The French Language

Au Gui l’An Neuf  is another way, a bit old fashioned, to say Bonne et heureuse année à vous. La saison voulant que le gui abonde, on en cueillit dès le Moyen Âge pour l'offrir avec ce souhait : « Au gui l'an neuf », formule qui fut remplacée plus tard par « Bon an, mal an, Dieu soit céans » (soit dans la maison). Au XIXe siècle on disait « Bonne et sainte année, le paradis à la fin de vos jours », expression modernisée au XXe siècle en « Bonne et heureuse année ». Mistletoe grows all over northern France and on six of the seven continents. It’s those balls in the bare trees that you think might be nests at first glance, but in fact it is vegetal parasite which rarely kills the host trees and thus is not a pest. Ecologically it is an important plant as it provides food and shelter for many species. A study in Australia mentioned in the NY Times compared forest parcels with mistletoe to parcels from which mistletoe had been removed. The study suggests that mistletoe is…

1000 billion or one trillion? It's the same thing, but it depends who you ask. In any case they are gigantic numbers. While reading an article recently in the French press where the budgets are flying through the roof again I saw the figure 1000 milliard and wondered why the journalist used that method for writing the figure, why not use trillion. In any case they are gigantic numbers. Well come to find out the French, the British (who finally agree on something with the French) and most of the rest of the world have different words than the U.S. (nothing new here, especially when it comes to measurement) for expressing these giant numbers. To try to understand the terms here is a list of them. As you will note the system for naming numbers used in the U.S. is not as logical as that used in other countries (like Great Britain, France, and Germany). In these countries, a billion - bi meaning two and -llion referring to million - logically has twice as many zeros as a million, …

French Acronyms are an invasive species! But an integral part of the French language.

Can you decipher this text full of usual French Acronyms?

Marie-France, a French lady, citizen of the RF, lives in IdF. She commutes daily via the RER, STIF and the RATP to the center of Paris where she runs a PME SARL. She learned her business acumen at INSEAD. She deals daily with TVA, PVs, CFE, CVAE, the CNIL, the RGPD, but luckily she doesn’t miss deadlines and thus does not receive many LRAR.

When she goes on vacation to PACA, her favorite region, she takes the SNCF, a TGV or TER. She dreams of visiting the TAAF, as well as the DROM-COM to walk the famous GR on Ile de la Réunion. To get there she’ll fly from one of the ADP, probably CDG. She plays the FDJ lottery and the PMU once in a while hoping to win big to finance her trip. She also has a PEL and a PEA to save money. She shops at the FNAC or the BHV where she pays with her CB.

M…