French is the official language of a number of international organisations (including the UN and the International Olympic Committee). French films are internationally renowned, and France has won the Nobel Prize in Literature more times than any other country!Get More From Your Trip with Easy-to-Find Phrases for Every Travel Situation! Lonely Planet Phrasebooks have been connecting travellers and locals for over a quarter of a century - our phrasebooks and mobile apps cover more than any other publisher!Order the right meal with our menu decoderNever get stuck for words with our 3500-word two-way dictionaryWe make language easy with shortcuts, key phrases & common Q&AsFeel at ease, with essential tips on culture & mannersCoverage includes: Basics, Practical, Social, Safe Travel, Food!Lonely Planet gets you to the heart of a place. Our job is to make amazing travel experiences happen. We visit the places we write about each and every edition. We never take freebies for positive coverage, so you can always rely on us to tell it like it is.Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Michael Janes, Jean-Bernard Carillet, and Jean-Pierre Masclef.About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in.TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

    Suitable for raw beginners to intermediate-level language learners, this popular title features engaging readings of progressive difficulty that allow you to rapidly build your comprehension. Find out what unfamiliar words and phrases mean with the book's helpful glossary Discover the nuances of French language and culture as well as the country's history through engaging texts Get a feel for authentic French society with readings from contemporary literature

    Voila!” —Mark Greenside, author of I’ll Never Be French (No Matter What I Do) William Alexander is more than a Francophile. He wants to be French. There’s one small obstacle though: he doesn’t speak la langue française. In Flirting with French, Alexander sets out to conquer the language he loves. But will it love him back? Alexander eats, breathes, and sleeps French (even conjugating in his dreams). He travels to France, where mistranslations send him bicycling off in all sorts of wrong directions, and he nearly drowns in an immersion class in Provence, where, faced with the riddle of masculine breasts, feminine beards, and a turkey cutlet of uncertain gender, he starts to wonder whether he should’ve taken up golf instead of French. While playing hooky from grammar lessons and memory techniques, Alexander reports on the riotous workings of the Académie française, the four-hundred-year-old institution charged with keeping the language pure; explores the science of human communication, learning why it’s harder for fifty-year-olds to learn a second language than it is for five-year-olds; and, frustrated with his progress, explores an IBM research lab, where he trades barbs with a futuristic hand-held translator. Does he succeed in becoming fluent? Readers will be as surprised as Alexander is to discover that, in a fascinating twist, studying French may have had a far greater impact on his life than actually learning to speak it ever would. “A blend of passion and neuroscience, this literary love affair offers surprise insights into the human brain and the benefits of learning a second language. Reading William Alexander’s book is akin to having an MRI of the soul.” —Laura Shaine Cunningham, author of Sleeping Arrangements   “Alexander proves that learning a new language is an adventure of its own--with all the unexpected obstacles, surprising breakthroughs and moments of sublime pleasure traveling brings.” —Julie Barlow, author of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

    And that’s exactly why we created this book. Short Stories + Foreign Language = Faster Learning We know how difficult it may seem to learn a foreign language from scratch, let alone trying to put all that learning into practice. But what you might not realize is that it's fairly easy to fully incorporate the essentials of a language once you frame that learning into a certain context (for example, a short story). Short stories allow you to put what you’ve learned so far into practice, allowing you to expand your vocabulary quickly, make sense of ideas, understand new concepts, and overall get a better grasp of the French language. Short stories work because they eliminate the stress of forcing yourself to learn. Instead, when you read the 9 captivating short stories we’ve prepared for you, you will learn French without even realizing you’re learning it! Your goal is to simply focus on a single story at a time (they only a take few minutes to read). The stories consist of multiple genres, including adventure, fantasy, mystery, romance, just to name a new. We wanted these stories to be fun, interesting, and appealing, motivating you to keep on reading to find out what happens next. That’s the very best way to learn, don’t you think? BONUS: Vocabulary Lists, Multiple Choice Exercises & Summaries of Each Story In this book you’ll find a total of 9 short stories in French. Each story is divided into three chapters. You start by reading Chapter one, then you go to the Annex, and you’ll find there a quick summary of what you just read, a vocabulary list, and several multiple choice exercises intended to help you forge a deeper understanding of the story as it goes. Once you’re done with this section, you move on to Chapter 2, then Chapter 3, and then you move on to the next story. It’s so easy and fun you won’t believe it. READ: French Short Stories For Beginners - 9 Captivating Short Stories to Learn French & Expand Your Vocabulary While Having Fun "French Short Stories For Beginners" contains a multitude of vocabulary lists including words and phrases you can incorporate to grow your French vocabulary to unprecedented levels. We chose each of those words carefully, aiming to support the beginner and intermediate student alike. We are absolutely sure will love all our stories, and we sincerely hope they help you learn French much, much faster. How Will You French Skills Improve? You will learn new words without even realizing it You will incorporate key phrases of the French language You will understand how context affects the meaning of certain words You will get a break from all those dusty French grammar books you own You will have fun reading entertaining stories on multiple genres You will get a chance to apply what you already know Most importantly,you will get a better overall grasp of the French

    It's a pleasant way of expanding one’s vocabulary, immersing in the French language and building confidence. There is no need for a dictionnary: key words are listed under each paragraph and translated out of the context. At the end of the book, all new words are summed up in a complete vocabulary section. Simple and easy to read, the short stories use a good mix of grammar constructs, with basic and useful vocabulary. The stories are written in tenses used in normal conversation : present tense, and just a little bit of future tense, passé composé and imparfait. With the MP3, you can practice your pronunciation and your listening (40 minutes/ read by the author). These stories are now available in the past tenses passé composé and imparfait [ASIN: B00PM4SO5M] Beginners : Level A0 - A1 About the author : Sylvie Lainé lives in Normandy where she teaches French to adults and teenagers. Her work with students of various nationalities and different ages allowed her to understand their difficulties and their challenges. Having looked for enjoyable reads to occasionnaly escape grammar and exercise books, but finding nothing simple enough for her beginners, she came up with the idea to write stories herself. She is passionate about writing and now publishes short stories tailored to the needs of English speakers.

    This is a practical way to learn the aspects of language that you’ll actually need and use; from booking a hotel room to navigating a menu, Paul will effortlessly build your confidence and give you the tools to handle any holiday situation.His ‘word robbery’ will also help unlock the range of vocabulary you already know. By making a few simple tweaks, you’ll go from fantastic to fantastique.Ideal for first-time learners or people who struggled in school, this book will help you absorb information quickly and efficiently, just like you did learning English as a child. Forget the way you used to be taught; this course guarantees you minimum effort and maximum success without the need for complex grammar rules or jargon. With thousands of satisfied customers, there’s never been a better time to learn.“There is nothing so complicated in foreign languages that it cannot be made simple.” Paul NobleA quick, easy and fun way to unlock your basic language skills. Perfect for beginners, this book will give you all the information you need to build basic conversations and get by on your travels.

    Rick Steves, bestselling author of travel guides to Europe, offers well-tested phrases and key words to cover every situation a traveler is likely to encounter. This handy guide provides key phrases for use in everyday circumstances, complete with phonetic spelling, an English-Italian and Italian-English dictionary, the latest information on European currency and rail transportation, and even a tear-out cheat sheet for continued language practice as you wait in line at the Sistine Chapel. Informative, concise, and practical, Rick Steves' Italian Phrase Book and Dictionary is an essential item for any traveler's zainetto.

    She proclaims, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. Using examples from literature, history, neighborhood signage, and her own imagination, Truss shows how meaning is shaped by commas and apostrophes, and the hilarious consequences of punctuation gone awry.Featuring a foreword by Frank McCourt, and interspersed with a lively history of punctuation from the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, Eats, Shoots & Leaves makes a powerful case for the preservation of proper punctuation.

    This real-life resource is for anyone who remembers thumbing through English/French dictionaries for such words as "toilet paper" and "damn," as well as for the far more interesting, titillating terms that would never be used in polite conversation. But real French isn't spoken with the intent of being polite... With epithets for every occasion, a range of colorful idioms, and a wealth of come-ons and put-downs, this is the only language book you'll need to prepare for a trip to the city of lights.

    And if that’s too much to ask, remember the sage advice from the staff of a Taipei hotel: “If there is anything we can do to assist and help you, please do not contact us.”

    The stories reflect not only the beliefs of various literary schools, but the preoccupations of French civilization, at the various times of their composition, with the metaphysical and psychological problems of man.Contents include Micromégas (Voltaire), La Messe de l'Athée (Honoré de Balzac), La Légende de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier (Gustave Flaubert), Le Spleen de Paris (Charles Baudelaire), Menuet (Guy de Maupassant), Mort de Judas (Paul Claudel), Le Retour de l'Enfant Prodigue (André Gide), Grand-Lebrun (François Mauriac), Le Passe-Muraille (Marcel Aymé), and L'Hôte (Albert Camus).Students of French, or those who wish to refresh their knowledge of the language, will welcome this treasury of masterly fiction. The selections are arranged chronologically, allowing the reader to witness the development of French literary art — from Voltaire to Camus. Excellent English translations appear on pages facing the Original French. Also included are a French-English vocabulary list, textural notes, and exercises.

    The literary critic Roland Barthes dies—struck by a laundry van—after lunch with the presidential candidate François Mitterand. The world of letters mourns a tragic accident. But what if it wasn’t an accident at all? What if Barthes was . . . murdered?

    If you need to extend your verbal eloquence to include vulgarity from 1811, this is the book for you.

    aIam reading the OED so you donat have to. If you are interested in vocabulary that is both spectacularly useful and beautifully useless, read on...a So reports Ammon Shea, the tireless, word-obsessed, and more than slightly masochistic author of Reading the OED, The word loveras Mount Everest, the OED has enthralled logophiles since its initial publication 80 years ago. Weighing in at 137 pounds, it is the dictionary to end all dictionaries. In 26 chapters filled with sharp wit, sheer delight, and a documentarianas keen eye, Shea shares his year inside the OED, delivering a hair-pulling, eye-crossing account of reading every word, and revealing the most obscure, hilarious, and wonderful gems he discovers along the way.

    The book, converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers now that it is out of copyright, consists of some fables and poems, most of which were aimed at children in their original form.