Les Bistrots à Paris
French Listening Comprehension
Study Guide
Take a look at the following for help with any vocabulary that you might not have understood in
the report on bistros in Paris, then take
the test.
| Vocabulary | |
| bouder | to give the cold shoulder to |
| délaisser | to abandon |
| un éboueur | garbage collector |
| faire la bise | French greeting gesture |
| incontournable | unmissable |
| un mélange | mix |
| RER | French acronyms |
| Notes | |
| Auvergnat | There was immigration from the mountainous regions of Auvergne and the Limousin to Paris from the 18th century, as paysans fled the poverty of their villages for the opportunities opening up in the expanding capital. Originally many of these hardy laborers carried out the backbreaking work of delivering hot and cold water to upstairs apartments. In the mid 19th century, when Baron Haussmann's reforms brought running water to Paris, they started lugging coal up the stairs instead. The coal was stored in the prototype of the famous Auvergnat bistro, which was, in fact, a small coal shop that served wine on the side. These early bistro owners were known as bougnats, from charbougnats, the Auvergnat patois for "coal merchants." (This is presumably the origin of Café Charbon.) As the network of cafés and wineshops spread across Paris, new arrivals from Auvergne knew where to come in search of a job or lodging. The term Auvergnat is used loosely, because in fact these bar owners came from all over the Massif Central. |
| un bistrot | It can also be spelled bistro in French. The origin is obscure. The word appeared in the 1880s, and its first meaning was "innkeeper." By 1900 it had come to mean a small café. The Dictionnaire Historique discounts as legend the theory that Russian soldiers occupying Paris in 1814 shouted bystro ! (quick !) at sluggish French waiters, thus creating the name. More likely it comes from bistraud, which in Poitou dialect meant a wine merchant's helper. There may also be a link with the word bistre, which means "somber, dark brown," and could have been a good description of many early bistrots. |
| Costes brothers | The Costes brothers are classic Auvergnats; in the 20 years since they came to Paris to build their fortune in the café business, they have built up an empire of some 30 fashionable bars, bistros, and hotels, some of which they own outright, while others are partnerships with family or former employees. Gilbert and Jean-Louis make a specialty of pouncing on choice locations, which they learn of through their contacts in the Auvergnat business clan. They then convert the décor, employing the hippest designers. Philippe Starck was taken on for the first. The best known of the brothers' establishments is the fashionable Hotel Costes, on the rue Saint-Honoré. According to a recent article in L'Express magazine, Jean-Louis Costes dislikes ostentation and has in the past politely turned away certain celebs (Paris Hilton, for example). The hotel is the origin of the cool Hotel Costes electronic lounge-music albums. The latest gossip is that the brothers want to take over the legendary, now bankrupt Jewish restaurant Goldenberg in the 4th arrondissement. Incidentally, the Costes are not technically Auvergnats at all. Their family is from the Aveyron department, which, though in the Massif Central, is not in Auvergne, but Midi-Pyrénées. True to his roots, Jean-Louis Costes was the instrumental leading investor in the resurrection of the Laguiole knife factory in the Aveyron that was featured in Champs-Élysées 23-4. |
| garçon | waiter. In L'Étonnant Voyage des mots français dans les langues étrangères by Franck Resplandy, we learn that garçon and its feminine, garçonete, mean waiter and waitress in Brazil. Meanwhile the Hungarian garzon, the Slovakian garzonka, and the Romanian and Polish garsoniera all mean studio or bachelor flat, from the French garçonnière. In Macedonian, garsoniera has apparently come to mean a suite in a hotel. |
| Jacobsen | Arne Jacobsen was a modernist Danish architect and designer. Among his best-known creations are the "Ant" chair, which he designed in 1952 for the canteen of a pharmaceutical firm. Light and stackable, it was of molded laminated veneer and originally had three legs (though later models had four). It was so named because it looked like an ant with its head in the air. Thousands of imitations have been made and can be seen around the world. Jacobsen also designed the Number 7 chair, which was used in the famous nude photo of the British model Christine Keeler (she is seated in such a way that the chair preserves her modesty), as well as buildings for St. Catherine's College in Oxford. |
| maison close | The maisons closes (literally, closed or enclosed houses) were licensed brothels established by Napoleon in 1804 and eventually abolished in 1946. They were required to be discreetly situated and run by women, and the prostitutes were subject to regular health checks. At the time of their abolition, there were estimated to be 1,400 of them in France, of which 180 were in Paris. The law banning the maisons closes is known as the Loi Marthe Richard after the extraordinary woman who was its prime mover. Richard (née Betenfeld) was born in Alsace in 1889 and was a prostitute in Nancy before moving to Paris before World War I. During the war she was recruited as a spy—of the horizontal variety—by the French secret service. She was a keen pilot, and after the war this won her entry into the British colony in Paris, where in 1926 she married Thomas Crompton, a director of the Rockefeller Foundation. In the 30's she published her memoirs and became an instant national heroine. She was awarded the Légion d'honneur and a film was even made about her life. In World War II she was less than heroic, and stories circulated about her procuring girls for the Gestapo and other misdemeanors. Like so many others, she joined the Resistance at the opportune moment, and after the Liberation was elected as a municipal councillor in Paris and was chosen as the figurehead to lead the campaign against the maisons closes, which were associated in many people's eyes with the worst aspects of collaboration. The law did not, of course, put an end to prostitution, and many maisons closes converted into hôtels de passage, offering a similar if more discreet service. Today prostitution, but not pimping or soliciting, is legal in France. Marthe Richard died in 1982, and this year, the 60th anniversary of the closing of the maisons closes, two biographies of this bizarre woman have been published: Marthe Richard : L'Aventurière des Maisons Closes, by Natacha Henry and Marthe Richard : De la Petite à la Grande Vertu, by Elizabeth Coquart. |
| Oberkampf | The rue Oberkampf is now an ultratrendy neighborhood in the 11th arrondissement. It is named after Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf, who founded a royal factory for printed fabric at Jouy-en-Josas, not far from Versailles. The establishment went bankrupt in the early 19th century, but the term toile de Jouy, for a scenic fabric pattern, is still very much in use (though it is often now referred to by English speakers simply as toile). Oberkampf is also the name of a 1980's French punk band. |
| Les Bistrots à Paris
Part 1 Part 2 French Listening Comprehension Exercise |
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| Listen | Study | Test | ||
| Transcript Translation | ||||
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More Info: Restaurants in Paris |
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| 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 | ||||
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