X-Nico

36 unusual facts about french language


Achrafieh

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

Ad valorem tax

The Canadian Goods and Services Tax (GST) (French: Taxe sur les produits et services, TPS) is a multi-level value-added tax introduced in Canada on January 1, 1991, by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and finance minister Michael Wilson.

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Maurice Lauré, joint director of the French tax authority, the Direction générale des impôts, as taxe sur la valeur ajoutée (TVA in French) was first to introduce VAT with effect from 10 April 1954 for large businesses, and extended over time to all business sectors.

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).

Ænigma Mystica

It comes in a regular version exlcusively in French and a two disk deluxe edition with the French disk, English versions of chosen tracks as well as other re-recorded songs from past albums.

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.

Benin Premier League

The Benin Premier League, also called Championnat National du Bénin in French, is the highest football division in Benin.

Ça Va

Ça Va (French for "okay", literally "that goes") is an album by German/British avant-pop group Slapp Happy, recorded in London in 1997.

Canadian electoral system

Wherever possible, election officers at polling stations speak both official languages (English and French).

Centre de Liaison et d'Information des Puissances maçonniques Signataires de l'Appel de Strasbourg

The Centre of Liaison and Information of Masonic Powers Signatories of Strasbourg Appeal (French: Centre de Liaison et d'Information des Puissances maçonniques Signataires de l'Appel de Strasbourg) or CLIPSAS is an international group of Masonic Grand Orients and Grand Lodges that adhere to Continental Freemasonry and signed the Strasbourg Appeal.

Demarest Hall

In the late 1990s and early 2000s a number of language studies sections were among the officially funded special interest sections of the dormitory including: French; Spanish; and Italian.

En ventre sa mere

The French phrase en ventre sa mere (literally, in his/her mother's belly) refers to a fetus in utero.

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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).

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).

Islamic University of Technology

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

Le bonheur

Le bonheur is French for "happiness."

Literator

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

Lower Canada Rebellion

The movement for reform took shape in a period of economic disfranchisement of the French-speaking majority and working-class English-speaking citizens.

Marmara University Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences

The Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences of Marmara University has a 127 year history and provides education in 11 departments and in four languages: Turkish, English, German and French.

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."

Official bilingualism

In Canada English and French have special legal status over other languages in Canada’s courts, parliament and administration.

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.

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.

Reticulated poison frog

The reticulated poison frog (Ranitomeya ventrimaculata), known in French as dendrobate à ventre tacheté, is a species of poison dart frog.

Robert Naunton

It has also been printed in several collections and has been translated into French and Italian.

Rondeau Provincial Park

The name of the park comes from the French words "ronde eau" or "round water" which describes the shape of the harbour sheltered by the peninsula.

Royal Canadian Navy Monument

On the western face of the north–south orientated sail the motto "Ready Aye Ready" and its French translation, "Prêt Oui Prêt", are carved in the uppermost corner.

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.

Tache noir de la sclerotique

Tache noir de la sclerotique (French for Black spot of the sclera) is one of the ocular signs of death in which a reddish brown discoloration is transversely arranged across the sclera.

Terra incognita

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

The Birth of Corneillius

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

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.


Ali Abdolrezaei

Ali Abdolrezaei's poems have been translated into a variety of languages including English, German, French, Turkish, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Croatian and Urdu.

Amit Offir

On 2013 Amit's books were translated to other languages such as English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and many more.

Andronikashvili

His son, Constantin Andronikof (1916–1997) became a French diplomat, the Dean of St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, and translator of Sergei Bulgakov's theological writings into French.

Arpan Sharma

Arpan Sharma (born 1997) is a British polyglot who at the age of 10 could speak 11 languages: English, Hindi, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Tamil, Swahili, Polish, Thai, Welsh and Sanskrit.

Aufbau principle

The order in which these orbitals are filled is given by the n + ℓ rule (also known as the Madelung rule (after Erwin Madelung), or the Klechkowski rule (after Vsevolod Klechkovsky in some, mostly French and Russian-speaking, countries), or the diagonal rule.

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.

CBPD-FM

CBPD-FM is a Weatheradio Canada station which broadcasts weather information and alerts on a frequency of 103.7 FM in Port Hardy, British Columbia, Canada, in both English and French.

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.

Chaussée de Wavre

The Chaussée de Wavre (French) or Waversesteenweg (Dutch) in Brussels, Belgium is a major street crossing the municipalities of Ixelles, Etterbeek and Auderghem.

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.

CIQA-FM

CIQA-FM is a Weatheradio Canada station which broadcasts weather information and alerts on a frequency of 93.3 FM in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, in English, French and Inuktitut.

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).

Corcyre

Corcyre (old-fashioned French for Corfu) was one of three short-lived French départements in present Greece.

Cretinism

Cretin became a medical term in the 18th century, from an Occitan and an Alpine French expression, prevalent in a region where persons with such a condition were especially common (see below); it saw wide medical use in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and was actually a 'tick box' category on Victorian-era census forms in the UK.

David Durand

He moved to England in 1711 and served as a pastor to the Church of England French-speaking churches in London.

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.

Éric Losfeld

Éric Losfeld (Mouscron, 1922 - Paris, 1979) was a Belgian-born French publisher who had a reputation for publishing controversial material with his publishing imprint Éditions Le Terrain Vague.

Helvetia

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

Hors-la-loi

Hors-la-loi means outlaw in French.

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.

Julius Grey

Grey defended La servante écarlate by Margaret Atwood, the French version of The Handmaid's Tale, in the French version of Canada Reads, broadcast on Radio-Canada in 2004.

Kabika Tshilolo

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

Khadja Nin

Her breakthrough, however, came in 1996 with her widely popular album Sambolera, which was sung in Swahili, Kirundi, and French.

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 Quête de l'oiseau du temps

La Quête de l'oiseau du temps (The Quest for the Time-Bird, or Roxanna and The Quest For The Time Bird) is a French language fantasy comic series written by Serge Le Tendre and drawn by Régis Loisel (1st cycle) and others (2nd cycle), published by Dargaud since 1983.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Radio Bulgaria

In 2004, Radio Bulgaria broadcasts to Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America on short and medium wave in Bulgarian, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Serbian, Greek, Albanian and Turkish.

Solomon the Wise

Solomon the Wise (original Yiddish title Shloime Chuchem) is a 1906 play by Jacob Gordin, based on French sources, and loosely based on actual events in 17th century France, during the reign of Louis XIII and the ascendancy of Cardinal Richelieu.

Soltorgsgymnasiet

Since 2002 Soltorgsgymnasiet have had an exchange-agreement with Lycée Léon Bourgeois in Épernay for teacher and the students reading French and an exchange with a school in Magdeburg for the students reading German.

St. Louis Jesuits

In addition, some hymns have even been translated into other languages such as Chinese, French, German, Korean, Polish, Spanish and Vietnamese, and have garnered wide acceptance in those areas as a result.

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.

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.

Under the Bridges of Paris

"Under the Bridges of Paris" is a 1914 popular song with music written by Vincent Scotto, the original French lyrics (entitled "Sous les ponts de Paris") by Jean Rodor (1914), and English lyrics by Dorcas Cochran (1952).

Viscount

The word viscount, known to be used in English since 1387, comes from Old French visconte (modern French: vicomte), itself from Medieval Latin vicecomitem, accusative of vicecomes, from Late Latin vice- "deputy" + Latin comes (originally "companion"; later Roman imperial courtier or trusted appointee, ultimately count).

Williams Sassine

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