Fête de la Francophonie: Celebrating the francophone world

by Anna Brones on

French is the native tongue of over 80 million people. But many more people interact with it on a daily basis, be it through culture, as a second language or even as a subject being learned in school. The francophone world stretches from Hanoi to Abidjan, bringing together all kinds of foods and customs that aren’t always immediately associated with all things French; this isn’t about baguettes and wine, this is about creole music, saffron infused food and crazy carnivals.

If you haven’t had France on the radar, you may not know that March is the official month of La Fête de la Francophonie. The month long festival is intended to celebrate the international and linguistic community that share French — either as a native language or even a second one — that is referred to by the coined term La Francophonie.

Thursday March 20 is the big celebration, being the official International Francophone Day, and there are a whole lot of global celebrations to take part in wherever you may find yourself, from Cambodia to Mali to Canada.

If you are in the New York area you can check out the Fête de la Martinique taking place today, March 19, which will turn Le Skyroom into a tropical paradise, full of French Creole culture that the island of Martinique is so well known for. This isn’t a conservative event; prizes are being awarded for best carnival costume. Other events going on around the US include a French film festival in Burlington, Vermont and a French Cultures Festival in various cities across Texas.

For more Fête de la Francophone events go here.

“Le” or “la”? Even the French can’t decide

by Anna Brones on

If you’ve ever dabbled in the French language, you know the difficulty of memorizing which gender goes with which noun. Why is a beard — la barbe — feminine? Why is a bicycle — le vélo — masculine? Well you shouldn’t have to feel bad about your French language difficulties; turns out even the French can’t agree on which gender goes with which word.

A recent study conducted by Dalila Ayoun at the University of Arizona found that, “Fifty-six native French speakers, asked to assign the gender of 93 masculine words, uniformly agreed on only 17 of them. Asked to assign the gender of 50 feminine words, they uniformly agreed [on] only 1 of them. Some of the words had been anecdotally identified as tricky cases, but others were plain old common nouns.”

Put simply, even native speakers have a hard time distinguishing between le and la. But I’m not surprised, French is after all très difficile.

Via LanguageHat

Not exactly your regular LAX ‘stripper plane’

by Jerry Guo on

Neil has written about the infamous Los Angeles to Las Vegas “stripper plane” run by Southwest. From what he said, it seems to be a completely legitimate operation.

This stripper plane, however, was not. Recently on a French airline, a couple of flight attendants were caught–on film–giving a saucy striptease to the pilots in the cockpit. The video was subsequently leaked (though it did take a whole three minutes of Googling for me to find it — NSFW), and now there’s a widespread investigation all across Europe to track down these folks.

The incident follows right on the heels of another piloting fiasco–this one on a Heathrow flight, when the co-pilot decided to have a mental breakdown at 35,000 feet. Ahh… reminds me of the year of the drunken pilots. Was that ’05? Last year?

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Bon appetit on the Eiffel Tower

by Abha Malpani on

Taking further our kicks of eating things either made by someone famous or with someone famous, now eating on something famous takes a new turn. Friends, friends and friends, you can now dine in new style at 410-feet on the Eiffel Tower.

Called Jules Verne (after the famous French author?), the revamped restaurant on this monument is the brain child of celebrity chef Alain Ducasse that will serve authentically French food (duh!), and will seat up to 120 people. For safety reasons, there will be no gas-cooking and the food will be prepared in a kitchen underneath the Champ de Mar garden which is located at the base of the tower.

With the 6.7 million tourists that visit this monument every year, dine at the restaurant and you will be taken up in a private lift. Meals are priced at $108 for lunch and $216 for dinner, making them totally “accessible to everyone”.

Anyone enticed to go?

Known for his eccentric ideas of taking cuisine to new heights, Ducasse was heard saying “I don’t work, I dream…I illustrate my dreams” — the next one being a restaurant on Mars. Now that’s somewhere I would love to go for a meal.

One for the Road: Women Travelers – A Century of Trailblazing Adventures, 1850-1950

by Kelly Amabile on

Earlier this week I mentioned a book by U.K. imprint Virago that celebrates women travelers of the past. And today I’ve learned of another book, (this time from French publisher Flammarion) that pays tribute to female explorers who ventured out in years gone by: Women Travelers: A Century of Trailblazing Adventures, 1850 – 1950 celebrates the courageous journeys of thirty-one fascinating women from fourteen countries.

The featured women include Fanny Vandegrift, wife of Robert Louis Stevenson, and Nellie Bly, a journalist who went around the world in seventy-two days. Others include: Ida Pfeiffer, Alexine Tinne and Florence Baker. From the publisher: In the face of social convention, these women set off into the unknown. Their bold journeys had long-lasting effects on the role and status of women in society, and they made important contributions to disciplines as varied as medicine, archeology, and anthropology.

The book of inspiring stories about pioneering women was written by French authors Alexandra Lapierre and Christel Mouchard.