Sète
French Listening Comprehension
Study Guide
Take a look at the following for help with any vocabulary that you might not
have understood in Sète, then take
the test.
| Vocabulary | |
| une colline | hill |
| un étang | lagoon |
| un lido | sandbar |
| relié | linked |
| singulier | remarkable, unusual |
| un vigneron | winegrower |
| Places | |
| Canal du Midi | A 150-mile (241-kilometer) waterway linking the Mediterranean Ocean to the Atlantic via the Garonne River and Gironde estuary. One of the great engineering feats of the 17th century, it was the brainchild of Pierre-Paul de Riquet, an engineer from Béziers, about 25 miles (40 km) east of Sète. He died two years before completion of the project, into which he sank his entire fortune. |
| Hérault | A coastal department of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, southwest of the Gard department, on the Gulf of Lion. Its capital, Montpellier, is also the regional capital and France's eighth-largest city. |
| Languedoc | A former province of southern France that historically extended well into the Massif Central in the north, and as far west as Toulouse, which was long its capital. Its name comes from langue d'oc—old French for "Provençal"—in which oc meant oui. Today it is called Occitan. |
| Sète | An industrial and tourist center on the eastern end of the sandbar separating the Thau lagoon from the Gulf of Lion. The Romans knew its site as Setius Mons ("neighboring height"). The town's name was Cette until 1927, when the spelling was officially changed. In 1666, Colbert commissioned Pierre-Paul de Riquet to build its port; the following year, the engineer began work on the canal du Midi. It is the northern terminus of ferry lines serving North Africa and the Balearic Islands. Sète's nickname is l'île singulìere. |
| Thau | Called both l'etang de Thau and le bassin de Thau, it is situated on the northern shore of the Gulf of Lion and supports shellfish farming, tourism, industry, and shipping (as the end point of the canal du Midi and the canal du Rhône at Sète). |
| Sète French Listening Comprehension Exercise |
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| Listen | Study | Test | ||
| Transcript Translation | ||||
| Sound files,
transcript, and "Places" notes were originally published in Champs-Élysées audiomagazine (read my review) and are used with the permission of Champs-Élysées, Inc. |
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| Listening Index | ||||
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