Day 1117 (Tuesday) 30^th June 2020

I love my little walk to the station every morning

 

In International house there was only one classroom full and all the students were wearing masks but the teacher wasn’t. The kids were a bit late so I had the chance to do some photocopying for the start of next week’s summer school. The two hours with the kids were relatively painless although they did play fight for a while but I have found a new weapon; if they are not behaving I tell them we won’t play Pictionary at the end of the class and it works. Two days down, three to go. On the walk back up to Nice station I saw yet another brilliant example of French parking – you’ve got to love them.

 

At the station I got confused again as they’d moved the entrance since yesterday but I found it eventually. On the platform the rules are still really strict and most people obey them

but when the train arrived all the rules went straight out of the window and a young kid sat right next to me on the fold away chairs. I must have given him a dirty look because his dad told me off for minding because he’s just a child!

We had a lovely few hours on the beach this afternoon and it wasn’t too full. Huw had a swim and claims the water is getting warmer so hopefully I’ll go in next week – you never get me in there before July!

         

Weird facts you didn't know about the French language

Why not impress your French friends with some unusual facts about their own language?

The longest word in the dictionary is anticonstitutionnellement at 25 letters. 

The longest French word of all is the full chemical name for thiamine which has 49 letters

The shortest French word with all the vowels is oiseau (bird).

Meanwhile oiseaux (birds) is the longest word where you don't pronounce any of the letters individually. 

There are more words that have just one letter than there are letters in the alphabet.

Explainer: While you've heard of words like y and a, there are also accented words like à. But the French also count single letters as words like j' (as in j'aime) and c' (as in c'est). This would be the equivalent of counting 't as a word in English (as in the word don't) - and some English dictionaries actually do this. 

There's only one French word with the letter ù, and that's où (where). Yet the letter still gets its own key on the French keyboard.

The word "simple" doesn't rhyme with any other French word. Neither does "quatorze", "quinze" or "monstre". 

French is the only language (besides English) that's spoken on all the continents. (Much of West Africa is French speaking, Canada in North America, French Guiana in South America, Vanuatu in Oceania.) 

The longest name of a French town is Saint-Remy-en-Bouzemont-Saint-Genest-et-Isson in the Marne département, northeastern France.

There are several words that have three e's in a row, like créée and agréée which mean "created" and "approved", respectively. 

Oeil (eye) is the only word that starts with a different letter when in plural yeux (eyes).

The word "amour" is very peculiar as it's masculine in the singular ("amour fou") and feminine in the plural ("belles amours"), as one of our readers pointed out. 

The most common letter in French is e, recurring at a frequency of 14.7 percent. It's followed by s at 7.9 percent and a at 7.6 percent. In comparison, in English the top three are e at 12.7 percent, t at 9.1 percent, and a at 8.2 percent. 

The least common letter is the ï (known as a trema) at 0.005 percent. (It's in words like naïve, aïoli, maïs).

And lastly, the shortest town name is Y in Somme, northern France.

  

I found an article entitled ‘90 interesting facts about France’ so I thought I’d spread them out over the coming days, weeks – here are the first ten…

1. When all of France’s possessions around the world are taken into account, including French Polynesia, French Guyana, and Martinique, France occupies the most time zones of any country: 12 of them.

2. Beloved Paris was a Roman city originally. In those day it was known as “Lutetia”.

3. The French Army was the first to use camouflage. During World War I, artists painted vehicles and equipment to blend into their respective backgrounds.

4. Over one-half of the traffic roundabouts in the world are located in France.

5. In the Second World War, when Hitler visited the Eiffel Tower, the French cut all of the lift cables. This forced him to climb the stairs if he wanted to enjoy the view from the top.

6. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron became the youngest ever President of his country at the age of 39.

7. France made history in 2016 by banning supermarkets from throwing out unsold food items. These stores are now required to donate the food to charities and food banks.

8. During the Second World War, the Mosque of Paris protected French Jews from the Nazis by supplying them with Muslim Identification cards.

9. Keeping food fresh is easier thanks to the French. Nicolas Appert, a confectioner by trade, came up with the concept of canning foods, using sealed glass containers which were placed in boiling water. Pierre Durand came up with a practical way to preserve food in tin cans.

10. Always forward-thinking, the French were the first to introduce the concept of license plates for automobiles in 1893.

Today’s airport sign

TOIDI

This sign is funny for a whole host of reasons. First off, we're laughing at ourselves because it took us three whole minutes to figure out what the sign is saying. Second, it's funny because the person getting off the plane is going to be welcomed by her friend calling her an idiot. Last of all, the girl holding the "idiot" sign either accidentally or purposefully held the sign upside down. Really though, I don't know who the biggest idiot is here.

No jokes today but there is a very cute video