Day 1785 (Thursday) 28th April 2022

I made a cheese souffle for dinner last night and was amazed that I had three double-yolk eggs out of the same box, one after another. I know that’s not very exciting but it was really interesting at the time.

We had to get up super early this morning because I had an 8.20 start in Ipag. While we were getting ready to get on Kisbee we were a tad miffed to see that they are building the dreaded private beach Delhi Bo, our beach isn’t big enough to house this expensive monstrosity.

Despite being so early we didn’t need a coat on Kisbee this morning, just a light jacket – summer is coming.

To get to Ipag we have to go past La Tete Carree –. We really must go inside this wonderful building one of these days.

Tete Carree, Nice

Iconic city library in the centre of Nice also known as 'thinking inside the box'

A monumental sculpture standing 28m high, La Tête Carrée looms over one of Nice’s busiest intersections. Meaning “square head”, La Tête Carrée is literally a 14m³ cube with a mouth and chin nested on a rounded pair of shoulders.

Inaugurated in 2002, La Tête Carrée is the work of Sacha Sosno, a French sculptor who spent much time in the company of other celebrated local artists such as Henri Matisse and Yves Klein.  It is an iconic building that, at the time, was the first inhabited monumental sculpture in the world. Also titled, “Thinking Inside the Box," the giant square head houses 3 floors of books within the central library, “Bibliothèque Louis Nucera”.

Sitting on the corner of Promenade des Arts, La Tête Carrée looks out over Place Yves Klein from the small but colourful Jardin Maréchal Juin, a public garden crammed full of various bright blooms. Small paths weave in and out of the flowerbeds and there are a couple of other sculptures dotted about.

On the opposite side of the square to La Tête Carrée is a small landscaped area with ornamental fountains and the Acropolis, a large conference and exhibition centre that also houses a bowling alley and cinema.

Look up if you’re passing La Tête Carrée at night, as it is lit from within and you can make out the floors of the library inside. When I got to school I was impressed with the new deck chairs that have appeared in the garden. I don’t know if they are for a specific purpose and they look very inviting.

It was a very long day in school today as I had a group of 24 students from 8.20 – 10.20, then a 10-minutes break followed by half of the group of 24 (13 students), so I was with them for four hours – it’s too much. After lunch on the roof garden I had the other half of the big group (11 students) so I repeated the same lesson – thank god the money is good! 

 

This is the small café where I bought a chicken panini, for such a big school the café is tiny.

And this is the play area

Ten French words you’ll never pronounce right

French may be a beautiful sounding language - but some of those Gallic words can be a real ordeal for us foreigners to pronounce. Our readers have picked out their most unpronounceable French words. How many can you (confidently) say?

This is what a frog might look like trying to pronounce the French word for frog. Photo: Yamanaka Tamaki/Flickr

We put the shout-out on social media and we were flooded with responses.

 

We gathered what we thought were the best responses and the toughest words – from beginner level to extremely advanced. And a warning: Number ten is really hard.

 

Without further ado:

 1: Mille-feuille (pronounced meel-foy)

(If you can't get your mouth around the word, get it around the cake instead. Photo: Alpha/Flickr)

 

Fancy some custard slice? Well not if it's mille-feuille, says Facebook fan Deborah Adams Kutch. “It's physically impossible for me to pronounce correctly,” she says. 

“I have had more than one session with several obliging patisserie ladies trying to teach me, much to their hilarity.”

 

2. Brouilly (pronounced  brü-ˈyē)

 

(Welcome to Brouilly itself, with some vineyards in the background. Photo: JaHoVil/Flickr)
Another item that's top of the unpronounceable list is “Brouilly“, a type of red wine from the area bearing the same name in the Beaujolais region. Lynn Segal on Facebook says: “I don't drink it anymore because I've been laughed at so many times! I can't figure out how to say the B at the front of the mouth and the R at the back.”

 

3. Rouen (I couldn’t find the phonetic spelling for this)

(Photo: Thomas Hammoudi/Flickr)

 Another answer that got people talking was “Rouen“, a town in northern France. Iris Weintraub Lachaud says it's hard to pronounce “unless you're a goose”. 

 But it's not just us foreigners who think it. Facebook follower Onürb Öhn is a Frenchman who describes himself as “nearly Rouen native” – but he says that the town's name “is still a mystery for me to pronounce… rouan, wran, roin, roan, rouen”.

 

4. Bouilloire  (pronounced \buj.waʁ\) 

Tweeter Richard Milne says that “without a doubt” the hardest French word to pronounce for him is bouilloire (which means kettle).

“It's got so many vowels/soft sounds that I sound like somebody is strangling me when I say it,” he says. 

 

5. Pneu (Pronunciation /njuː/) 

Another common response was “pneu“, which means tyre. Ruth Trevanion on Facebook says she “just can't get to grips with that one at all”. That seems like a pun Ruth, and we salute you for it. But you're not alone. A number of people said they couldn't pronounce the word either, with one follower saying it's the “least French sounding French word” they know. 

6. Heureuse (or this one)

Yet another common response was “heureuse” (meaning happy). Karen Hermann laments: “It doesn't sound like a word when I say it, it sounds like I'm trying to speak through a piece of gum stuck in my airway.”

 

7. Froid (pronunciation fwa)

(Photo: Laszlo Ilyes/Flickr)

On Facebook, Shelby Marcus Ocana says the toughest for her is the word “froid” (which means cold). And it sounds as if it's that pesky rolled r in the middle that's causing all the problems. 

“My kids always crack up when I say “J'ai froid” – they say I pronounce it like “foie” [which means liver].” She then has to endure inevitable series of jokes about foie gras from the little ones, she says.

 

8. Grenouille (pronounciation /gʀənuj/)

This word, which means frog, popped up a lot. In fact, many readers sent in words ending in “ouille”. Jay Fogler on Facebook says the problem with the word grenouille is the complex rolling of the r and the combination of the ou i and ll. Enough to drive you hopping mad!

 

9. L'eau (or this one)

(Photo: Gib3102/Flickr)

Catherine Gheribi on Facebook says it's one of the simplest, yet most important words of all that she gets tangled up on.

“When I say l'eau – no one ever understands what I mean,” she says. 

In fact, she says that even when a waiter asks whether she would like water or wine and she responds “L'eau s'il vous plait” – they still look at her blankly. 

“I want to shout 'I didn’t say du vin did I – so it must be the other one” She says that she's learned to order 'une carafe' now.

 

10. Serrurerie (pronunciation se-ryruh-ree ser-rurerie)

Brace yourself: The hardest French word to pronounce is the word for locksmith – “serrurerie“. It was the most commonly repeated response. Blogger Polly-Vous Francais even sent us an entire blog entry about the word. 

She says: “Forget it. It is not happening. It requires too many mellifluous, throaty French r's in too short a time frame (…) I find that I've barely recuperated from rolling out the first r when the next r and the next r need to come flying out of my tonsils.”