Better Reading FRENCH Second Edition Annie Heminway Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-07-177030-9 MHID: 0-07-177030-5 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978- 0-07-177029-3, MHID: 0-07-177029-1.
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This limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise. Contents Preface How to use this book Embrasse-moi Les petits mots d’amour A game of love, Valentine’s Day cards, and proverbs about love L’horoscope Horoscopes—Western and Chinese Les petites annonces classées Looking for love in the classifieds L’amour éternel A letter from Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo La vie romantique A letter from George Sand to Alfred de Musset L’amour au théâtre Molière’s pursuit of the perfect expression of love L’amour et les chats Chateaubriand’s love of cats L’amour et le chocolat For the love of chocolate L’adieu A farewell poem by Apollinaire Écris-moi Les notes Sticky notes, to-do lists, e-mail, a love letter, a “Dear John” letter, postcards, and a wedding invitation Échanges entre voisins Correspondence—neighborly and not so neighborly Correspondance administrative A letter to city hall Lettre de cachet An official request Lettres historiques Letters from the battlefield Runes The magic of writing Haïkus Poetry in three lines Nourris-moi La panoplie du chef A chef ’s stock-in-trade Recettes Three recipes, beginning with dessert Les critiques culinaires A guide to Parisian restaurants Cuisine et littérature Déjeuner with Proust Les manières de table Eating do’s and don’ts in the 1800s Le lunch au Local Let’s have lunch with the Québécois! Des livres beaux à croquer Flaubert au chocolat, Balzac à la Chantilly Enivrez-vous An invitation from Baudelaire Chante, chante À la claire fontaine A seventeenth-century soldier’s lament Le temps des cerises Politics and love in a nineteenth-century song Les roses blanches Lyrical white roses for maman Carmen Romance in Bizet’s opera Le chant grégorien Centuries-old plainsong L’Olympia Resurrecting a musical theater in Paris Le Musée de la Musique A museum of musical instruments Nous n’irons plus au bois A song based on a nineteenth-century poem Promène-moi La France des musées Museums—old and new Le musée du quai Branly African, Asian, Oceanic, and American art by the Seine Les musées ruraux Bread, bees, and ostriches in the countryside Les musées urbains Fabric and fashion in the city Les maisons d’artistes The artist’s spirit lives on Le Paris des jardins The green space of Paris Emmène-moi au bout du monde Un voyage d’affaires Doing business in Venice L’Orient-Express A history of the train of myth and mystique Un tour en montgolfière Up, up, and away Paris bohème A stroll through 1920s Montparnasse Théodore Monod A scientist and humanitarian whose passion was the desert Alexandra David-Néel Pages from an explorer’s journal Femmes au-delà des mers Women, heritage, and networking Fais-moi explorer Lecture numérique Young, avid digital readers Les inventions Hot-air balloons, garbage cans, and Braille L’euro Technology in your pocket Les vitraux Craftsmanship in the restoration of stained glass Marie Curie, une pionnière du prix Nobel au Panthéon The first woman to join the nation’s “great men” Médecins Sans Frontières Relieving the world’s suffering Adolphe Sax The highs and lows of an inventor’s life Explique-moi tous les symboles Les symboles français Maxims, the rooster, Marianne, and “La Marseillaise” Les drapeaux The flags of France and the European Union L’Académie française Protecting the mother tongue Les discours Speech, speech! Victor Hugo delivers Fais-moi découvrir la littérature contemporaine Hommage au monde francophone A tribute to the mother tongue La théorie des nuages Cloud obsession, love, and survival Pondichéry, à l’aurore From Stockholm to Pondichéry Aimé Césaire par sa fille Césaire, fundamental man Haïti Kenbe La! Dreams of my Haitian grandmother Dany Laferrière We are human beings, all over the world Boulevard des Mots-dits A carnival of words La tourmente de la langue française Taming the French language Chant à l’Indien A poem by Khireddine Mourad Continuing to read Answer key Preface Better Reading French has been developed for English speakers who have a basic to intermediate knowledge of French and is designed to help them read French better and to encourage them to read more. To read better, we must read more. As an encouragement for beginning readers, I have organized this book according to nine areas of interest: love, writing, cuisine, music, museums and gardens, science and technology, symbols of France and Europe, and contemporary literature.
At least one of these areas should interest the reader immediately, and after that subject is explored, interest in another will follow. The selections include material that has appeared in magazines and books, as well as on the Internet. In addition to recipes, essays, poems, book excerpts, and songs, there are original articles appearing in print for the first time. Some of the online selections have been abridged and edited for accuracy.
Selections not otherwise credited were compiled, adapted, or created by the author. While each section’s material relates to a topic in French culture, the section as a whole is not intended to be an overview or summary of the topic. Instead, the selections have been chosen for their broad appeal, their variety, and their likelihood to inspire readers to explore new horizons and to feel confident as they encounter the written word in French in its myriad forms. Each section begins with the selections that are easiest to read, although none of the material has been simplified.
The selections become progressively more difficult within each section. Almost all reading selections are followed by one or more exercises designed to help readers develop skills in understanding what they are reading. The overall goal is to help readers develop reading strategies that will help them understand and benefit from future reading material. If we can read better, we will read more.
How to use this book One of the joys of reading is that you can read what you want, when you want, however you want. The format of Better Reading French enables you to use, and benefit from, the book in different ways. One approach is to select a topic that interests you, read each of the selections in order, writing the exercises after each one, until you have completed the final selection. If you are really interested in this topic, you will probably be able to read the most difficult selections—because you want to and because you have been developing important reading skills that make the material easier to read.
Then you may choose another topic that interests you. A second approach is to read the first, easiest selection in each section, writing the exercises as you go, then progress to the second selection of each section, and so on until you have completed the most difficult selections in the book. In your approach to an individual selection, first read it in its entirety, then proceed with the exercises, which are designed to help you read without the aid of a dictionary. The exercises encourage development of the following skills.
• Skimming for general meaning: reading the entire selection quickly to determine its general purpose and content • Scanning for details: noting headings, references, and other guides to quick information • Using word formation to determine meaning: knowing how prefixes, suffixes, verb endings, and grammatical forms indicate meaning • Using cognates to determine meaning: comparing French words with related words in English • Using context to determine meaning: making educated guesses about the meaning of unfamiliar words by determining their role in the context of a sentence, paragraph, or entire selection • Learning idioms and other expressions: recognizing and learning the meaning of forms that cannot be translated literally • Understanding artistic expression: recognizing literary devices that authors use • Rereading for comprehension: reading an entire selection again to gain greater understanding Embrasse-moi Les petits mots d’amour First, let us look at brief messages. L’expression d’un sentiment One common way to measure your love for someone is to effeuiller la marguerite —to take a daisy and remove one petal at a time … Je t’aime… un peu. pas du tout. Messages d’amour Messages on greeting cards for la Saint-Valentin can be short or long.
Je t’aimerai toujours. Jamais je ne t’oublierai. Je pense souvent à toi. Je t’aime à la folie.
Tu me manques. Je m’ennuie de toi. Depuis que je te connais, mon cœur s’émerveille sans cesse. Je t’aime… pour ton sourire qui me réconforte, pour ta main sur mon épaule, pour tes attentions si touchantes, pour ta présence si réconfortante.
Je t’aime parce que tu es toi, tout simplement. Proverbes et dictons Love has an important place in proverbs and maxims. On revient toujours à ses premières amours. L’amour est aveugle.
L’amour ne connaît pas de loi. Ils vivent d’amour et d’eau fraîche. Qui m’aime aime mon chien. EXERCICE ADVERBS The French language is capable of expressing a wide range of nuances.
To indicate these, you will often use adverbs.