La Révolte des Accents
French Listening Comprehension
Study Guide
Take a look at the following for help with any vocabulary and grammar that you might not
have understood in La Révolte des Accents, then take
the test.
| Vocabulary | |
| ainsi que | as well as |
| un comédien | actor (comedian is a false cognate) |
| constater | to notice, see |
| les contreforts (m) | foothills |
| se dérouler | to take place, happen |
| évoquer | to touch on, bring up |
| inattendu | unexpected |
| une jonque | junk boat |
| le lendemain | the next day |
| morne | dull, gloomy, dreary |
| ôter | to take away, remove |
| se pâmer | to swoon, be overcome |
| un parcours | journey, distance |
| parvenir à | to succeed in, manage to |
| le rivage | shore |
| terne | lifeless, dull, drab |
| un volet | part, section, chapter |
| French accents | |
| * Introduction to French accents | |
| * The importance of accents | |
| * How to type accents | |
| Grammar - Click the links for detailed lessons | |
| dit-il | Uses of inversion |
| on | Informal subject pronoun |
| Notes | |
|
Erik Orsenna's trilogy of
storybooks aims to reawaken love of the French language and rescue it from vulgarization. In
the first book, La grammaire
est une chanson douce, the two
child heroes Jeanne and Thomas are shipwrecked on a magic island somewhere in the Atlantic where
words are living beings. The second book brings them to the island of subjunctives,
where they are
introduced to the beauties of the subjunctive mood, which, as Orsenna says, is
"l'univers du possible."
For the third book Orsenna has chosen accents, another theme close to his heart. It is sadly true that in this matter texting and the Internet pose a real threat to French. Qs become Ks, everything is stripped to phonetic essentials, and the accents disappear. Likewise if you do a search on Google, there is no need to type in the accents. For Orsenna, "la langue française est inséparable de ses accents. S'il n'y a pas d'accents, il n'y a pas de sel, puisqu'ils servent à distinguer." As he points out, most French accents were introduced in the early 16th century with the start of printing, because the five vowels were insufficient to express all the sounds of the language. In 1990, the Académie française recommended that the circonflex on i and u be dropped, except on certain words where it is needed to avoid ambiguity. Thus coût should become cout and entraîner should become entrainer. However, the new rules provoked an outcry and have yet to be accepted. Orsenna's views on the importance of teaching French to immigrants are clear: "Je ne suis pas contre un peu les obliger pour qu'ils participent à cette communauté.... Ce n'est pas très bien vu dans mon camp, la gauche, mais je suis très ferme là-dessus," he said recently. In July 2007, President Sarkozy's government introduced a bill that will oblige would-be immigrants to pass a test on French languages and "values" before coming to France. |
|
| André Le Nôtre | the Sun King's gardener |
| Conseil d'État | large body that vets government bills before they go before parliament and acts as France's highest administrative court |
|
École nationale supérieure du Paysage |
landscape architecture college |
|
École normale supérieure |
elite teacher training college in Paris |
|
Grammaire est une chanson douce |
The English translation is entitled Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song: A Novel |
|
Jeanne, Thomas, Monsieur Henri |
characters from the earlier books |
| prix Goncourt | France's best-known literary award |
| Les Syrtes | Les Syrtes is a made-up name, though it recalls the Gulf of Syrte off Libya. |
| La Révolte des Accents French Listening Comprehension Exercise |
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| Listen | Study | Test | ||
| Transcript Translation | ||||
| Sound files and transcript
were
originally published in Champs-Élysées audiomagazine (read my review) and were published here with the permission of Champs-Elysées, Inc. |
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| Listening Index French Dictionaries French Accents | ||||
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