X-Nico

33 unusual facts about French Language


Achrafieh

Grand Lycée Franco-Libanais, a French language secondary school, Les Diablotins, Universite Saint Joseph located in the neighbourhood

Ali Murad Davudi

He then travelled to France, where he stayed for one year, to improve his French, which he later used to translate many French philosophical texts.

An Act of Valour

Originally, Leppäjärvi and Corduner had approached D'Amico with the idea of him playing the drag-queen Bette Noir (a pun on French expression bête noire).

Ann Maire Horan

She studied French and Spanish at NUIG and became involved in DramSoc, the university's drama group.

Ayas, Aosta Valley

It is made up of several frazioni (locally officially called hameaux, in French), the two major ones being Antagnod which holds the town hall and the main parish, and Champoluc.

Basil Helmore

Born at Newcastle to company secretary Ernest Arthur James Helmore and Gertrude, née Allbon, he attended local state schools and in 1913 was first in the state in French and Latin for the Leaving certificate.

Beau Rivage

Beau Rivage means "Beautiful shore" in French.

Caput

The French language converted caput into chief, chef, and chapitre, later borrowed in English as chapter.

En ventre sa mere

In current spoken French, the phrase would now be rendered as "dans le ventre de sa mère".

Géographica

Géographica is the French-language magazine of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS), published under the Society's French name, the Société géographique royale du Canada (SGRC).

Heath mouse

Common names include heath mouse, heath rat, blunt-faced rat, Shortridge's native mouse, fausse souris de Shortridge (French), and ratón bastardo crestado (Spanish).

Hors-la-loi

Hors-la-loi means outlaw in French.

Islamic University of Technology

English, Arabic and French are the official languages of the university for all academic and admission purposes.

Jens Lieblein

In his leisure time, he studied history and languages, including German, French, Latin and Greek.

Le bonheur

Le bonheur is French for "happiness."

Literator

A writer, one who writes professionally, sometimes the original French term litterateur is used.

Milieu

Milieu is the word for environment in French, and, for hundreds of years, also in Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish, English, and other languages that were strongly influenced by French culture and French language, primarily during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Mistralian norm

Its aim is to make Provençal Occitan orthography more logical, relying on a mix of traditional spelling and French spelling conventions.

Mohammad Vali Mirza Farman Farmaian

Mohammad Vali Mirza escaped only at the last minute because he spoke to the general in French, prompting the general to realize, as Nogales wrote in his memoirs, "that he was a prince of the lineage of Farman Farma."

Order of the Ship and the Mussel

The Order of the Ship (French : Ordre du Navire) was founded in 1269 by the French king Louis IX the Saint.

Ordre de la Santé publique

The Order of Public Health (French: Ordre de la Santé publique) was a French order of merit, created by presidential decree of President Albert Lebrun on 18 February 1938 and amended on 22 May 1954, and awarded for services to the public health and protection of children.

Ottawa Fringe Festival

Because Ottawa is a bilingual city, both English and French productions are presented at the Fringe, though a small number of productions in past years have been bilingual.

Parliamentary ping-pong

"Lutte a la corde" (French, meaning tug of war, lit. "struggle of the rope") is an older term for Parliamentary ping-pong.

Peacekeeping Monument

My own government would be glad to recommend Canadian participation in such a United Nations force, a truly international peace and police force, as well as the French translation.

Prince Alexander of Belgium

Prince Alexander of Belgium (French: Alexandre Emmanuel Henri Albert Marie Léopold, Dutch: Alexander Emanuel Hendrik Albert Maria Leopold; 18 July 1942 – 29 November 2009) was the eldest child from the second marriage of King Leopold III of Belgium.

Quadrille Ball

One interesting thing about this ball is that even though it is a German organized ball, the Caller announces the steps entirely in French.

Relâche

Relâche is French for "cancellation", "theater dark", or "no performance today".

Swiss Prealps

The Swiss Prealps (Préalpes Suisses in French, Schweizerische Voralpen in German) are a mountain range in the north-western part of the Alps.

T. P. O'Connor

In 1870, he moved to London, and was appointed a sub-editor on the Daily Telegraph, principally on account of the utility of his mastery of French and German in reportage of the Franco-Prussian War.

Terra incognita

The equivalent on French maps would be terres inconnues (plural form), and some English maps may show Parts Unknown.

The Popguns

Their final album, A Plus de Cent (1996) - which features the French language version of their last single, "Harley Davidson" - was released by Tall Poppy Records.

Tosa Kuroshio Railway

This is one of the few Japanese railway operator that provide its official website in Japanese, English, and French.

Vous

Vous is "you" in plural in French language


A. Ronald Walton

Working with ACTFL, the US Department of Education, the College Board, among other organizations, Walton helped to formulate nationwide standards for Japanese, French, Hebrew German, Spanish Chinese and Korean.

Abidin Dino

While his young wife Güzin Dino taught French at Adana High School, he worked for a local newspaper, producing articles and drawings that illustrated with poetic realism of the hard lives and working conditions of agricultural laborers in the region.

Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale

Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (French for Acts and Documents of the Holy See related to the Second World War), often abbreviated Actes or ADSS, is an eleven-volume collection of documents from the Vatican historical archives, related to the papacy of Pope Pius XII during World War II.

Agglomeration community of Rouen-Elbeuf-Austreberthe

The Agglomeration community of Rouen-Elbeuf-Austreberthe (French: Communauté d'agglomération Rouen-Elbeuf-Austreberthe) is the intercommunal structure gathering the commune of Rouen and that part of the Rouen metropolitan area that lies in France.

Asrary school riyadh

Asrary School, Riyadh is a school that teaches English, Arabic, and French from KG1 till 12th grade.

Catalufa

The word catalufa is also used in several Caribbean countries as the Spanish or French language common name for a number of other Priacanthidae species.

CBPM

CBPM is a Weatheradio Canada station which broadcasts weather information and alerts on a frequency of 1260 AM in Sicamous, British Columbia, Canada, in both English and French.

China Today

It is published in Chinese language, English, Spanish, French, Arabic, German and Turkish, and is intended to promote a positive view of the People's Republic of China and its government to people outside of China.

CKRN-DT

CKRN-DT (branded on-air as Radio-Canada Télévision CKRN) is a privately owned French language television station affiliated with Télévision de Radio-Canada in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, Canada, which essentially functions as a semi-satellite of Montreal Radio-Canada flagship station CBFT-DT due to not having alternative non-network sources of programming available.

College of Juilly

The College of Juilly (French: Collège de Juilly) is a Catholic private teaching establishment located in the commune of Juilly, in Seine-et-Marne (France).

Demographics of Suriname

Dutch (official), Sranan Tongo (Surinamese, sometimes called Taki-Taki, is native language of Creoles and much of the younger population), Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Javanese, English (widely spoken), French due to cultural influence from French Guiana, Portuguese and Spanish.

Francesco Matraire

Little is known of his life; his family is believed to have been from Nice originally, and his correspondence is mostly written in French.

General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales

The General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales (in French: Conseil Général des Pyrénées-Orientales) is the assembly elected for 6 years by the 31 Cantons of the Pyrénées-Orientales and its executive.

Hekmeh FC

Al-Hikma in classical Arabic, El-Hekmeh in Lebanese dialect stands for "wisdom", thus also the French alternative name of the club, Sagesse (meaning wisdom in French).

Helvetia

In French, Swiss people may be referred to as Helvètes.

International English

In Europe, English received a more central role particularly since 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles was composed not only in French, the common language of diplomacy at the time, but, under special request from American president Woodrow Wilson, also in English - a major milestone in the globalisation of English.

ISREC

The Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC, French: Institut suisse de recherche expérimentale sur le cancer) is a not-for-profit institution founded in 1964 and located in Épalinges, Switzerland.

James Burty David

He was a journalist of Freelance, teacher and afterwards rector at Eden College and an author of many school manuals in French.

Kabika Tshilolo

Marie-Jeanne Kabika Tshilolo (born 1949 in Élisabethville, Katanga) is a French language writer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

King Henry VIII School Abergavenny

The school at this time was supposed to be a grammar school taking pupils from all over North Monmouthshire with a curriculum of Latin, English, History, Geography, French, Arithmetic, Algebra, Trigonometry and Chemistry.

La Jalousie

The title of its English editions is Jealousy, but this fails to capture the ambiguity of the French title: "la jalousie" can be translated as "jealousy", but also as "the jalousie window".

La Va Bon Train

The La Va Bon Train ("goes like blazes" in French) was a French automobile manufactured by Larroumet and Lagarde of Agen, Lot-et-Garonne between 1904 and 1914.

Languages of Monaco

French is the only official language in Monaco, a result of the role France has had over the microstate (see Franco-Monegasque Treaty) since the annexation of Nice and the Nizzardo (the territory surrounding Monaco), then culturally and ethnically Italian, as part of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.

Le testament de la tante Caroline

The original production was in the Czech language (prepared by Julie Reisserová) and in three acts, but the work was later revised into a one act operetta in the French language.

Les Incompétents

According to the band, in an interview with John Kennedy on XFM, their name is pronounced as it is written, with the French plural for 'the' pronounced like the English name 'Les', as if it is a British person's attempt at speaking French.

Linguatec

:The Voice Reader text-to-speech program reads in twelve languages: German, British English, American English, French, Quebec French, Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Czech, Chinese.

Luis de Ávila y Zuniga

The book, first published in 1548, was very popular in its time, and was translated into French, Dutch, German, Italian, and Latin.

Lyonel Trouillot

Lionel Trouillot (born Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on December 31, 1956) is a novelist and poet in French and French Creole, a journalist and a professor of French and Creole literature in Port-au-Prince.

MacArthur Study Bible

Initially only available in the New King James Version, the MacArthur Study Bible is now also published using the New American Standard Bible text and the English Standard Version text, and the New International Version text as well as in Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.

McDougall United Church

George McDougall established a school in 1871, to teach English to the children of the Hudson's Bay Company employees, because the most used languages then were French, Gaelic, and Cree.

Miles Kington

It was during this time, in the late 1970s, that he began writing his Franglais columns written in a comical mixture of English and French.

Motion Picture Association – Canada

The Motion Picture Association – Canada (in French: Association Cinématographique – Canada) or MPA-C is a film industry trade group which speaks for and represents the major U.S. motion picture studios in Canada for films, television, videos and DVDs.

Nathan ben Moses Hannover

This work, owing to its literary value, was translated into Yiddish (1687), into German (1720), and into French by Daniel Levy (published by Benjamin II., Tlemçen, 1855).

Professor Palmboom

While all the books are available in Dutch, the main three albums have also been translated into French, but not into English.

Public Francophone Radios

The Public Francophone Radios (French: Radios francophones publiques) is a group of French-speaking radio broadcasters comprising Radio France, Radio Canada, the Radio Télévision Suisse and RTBF.

Renault Avantime

The name combines the French word "Avant" (meaning "ahead") and the English word "time", with the latter using the English (tīm) rather than French pronunciation (tēm).

Richard Wilbur

Wilbur is also a translator, specializing in the 17th century French comedies of Molière and the dramas of Jean Racine.

Tahar Rahim

Rahim has demonstrated multilingual skills and an ear for accents, having played in Corsican and Arabic in addition to French in A Prophet, and in Scottish Gaelic for his role as the Seal Prince in Kevin Macdonald's The Eagle.

Thé Au Harem D'Archimède

The album's French title, which translates into English as "Tea in the Harem of Archimedes," is a reference to the Mehdi Charef book Tea in the Harem (French title: Thé au Harem d'Archimède), as well as a pun on the French phrase "Théorème d'Archimède", the title of the album's fourth track.

The Birth of Corneillius

It was an English language album in contrast to earlier Corneille albums in French language.

Ts'ao Yung-ho

Ts'ao has studied a number of languages in pursuit of his understanding of early Taiwanese history, meaning he can now make use of ten languages: Taiwanese, Japanese, English, German, Mandarin Chinese, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin.

Vin d'honneur

Vin d'honneur literally translates from French to "Wine of honour" and is akin to a prolonged social celebration after an official ceremony like a marriage.

Wilhelm J. Burger

When working in French, Burger used the first initial "G.", obviously for "Guillaume".

Williams Sassine

Williams Sassine (1944, Kankan, Guinea – February 9, 1997, Conakry, Guinea) was a Guinean novelist who wrote in French.

Witold Gombrowicz

Nicolas Philibert, the documentary film-maker best known in the English-speaking world for his Être et avoir, made a documentary set in the radical French psychiatric clinic La Borde entitled Every Little Thing (French La Moindre des choses); released in 1997, the film follows the patients and staff as they stage their production of Gombrowicz's Operette.