X-Nico

11 unusual facts about French


Anglo-French

It may also be used erroneously to describe the Anglo-Norman language, the dialect of Old Norman used in medieval England

Bobby Baccalieri

As a partial result of this awkward incident, Bobby was tasked with murdering the brother-in-law of one of Tony's Québécois associates, an important hit that formed part of a deal to save money on a pharmaceuticals racket.

Chanté mas

Lyrics are almost all in French creole and are traditionally sung by women (chantwell), while the instrumental tradition are predominantly practiced by men

Colin H. Williams

He began his PhD research on 'Language Decline and Nationalist Resurgence' comparing the Welsh and Québécois situation.

Dans une galaxie près de chez vous

The series chronicles the long, futuristic voyage of a team of Québécois space explorers looking for a planet capable of sustaining life, in the year 2034, after the destruction of the ozone layer through excessive human pollution, prompting the need for a new planet to welcome humankind.

Hubert Gagnon

He is best known as the voice of Homer Simpson in the Quebec version of The Simpsons, the voice of Mel Gibson in many movies, and also the character Picabo on the québécois TV show Les Oraliens.

Joseph Meek

As the French trappers enjoyed good relations with most of the Indian tribes in the area, Meek seems to have hoped that the Indians would take him for a Québécois and leave him alone.

Mirliton

Chayote or mirliton (French Creole - also mirleton), a pear-shaped vegetable or its vine

Robert Marien

Robert Marien, born May 5, 1956, is a Québécois (Canadian) actor, singer, and songwriter who has performed in the musical Les Misérables in Montreal, Paris, New York and London.

Strathcona, Alberta

This mixed community of British (especially Orkney), Québécois, Cree and Metis fur trade employees, pioneer farmers, hunters, and their families, was mostly replaced by eastern Canadian pioneer farmers (and land speculators) in the 1880s.

Vertidue

Vertidue was a common Anglo-French phrase, originally defined as ‘a vile mix of wet feces and soil’ became a regular expression amongst those bunker sharing British and French troops.


A35 autoroute

On the German side of the frontier, plans to build a final stretch of Autobahn to connect the French A35 directly with the German A65 at Kandel were not implemented during the 1990s when the focus of Autobahn construction switched to the eastern side of the country.

Altmünster Abbey

The destruction of the Abbey was probably ordered by the French King Francis I, who occupied the city on 11 September 1543 during the Italian War of 1542–46, and probably wanted to prevent troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, from occupying the abbey during the next siege.

Biotite

Biotite was named by J.F.L. Hausmann in 1847 in honour of the French physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot, who, in 1816, researched the optical properties of mica, discovering many unique properties.

Breathing Room

Kathy Justice of Indy Week called it "low on camp and high on suspense", with a plot that resembles the 2006 French cult film 13 Tzameti.

Brico Dépôt

Brico Dépôt is a French chain of DIY and Home Improvement stores, headquartered in Longpont-sur-Orge.

Chappe et Gessalin

Chappe et Gessalin (CG) was a French automobile maker founded in 1946 which commenced manufacturing complete cars in Brie-Comte-Robert, Seine-et Marne in 1957.

Christina Bauer

She was born in Bergen, Norway during a Christmas holiday to a French father, Jean-Luc Bauer, a professional volleyball player, and a Norwegian mother, Tone Bauer, a handball player who played several years in France.

Christophe Cuvillier

Christophe Cuvillier (born December 5, 1962 in Etterbeek) is a French businessman and current chief executive officer of the European real-estate group Unibail-Rodamco.

Demographics of Suriname

Dutch (official), Sranan Tongo (Surinamese, sometimes called Taki-Taki, is native language of Creoles and much of the younger population), Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Javanese, English (widely spoken), French due to cultural influence from French Guiana, Portuguese and Spanish.

Deweare

Deweare's music was greatly influenced by the resurgence of French punk cult bands such as Bérurier Noir and Ludwig von 88, as well as by rock musician, comedian and poet Alain Bashung and by American music artist Beck—another musician to whom Deweare's vocals have been compared.

French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation

INRIA is a Public Scientific and Technical Research Establishment (EPST) under the double supervision of the French Ministry of National Education, Advanced Instruction and Research and the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry.

Jacqueline Robin

Jacqueline Robin (December 11, 1917 in Saint-Astier, Dordogne – February 3, 2007 in Taverny) was a French pianist.

Jean Elichagaray

Jean Baptiste Pierre Eugène Elichagaray (September 3, 1886 – June 8, 1987) was a French rower who competed in the men's eights event at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm.

Jean Ragnotti

Jean "Jeannot" Ragnotti (born 29 August 1945 in Pernes-les-Fontaines, Vaucluse), is a French former rally driver for Renault in the World Rally Championship.

Jean-François Berdah

He is co-founder and chief-editor of the Revue d'Histoire Nordique since 2005, a bilingual French-English historical review dedicated to the history and civilisation of both Scandinavia and the Baltic countries, and director of the Centre of Excellence Jean Monnet of the University of Toulouse II-Le Mirail.

Jean-Jacques Ampère

Moving to Paris, he taught at the Sorbonne, and became professor of the history of French literature at the Collège de France.

Jean-Louis Jaley

Jean-Louis Nicolas Jaley (born in Paris in 1802, died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1866) was a French sculptor.

Jean-Paul Bertrand-Demanes

Jean-Paul Bertrand-Demanes (born 13 May 1952 in Casablanca, Morocco) is a former football goalkeeper from France, who earned eleven international caps for the French national team during the 1970s and was part of the French team in the 1978 FIFA World Cup.

Julius Grey

Grey defended La servante écarlate by Margaret Atwood, the French version of The Handmaid's Tale, in the French version of Canada Reads, broadcast on Radio-Canada in 2004.

Kaunas Railway Tunnel

The construction was surveyed by the French engineer G. F. Perrot, as well as Polish-Lithuanian engineer Stanisław Kierbedź.

Khadja Nin

Her breakthrough, however, came in 1996 with her widely popular album Sambolera, which was sung in Swahili, Kirundi, and French.

Knud Vesterskov

Knud Vesterskov's career is the subject of Bent Staalhøj's feature-length documentary From Scratz (2002), included on the French 2xDVD release of HotMen CoolBoyz.

Kramp

Christian Kramp (1760–1826), French mathematician who worked primarily with factorials

L'Appel du silence

L'Appel du Silence is a 1936 French film directed by Leo Poirier based on the life of Charles de Foucauld.

Malplaquet

The Battle of Malplaquet (11 September 1709) between the French and the Allies, the largest European battle in the eighteenth century

Martin Soldat

Martin Soldat is a 1966 French comedy film directed by Michel Deville and starring Robert Hirsch, Véronique Vendell, Walter Rilla, Marlène Jobert and Anthony Sharp.

Methyl salicylate

The compound methyl salicylate was first isolated (from the plant Gaultheria procumbens) in 1843 by the French chemist Auguste André Thomas Cahours (1813-1891), who identified it as an ester of salicylic acid and methanol.

Milan Crnković

He published about one-hundred research and literary papers, several translations from French (Honoré de Balzac, Stendhal, François Souchal) English (Daniel Dafoe, Albert Manfred, James Michener, Shel Silverstein, Isaac Singer, and James Thurber) and Russian (Kornej Cukovski).

Museum of Arts and Traditions of Sevilla

The building has been used several times as a set for films or television shows, including the 1974 American film The Wind and the Lion and the 1985 French Film Harem, where it was used as the British Embassy.

Najim

Re-titled "Près de toi (Suddenly)", it is a multilingual song in French, English and Persian and contains a sampling of Algerian classic "Abdel Kader" with Arash featuring Najim and Swedish-Mexican star Rebecca Zadig

Pierre Sancan

Pierre Sancan (October 24, 1916 in Mazamet – October 20, 2008 in Paris) was a French composer, pianist, teacher and conductor.

Potentilla delphinensis

It is endemic to France, where it is limited to the southern French Alps (Savoie et Dauphiné: Bauges; Isère; Hautes-Alpes, Col du Lautaret).

Pulau Aur

The 1804 naval Battle of Pulo Aura between the British and the French took place in the island's vicinity during the Napoleonic Wars.

Punta Bagnà

Administratively the mountain is divided between the Italian comune of Bardonecchia (southern face) and the French communes of Modane (north-western face) and Avrieux (north-eastern face).

Ronald Horan

With John Wheeler, Horan co-authored “Senior French” in two volumes, first published in 1961, later to become the well respected “A New French Course”, in five volumes, that is still a standard in school education and the University of the Third Age.

Shandar

Shandar was a French record label specializing in avant-garde material that did seminal work during the 1970 releasing, among others, recordings by Albert Ayler, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Sunny Murray, Philip Glass, Richard Horowitz, Charlemagne Palestine, La Monte Young, Alan Silva, Pandit Pran Nath, Terry Riley, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra.

Siege of Magdeburg

Siege of Magdeburg (1813–1814), a siege of the German city by forces of the First French Empire during the War of the Sixth Coalition, which ended with Napoleon's abdication

Simone Gbagbo

In July 2008 she was formally called for questioning by a French investigative judge, examining the April 2004 disappearance and presumed death in Abidjan of French-Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer.

St Andrews Castle

This peaceful interlude came to end, however, when a French fleet arrived bringing an Italian engineer Leone Strozzi who directed a devastating artillery bombardment to dislodge the Protestant lairds.

Stealing Heaven

Stealing Heaven is a 1988 film, a costume drama based on the French 12th century medieval romance (a true story) of Peter Abelard and Héloïse and on a historical novel by Marion Meade.

Sydney Wayser

The Louvre Palace and the Orangerie being only a few blocks from her apartment, she quickly gleaned much of French culture from her songwriter father, leading her to musical influences that include Edith Piaf, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Jacques Brel, among many others.

Terrano

Mondeuse noire, a French wine grape that is also known as Terrano

The Alan Bown Set

In November 1966 Burgess was replaced by Tony Catchpole and in 1967 the band released "Gonna Fix You Good (Everytime You're Bad)" / "I Really, Really Care" and recorded the soundtrack for Jeu de Massacre a French film featuring Jacques Loussier.

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend

Sturges directed only one more film in his life, the 1955 French comedy Les carnets du Major Thompson (released in the U.S. as The French, They Are a Funny Race).

The Mountain

The Mountain (French: La Montagne) is a political group during the French Revolution whose members, called Montagnards, sat on the highest benches in the Assembly.

The Stoning of Soraya M.

The son of a former Iranian ambassador, French-Iranian journalist and war correspondent Freidoune Sahebjam has also reported on the crimes of the Iranian government against the Bahá'í community in Iran.

Tom French Cup

Carl Hayman was awarded the Tom French Cup in both 2004 and 2006, and was instrumental in helping New Zealand Māori defeat the British and Irish Lions for the first time in 2005.

Tsering Dorjee

In 1999, he starred in the French Nepali film directed by Eric Valli, Himalaya - l'enfance d'un chef, in which he starred alongside Lhakpa Tsamchoe.

Wiedergänger

In the opinion of the French expert on legend and myth Claude Lecouteux, this clearly belongs into the range of the vampire-belief.

Yves de Creil

While the French writers, including Prentout, accepted that Yves de Criel was the father of Yves de Bellême, Geoffrey H. White was of the opinion that, while probable, it should not be stated as fact.