baking! As you require each item, you need to tell your glamorous assistant that you need it, using the construction ‘j’ai besoin de’, I need, or literally translated,I have need of. That will mean combining the French de, meaning of, with each of the possible French articles.
J’ai besoin du sucre. (I need the sugar)
J’ai besoin de la tablette de chocolat. (I need the chocolate bar)
J’ai besoin des pépites de chocolat. (I need the chocolate chips)
J’ai besoin d’un bol. (I need a bowl)
J’ai besoin d’une cuillère en bois. (I need a wooden spoon)
J’ai besoin d’oeufs. (I need some eggs)
J’ai besoin de beurre. (I need some butter)
J’ai besoin de farine. (I need some flour)
As you can see, it’s basically a matter of grammar maths, of knowing what you get when you add de/of to each of the three definite articles, the three indefinite articles, and the two partitive articles (the reason there are only two partitive articles is because uncountable nouns don’t have plurals). Here’s the arithmetic laid out:
de+le = du
de+la=de la
de+les= des
de+un= d’un
de+une=d’une
de+des= de
de+du= de
de+de la= de
As usual, the French have confused things by having different words that look and sound identical scattered through the system. So du, de la and des can either mean ‘some’ or ‘of the’ depending on their function in the sentence. This doesn’t help the learner who’s trying to memorize how it all works. One thing that may help, though, is to notice that in the last three sums on the list, where you’re adding ‘de’ to ‘du/de la/des’, the ‘de’ simply takes precedence over the ‘du/de la/des’, which disappears.
If you have all that straight, there are two further advanced baking manoeuvres you may like to try in order to complete the lesson. Firstly, what happens when your feckless celebrity whines that they don’t have the ingredient you need (je n’ai pas…)? (Answer below.)
Definite articles work the same way in negative sentences (I don’t have the…) as they do normally : Je n’ai pas le sucre. Je n’ai pas la tablette de chocolat. Je n’ai pas les pépites de chocolat. However, ALL the indefinite and partitive articles (I don’t have a/any…) are replaced by de: Je n’ai pas de bol. Je n’ai pas de cuillère en bois. Je n’ai pas d’oeufs. Je n’ai pas de beurre. Je n’ai pas de farine.
And finally, what difference does it make if the hapless screen-idol hands you a substandard item, and you’re forced to tell them to give you another one/the other one (use ‘autre’) ?
Adding an adjective before the noun makes no difference to seven of the eight sentences: Donne-moi l’autre sucre; donne-moi l’autre tablette de chocolat, etc. The one exception is with ‘des’ meaning ‘some’, which changes to ‘de’ before an adjective. So you’d say ‘Donne-moi des oeufs’ for ‘give me some eggs’, but ‘donne-moi d’autres oeufs’ for ‘give me some other eggs’. (This rule isn’t always strictly obeyed by French speakers, by the way, but you need to use it if you’re speaking or writing formally.)
I hope that was useful. At least Gaspard seems to have enjoyed it.
It’s the Easter holidays, which means revision time for many of you. Adventures on the Bookshelf is always keen to help, so over the next three weeks, here are our posts on three particularly tricky aspects of French grammar. You can find our full archive on language by clicking the ‘French language’ category tab above the title.
First up, this sentence:
Elle s’est cassé la jambe.
It means, ‘She’s broken her leg’, or literally, ‘She’s broken the leg to herself.’ French grammar tests are always full of women breaking their legs, cutting their fingers, washing their faces, not due to a worrying obsession with female body parts, but to see whether you’ll translate it correctly as:
Elle s’est coupé le doigt.
Elle s’est lavé le visage. (etc.)
…or whether you’ll succumb to the temptation to add an extra ‘e’ to those past participles. So why is it cassé, coupé and lavé, not cassée, coupée and lavée? To answer that, we need a little excursion into the rules of French agreement.
As you probably know, past participles in French, like the ‘cassé’ of ‘elle s’est cassé la jambe’, agree with a preceding direct object. (There is the exception of the sixteen special verbs whose past participle agrees with the subject — Elle est allée, Ils sont tombés, etc — but they don’t concern us here.)
So:
‘Où est ta voiture?’
‘Je l’ai vendue.’
There’s an ‘e’ on the end of the participle, ‘vendue’, because the ‘l’ is the direct object of the verb vendre (I sold it), because it’s feminine (the ‘l’ is a ‘la’, referring to ‘la voiture’), and because it precedes the word vendue in the sentence.
On the other hand, there’s no agreement here:
J’ai vendu ma voiture.
because there’s a direct object, ‘ma voiture’, but it comes after the participle in the sentence.
And there’s no agreement here:
Je leur ai vendu ma voiture.
because the ‘leur’ preceding the participle is an indirect object (I sold my car to them.)
OK so far?
The problem comes when you have something in the sentence that’s clearly a preceding object of the verb, but you’re not sure whether it’s direct or indirect. Sometimes it’s easy to tell, because they’re obviously two different words. The French direct object pronouns, le, la and les (him/her/it, them) are clearly different from their indirect equivalents, lui and leur (to him/to her/to it, to them).
But more often than not, they’re spelled and pronounced the same. The direct object, ‘us’ in French is ‘nous’, and the indirect object, ‘to us’ in French is also ‘nous’. Even so, they’re still two different words every bit as much as the bark on the outside of a tree is different from the bark that next door’s dog does when you’re trying to get to sleep. Here are the direct object pronouns in French:
me —- me
te —- you
le —- him/it
la —- her/it
nous —- us
vous —- you
les —- them
And here are the indirect ones:
me —- to me
te —- to you
lui —- to him/to her/to it
nous —- to us
vous —- to you
leur —- to them
The same rules apply for pronouns with reflexive verbs, which are the ones where the object of the verb is the same as the subject (i.e. when you’re doing things to yourself). Here are the direct object pronouns for reflexive verbs:
me —- myself
te —- yourself
se —- himself/herself/itself
nous —- ourselves
vous —- yourself/yourselves
se —- themselves
And here are the indirect ones:
me —- to myself
te —- to yourself
se —- to himself/to herself/to itself
nous —- to ourselves
vous —- to yourself/to yourselves
se —- to themselves
With the reflexive pronouns, as you’ll have noticed, every single one of them looks the same in direct and indirect forms. It’s a cunning ploy by the French to confuse language learners as much as possible.
So, finally, back to our original sentence. The key to understanding how it works is to remember that there are two different ‘se’s. There’s the direct object ‘se‘:
Elle s’est lavée. – She washed herself.
Here, ‘se’ (herself) is the direct object of the verb laver. (What did she wash? She washed herself.)
And there’s the indirect object ‘se‘:
Elle s’est lavé le visage. – She washed the face to herself
…which is just the French way of saying that she washed her face, I know, but the literal translation helps me keep the grammar straight in my head. Here, ‘se‘ (to herself) is the indirect object of the verb laver.
(By the way, it’s important not to get distracted by the fact that reflexive verbs take être rather than avoir in the perfect tense: ‘Elle s’est lavé le visage’. That doesn’t make them part of that list of sixteen verbs with past participles that agree with the subject — aller, tomber, etc. — which also take être. Reflexive verbs follow the same rules of agreement as avoir verbs.)
And the same goes for:
Elle s’est cassé la jambe. – She broke the leg to herself.
The verb has a direct object, la jambe (What did she break? The leg), but it is notpreceding the participle: it comes after.
And the verb has a preceding object pronoun, the reflexive pronoun ‘se’, but it isnot a direct object: it’s an indirect object (to herself).
This is the front page of today’s edition ofthe Belgian Newspaper, Le Soir. Tenir bon means ‘stand firm’, ‘hold on’ (or, very nearly, ‘keep calm and carry on’).
If you’d like to read a Belgian view on the attacks, here is a link to Le Soir‘s front-page editorial column (which is probably too small to read in the image above), entitled ‘Brussels Attacks: This Is Not The End, It’s The Beginning’.
France has a thriving culture of comic books and graphic novels, but there’s much more to it than the Tintin and Asterix books that are the best-known exports.
La Bande dessinée (or BD) is taken seriously over there, and it’s definitely not just for kids. Iranian-born Marjane Satrapi is the author of Persepolis, a graphic-novel memoir of a childhood shuttling between Iran and Europe, and the quite literal perils of being a rebellious teenager under Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
Now a French citizen, in 2007 Satrapi teamed up with animator Vincent Paronnaud to produce a film version of the graphic novel, which won the jury prize in Cannes that year and was nominated for an Oscar.
It’s an extraordinary film, every frame hand-drawn, and often crisply beautiful or wittily surreal. (I like the sequence where Marjane catches her first European boyfriend cheating on her. The film quickly re-runs their relationship on-screen, only this time, the handsome, sophisticated young man we saw when Marjane was smitten has turned into a snaggle-toothed mummy’s-boy slob.)
Warning: some adult language in the clip below!
https://youtu.be/p6ctwWvpr28
At the heart of this extraordinary film, though, is an entirely ordinary girl, who just wants the same as lots of people her age. She wants to listen to music, hang out with her friends, wear what she wants and study what she likes, meet boys, maybe fall in love. But whether she’s living under constant threat from the religious police in Iran, or as a lone foreigner in a cold, uncaring European city, living an ordinary life is a precarious activity, and you hold your breath as danger closes in on her.
The film’s available in the French original version with subtitles, or in a dubbed version featuring Sean Penn and other Hollywood voices. Naturally, get the original, if only to experience the full horror of Marjane’s enthusiastic off-key franglais rendition of the Rocky theme-song, Eye of the Tiger.
A blog for students and teachers of Years 11 to 13, and anyone else with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages and Cultures, written by the staff and students of Oxford University. Updated every Wednesday!
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Typical title page of the Magasin d’éducation et de recreation, the era’s most popular children’s periodical.
Remember this song from when you were a kid? They were teaching it in the 19th century too!
Learn about France’s heritage in this segment called ‘Vues et monuments de France’.
Notice the footnotes designed to help the young readers with new vocabulary.
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