1. 23 April 2007

    Le Fantôme de l'Opéra

    Gaston Leroux

    501 days ago

    Phantom of the opera in french, for one of my french classes. I think I understood most of it, and could even read without a dictionary if I felt like it.

  2. 17 April 2007

    507 days ago

    L’existence n’est pas quelque chose qui se laisse penser de loin: il faut que ça vous envahisse brusquement, que ça s’arrête sur vous, que ça pèse lourd sur votre coeur comme une grosse bête immobile – ou alors il n’y a plus rien du tout.

    (Existence isn’t something that lets you think of it from afar: it must be that it abruptly invades, steps on you, weighs heavily on your heart like a large immobile beast – otherwise it’s no longer anything at all.)

    Jean-Paul Sartre, Le Nausée

  3. 08 July 2005

    1155 days ago

    Google translate bookmarklet

    On my other computer I had a bookmarklet for translating the current selection with google's translate utility, but lost it. Here it is, so I always have it. Now you can too. Here it is in code:

    javascript:langpair="fr|en";e=""+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection():document.getselection?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text);if(!e)e=prompt("enter%20text%20to%20translate","");if(e!=null)void(window.open("http://google.com/translate_t?langpair="+langpair+"&text="+escape(e),"translate","scrollbars=1,resizablel=1,width=500,height=500"))

    Just copy it to your bookmarks and change the langpair variable to suit your language needs. You can find the right values in the <select name=langpair> on the translate page.

    Kjell Olsen1155 days ago

  4. 22 May 2005

    Rhinocéros

    Eugène Ionesco

    1202 days ago

    An absurdist play written in 1959, addressing the outrageousness of an average persons life on the planet and the societal urge to conform. Interesting, I need to look further into it again. It’s hard to read stuff like this in french.

  5. 07 April 2005

    Un été pas comme les autres

    Hughette Zahler

    1247 days ago

    The worst book I’ve read in quite a long time. Third grade all over again – but this time en français. Ou la la.

  6. 30 March 2005

    Les Aventures de Petit Nicolas

    Sempe

    1255 days ago

    A classic little book about a schoolkid in France who gets himself into all kinds of good kid fun. très drôle…

  7. 26 February 2005

    Le Petit Prince

    Antoine de Saint-Exup

    1287 days ago

    A great book recounting the life of a

  8. 18 January 2005

    1326 days ago

    Open Brackets - Wardsback

    a delightful few paragraphs on french slang. I learned a little verlan when I was there – and yes, it’s a bitch to learn foreign slang.

    So, in verlan a rotten (pourri) cop is called a ripou, an Arab is a beur (and flipped again to become a robeu), a Frenchman becomes a céfran, a femme_ (woman) a meuf, fête becomes teuf, vas-y (go!) is zyva, and barjot (slang, originally meaning naïve & bourgeois, later signifying just plain crazy) becomes the spit-collecting word jobard.

    via Kjell Olsen1326 days ago

  9. Also somewhat recently

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