X-Nico

32 unusual facts about French Language


Achrafieh

Grand Lycée Franco-Libanais, a French language secondary school, Les Diablotins, Universite Saint Joseph located in the neighbourhood

Ad valorem tax

Maurice Lauré, joint director of the French tax authority, the Direction générale des impôts, as taxe sur la valeur ajoutée (TVA in French) was first to introduce VAT with effect from 10 April 1954 for large businesses, and extended over time to all business sectors.

An Act of Valour

Originally, Leppäjärvi and Corduner had approached D'Amico with the idea of him playing the drag-queen Bette Noir (a pun on French expression bête noire).

Ann Maire Horan

She studied French and Spanish at NUIG and became involved in DramSoc, the university's drama group.

Ænigma Mystica

It comes in a regular version exlcusively in French and a two disk deluxe edition with the French disk, English versions of chosen tracks as well as other re-recorded songs from past albums.

Beau Rivage

Beau Rivage means "Beautiful shore" in French.

Bündner Oberländerschaf

The Bündner Oberländerschaf (also known as Grisons (French), Graubünden (German)) is a domesticated breed of sheep in Switzerland.

Ça Va

Ça Va (French for "okay", literally "that goes") is an album by German/British avant-pop group Slapp Happy, recorded in London in 1997.

Canadian electoral system

Wherever possible, election officers at polling stations speak both official languages (English and French).

Caput

The French language converted caput into chief, chef, and chapitre, later borrowed in English as chapter.

Catalufa

The word catalufa is also used in several Caribbean countries as the Spanish or French language common name for a number of other Priacanthidae species.

En ventre sa mere

The French phrase en ventre sa mere (literally, in his/her mother's belly) refers to a fetus in utero.

In current spoken French, the phrase would now be rendered as "dans le ventre de sa mère".

Francophone nationalism

Francophone nationalism refers to nationalism of Francophone peoples and societies involving a theme of the French language as a component of it.

Hors-la-loi

Hors-la-loi means outlaw in French.

Literator

A writer, one who writes professionally, sometimes the original French term litterateur is used.

Lower Canada Rebellion

The movement for reform took shape in a period of economic disfranchisement of the French-speaking majority and working-class English-speaking citizens.

Milieu

Milieu is the word for environment in French, and, for hundreds of years, also in Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish, English, and other languages that were strongly influenced by French culture and French language, primarily during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Mistralian norm

Its aim is to make Provençal Occitan orthography more logical, relying on a mix of traditional spelling and French spelling conventions.

Order of the Ship and the Mussel

The Order of the Ship (French : Ordre du Navire) was founded in 1269 by the French king Louis IX the Saint.

Ordre de la Santé publique

The Order of Public Health (French: Ordre de la Santé publique) was a French order of merit, created by presidential decree of President Albert Lebrun on 18 February 1938 and amended on 22 May 1954, and awarded for services to the public health and protection of children.

Ottawa Fringe Festival

Because Ottawa is a bilingual city, both English and French productions are presented at the Fringe, though a small number of productions in past years have been bilingual.

Peacekeeping Monument

My own government would be glad to recommend Canadian participation in such a United Nations force, a truly international peace and police force, as well as the French translation.

Quadrille Ball

One interesting thing about this ball is that even though it is a German organized ball, the Caller announces the steps entirely in French.

Robert Naunton

It has also been printed in several collections and has been translated into French and Italian.

Rondeau Provincial Park

The name of the park comes from the French words "ronde eau" or "round water" which describes the shape of the harbour sheltered by the peninsula.

Snow on the Sahara

¹ "La Rose des Vents" was the first Anggun single recorded in three different languages - French, English ("A Rose in the Wind") and Indonesian ("Kembali").

St. Louis Jesuits

In addition, some hymns have even been translated into other languages such as Chinese, French, German, Korean, Polish, Spanish and Vietnamese, and have garnered wide acceptance in those areas as a result.

Swiss Prealps

The Swiss Prealps (Préalpes Suisses in French, Schweizerische Voralpen in German) are a mountain range in the north-western part of the Alps.

The Popguns

Their final album, A Plus de Cent (1996) - which features the French language version of their last single, "Harley Davidson" - was released by Tall Poppy Records.

Theodore Wells Pietsch I

Fluent in the French language, he served in 1917–1918 as an instructor in French to officers of the 316th regiment at Camp Meade, Maryland.

Tuplet

The most common tuplet (Schonbrun 2007, 8) is the triplet (Ger. Triole, Fr. triolet, It. terzina or tripletta, Sp. tresillo), shown at right.


A. Ronald Walton

Working with ACTFL, the US Department of Education, the College Board, among other organizations, Walton helped to formulate nationwide standards for Japanese, French, Hebrew German, Spanish Chinese and Korean.

Abidin Dino

While his young wife Güzin Dino taught French at Adana High School, he worked for a local newspaper, producing articles and drawings that illustrated with poetic realism of the hard lives and working conditions of agricultural laborers in the region.

Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale

Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (French for Acts and Documents of the Holy See related to the Second World War), often abbreviated Actes or ADSS, is an eleven-volume collection of documents from the Vatican historical archives, related to the papacy of Pope Pius XII during World War II.

Aharon Amir

Amir translated over 300 books into Hebrew, including English and French classics by Melville, Charles Dickens, Camus, Lewis Carroll, Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Emily Brontë and O. Henry.

Ali Abdolrezaei

Ali Abdolrezaei's poems have been translated into a variety of languages including English, German, French, Turkish, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Croatian and Urdu.

Amit Offir

On 2013 Amit's books were translated to other languages such as English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and many more.

Arpan Sharma

Arpan Sharma (born 1997) is a British polyglot who at the age of 10 could speak 11 languages: English, Hindi, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Tamil, Swahili, Polish, Thai, Welsh and Sanskrit.

Asrary school riyadh

Asrary School, Riyadh is a school that teaches English, Arabic, and French from KG1 till 12th grade.

Asturian language

::The Asturian language also received much of its lexicon, from languages as Castilian, French, Occitan or Galician.

Beidweiler

Beidweiler is the site of the 2000 kilowatt-transmitter for transmitting the French-speaking programme of RTL.

CBPD-FM

CBPD-FM is a Weatheradio Canada station which broadcasts weather information and alerts on a frequency of 103.7 FM in Port Hardy, British Columbia, Canada, in both English and French.

Chaussée de Wavre

The Chaussée de Wavre (French) or Waversesteenweg (Dutch) in Brussels, Belgium is a major street crossing the municipalities of Ixelles, Etterbeek and Auderghem.

College of Juilly

The College of Juilly (French: Collège de Juilly) is a Catholic private teaching establishment located in the commune of Juilly, in Seine-et-Marne (France).

Corcyre

Corcyre (old-fashioned French for Corfu) was one of three short-lived French départements in present Greece.

David Durand

He moved to England in 1711 and served as a pastor to the Church of England French-speaking churches in London.

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.

Éric Losfeld

Éric Losfeld (Mouscron, 1922 - Paris, 1979) was a Belgian-born French publisher who had a reputation for publishing controversial material with his publishing imprint Éditions Le Terrain Vague.

Escaladieu Abbey

Escaladieu Abbey (French: l'Abbaye de l'Escaladieu) was a Cistercian abbey located in the French commune of Bonnemazon in the Hautes-Pyrénées.

Estoc

The French estoc or English "tuck" was a type of European sword in use from the 14th to 17th centuries.

Étoile Filante

Étoile Filante means "shooting star" in French.

Francesco Matraire

Little is known of his life; his family is believed to have been from Nice originally, and his correspondence is mostly written in French.

General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales

The General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales (in French: Conseil Général des Pyrénées-Orientales) is the assembly elected for 6 years by the 31 Cantons of the Pyrénées-Orientales and its executive.

Hekmeh FC

Al-Hikma in classical Arabic, El-Hekmeh in Lebanese dialect stands for "wisdom", thus also the French alternative name of the club, Sagesse (meaning wisdom in French).

ISREC

The Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC, French: Institut suisse de recherche expérimentale sur le cancer) is a not-for-profit institution founded in 1964 and located in Épalinges, Switzerland.

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.

Kabika Tshilolo

Marie-Jeanne Kabika Tshilolo (born 1949 in Élisabethville, Katanga) is a French language writer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Khadja Nin

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

King Henry VIII School Abergavenny

The school at this time was supposed to be a grammar school taking pupils from all over North Monmouthshire with a curriculum of Latin, English, History, Geography, French, Arithmetic, Algebra, Trigonometry and Chemistry.

La Jalousie

The title of its English editions is Jealousy, but this fails to capture the ambiguity of the French title: "la jalousie" can be translated as "jealousy", but also as "the jalousie window".

Les Incompétents

According to the band, in an interview with John Kennedy on XFM, their name is pronounced as it is written, with the French plural for 'the' pronounced like the English name 'Les', as if it is a British person's attempt at speaking French.

Luis de Ávila y Zuniga

The book, first published in 1548, was very popular in its time, and was translated into French, Dutch, German, Italian, and Latin.

MacArthur Study Bible

Initially only available in the New King James Version, the MacArthur Study Bible is now also published using the New American Standard Bible text and the English Standard Version text, and the New International Version text as well as in Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.

Marco Valerio Editore

The company has a particular interest in producing texts for visually impaired people, including large print books in Italian, English and French.

Motion Picture Association – Canada

The Motion Picture Association – Canada (in French: Association Cinématographique – Canada) or MPA-C is a film industry trade group which speaks for and represents the major U.S. motion picture studios in Canada for films, television, videos and DVDs.

Public Francophone Radios

The Public Francophone Radios (French: Radios francophones publiques) is a group of French-speaking radio broadcasters comprising Radio France, Radio Canada, the Radio Télévision Suisse and RTBF.

Radio Bulgaria

In 2004, Radio Bulgaria broadcasts to Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America on short and medium wave in Bulgarian, English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Serbian, Greek, Albanian and Turkish.

Renault Avantime

The name combines the French word "Avant" (meaning "ahead") and the English word "time", with the latter using the English (tīm) rather than French pronunciation (tēm).

René Lussier

His best known work, Le trésor de la langue (1989), was created during this period, and album which intersperses musical material with taped recordings of Quebec residents discussing the importance of the French language.

SAHAR TV

Sahar TV is the name of two Iranian TV channels that are part of Sahar Universal Network (SUN) which is the foreign broadcasting branch of Islamic Republic Of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) that is responsible for broadcasting the programs in different languages including English, French, Arabic, Urdu, Azeri, Kurdish and many other ones.

Samuel Nathan Blatchford

In addition to his native Navajo and second language of English, he also learned to speak Turkish, French, German and Japanese.

T. P. O'Connor

In 1870, he moved to London, and was appointed a sub-editor on the Daily Telegraph, principally on account of the utility of his mastery of French and German in reportage of the Franco-Prussian War.

Tahar Rahim

Rahim has demonstrated multilingual skills and an ear for accents, having played in Corsican and Arabic in addition to French in A Prophet, and in Scottish Gaelic for his role as the Seal Prince in Kevin Macdonald's The Eagle.

Thé Au Harem D'Archimède

The album's French title, which translates into English as "Tea in the Harem of Archimedes," is a reference to the Mehdi Charef book Tea in the Harem (French title: Thé au Harem d'Archimède), as well as a pun on the French phrase "Théorème d'Archimède", the title of the album's fourth track.

The Birth of Corneillius

It was an English language album in contrast to earlier Corneille albums in French language.

Wilhelm J. Burger

When working in French, Burger used the first initial "G.", obviously for "Guillaume".

Williams Sassine

Williams Sassine (1944, Kankan, Guinea – February 9, 1997, Conakry, Guinea) was a Guinean novelist who wrote in French.

World Association of Children's Friends

The World Association of Children's Friends (or AMADE, in French: Association Mondiale des Amis de l'Enfance) was founded in 1963 by Princess Grace of Monaco.