Le viaduc de Millau
French Listening Comprehension
Study Guide
Take a look at the following for help with any vocabulary that you might not
have understood in le viaduc de Millau, then take
the test.
| Vocabulary | |
| agglutiner | to gather, pile up |
| bivouaquer | to camp |
| une causse | limestone plateau |
| chipoter | to quibble |
| déchaîné | unleased |
| desormais | from now/then on |
| dorénavant | from now/then on |
| estival | (adj) summer |
| goudronné | tarred |
| un hauban | stay (of a bridge) |
| imbattable | unbeatable |
| un péage | toll |
| quasiment | almost |
| une rafale | gust of wind |
| une ride | wrinkle |
| la veille | guard, watch (also means "eve" or "night before") |
| Notes | |
| Garabit viaduct | The Garabit viaduct was built in 1884 to carry rail traffic over the gorge of the river Truyère in the Cantal department, about 50 miles north of Millau. The 564-meter metal bridge, which is still in use, was the work of Gustav Eiffel, whose construction company is now part of the conglomerate Eiffage. The Millau viaduct is a rare example in France of a private company being used for a major infrastructure project, and its success may well encourage other governments to pursue this option. |
| Italian bridge | Plans are going ahead for a massive bridge that will link
Sicily and the Italian
mainland across the straits of Messina, a distance of 2.05 miles. The
result will be
the longest suspension bridge in the world. The designers must contend
with the
region's very deep water and strong likelihood of earthquakes, and
others worry that the mafia may become involved. Nonetheless, the Italian government hopes to open the 12-lane road connection and two railway lines by 2012. |
| Millau | The town of Millau, 60 miles from the Mediterranean Sea in the Aveyron department, is on the banks of the river Tarn, which rises in the Cévennes mountains to the east, and here cuts between two high plateaus, or causses. The Causse de Larzac, to the south, is the stomping ground of the antiglobalization activist and Roquefort cheese manufacturer José Bové; in 1999 he and a group of his supporters trashed a McDonald's eatery in Millau, where he was tried the following year. (Recently, for as yet unknown reasons, he was denied entry into the United States.) In the past, appalling traffic jams occurred every summer in Millau as vacationers heading for the coast left the A75 motorway and wound their way down to the valley floor. Those days are over, as the viaduct more or less completes the 500-mile motorway corridor between Paris and Montpellier. France now has four autoroutes on the north-south axis: the heavily used A7, which descends the Rhône Valley; the A75, which crosses the Massif Central from Clermont-Ferrand to Montpellier via Millau; the A20, passing through the Limousin region to Toulouse; and, to the west, the A10-A62, via Bordeaux. In circumstances almost unique in Europe, the country's motorway-building program continues apace. Fortunately, France is large enough to accommodate new routes. An impressive road-transport system has been key to its modern economic achievement. |
| Norman Foster | The designs of Norman Foster, now Lord Foster of Thames Bank and Britain's best-known architect, can be seen in cityscapes around the world. Among other recent successes of his firm, Foster and Partners, are the new dome and interior of the Reichstag, in Berlin; the Millennium footbridge, over the Thames in London; and the new court inside the British Museum. The tall, gently curved Swiss Re tower, mentioned here, is more commonly compared to a pickle than to a pineapple. Foster's universally acclaimed design for the Millau viaduct is a wonderful sight, especially in the early morning,when mists shroud the pillars and it looks like a long silver thread moving through the sky. Just before its inauguration, in December 2004, Foster told a local newspaper that the "bridge could not look as if it been tacked onto the scenery. It had to rise out of the landscape with the delicacy of a butterfly." |
| Pont du Gard | The three-tiered Pont du Gard was an aqueduct built by the Romans in the first century A.D. over the river Gard (also known as the Gardon) about 60 miles east of Millau on the other side of the Cévennes. It formed part of a canal that carried water from a source at Uzès to Nîmes. Still in amazingly good shape, it is one of the region's prime tourist attractions. |
| Pont du Québec | The Quebec and Tacoma Narrows bridges are two infamous engineering disasters. The Pont du Quebec was half completed in 1907 when it collapsed, killing 76 workmen; its designers were said to have miscalculated stress ratios. It was finished ten years later and remains the longest cantilever construction in the world. The Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge, in Washington State, was called Galloping Gertie because it swung and twisted so dangerously in the wind. It collapsed in November 1940, four months after it opened. The Millau viaduct is the world's tallest vehicular bridge. The tallest of its pillars, dubbed P2, rises to 343 meters above the ground, 23 meters higher than the Eiffel Tower. The highest suspension bridge, as measured from deck to ground, remains the Royal Gorge Bridge, hanging 321 meters over the Arkansas River in Colorado. |
| Le viaduc de Millau 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 are used with the permission of Champs-Élysées, Inc. |
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| Listening Index French Dictionaries | ||||
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