Cultivate your French : Slow French, at the right pace.

It was December the 30th 2022, I had an appointment with Nathalie Iris from the bookshop Mots en marge, in La Garenne-Colombes. 

Nathalie is a famous bookseller in France, you can see her on the TV show Télématin. We met during the confinement, during which Nathalie chose some books for my three daughters, Micaela, Felicia and Lisa.

She also became a regular guest to talk about books on the podcast One Thing In A French Day that I run beside Cultivate Your French.  

That day, in December, Nathalie presented a book that I totally fell in love with : On va déguster Paris. It’s a book written by François-Régy Gaudry a journalist that runs a radio show about food and good products on France Inter. He’s very famous in France. I love his voice and his way of saying things. 

With his friends from the radio show, François-Régis Gaudry has already written different books about France, Italy, etc. But this particular book about Paris is really good. It’s full of addresses, recipes, historical stories, pictures and drawings. 

In this episode, you are going to hear Nathalie Iris talking about it.

You can order this beautiful book from the website Decritre.fr at a fair price. I don’t have any commercial link with them, but I know their service is very good. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, we will have an eye on those questions asked at the negative form, on the expression « il y a » that teachers often ask us to avoid and we will see all the different vocabulary about a book page. 

So, to cultivate your French, and enjoy the transcript by reading what is said and enjoy the notes that come with the text, you could subscribe at

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The weather is very bad these days in Paris, but it doesn’t stop me when I have the possibility to have a walk in Paris. 

Justement, I had an order to collect rue du Four. This led me to a strange encounter. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, I will highlight for your those expressions or words that are typical in French and that you could use in your own conversation. 

We will also focus on the vocabulary that I use in this text to talk about my itinerary . 

And I will select a particular sentence that you could repeat again and again to improve your pronunciation and your spoken French. 

So to cultivate your French, you could subscribe to the transcript and receive it by email. The subscription costs 4 euros a month. Rendez-vous at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

During the holidays, we had the visit of an unexpected visitor : the flue ! Micaela and Felicia and me where its victims, so it ruined the joy of being on holidays. But we had some nice moments and we were the 3 of us well enough to enjoy the traditional Christmas meal with my parents. Pintade aux marrons, plateau de fromages, bûche au chocolat and Clairette de Die are what we enjoyed the most. 

But, there where also some nice and positive moments, this is what this episode is about. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, I will give you all the information on who is who and what is what in this list. We will also notice the tenses used in this list of moments. Eventually, we will focus on this sentence that starts with « Saviez-vous que… » and see how you could use it in your own French conversations. 

So to cultivate your French and improve your listening comprehension, I invite you to subscribe to the transcript, so you can get the text of the podcast by email with the notes and photos. The subscription costs 4 euros a month. You can subscribe at cultivateyourfrench.com

It was cold on that day, when my friend Pauline and I went to Paris for a day.

We went to Saint-Germain-des-prés to walk in the nice streets, enjoy the Christmas shop windows like the ones of Alix D.Reynis, Ladurée or Officine Bully. We also visited the very nice Eglise Saint-Germain-des-prés whose ceilings are as nice as the ones of La Sainte-Chapelle. We had tea at Le café des deux magots. And, we went to la Place Furstemberg, one of the most beautiful places in Paris.

This episode takes you to this nice little place.

This is a double episode, it’s twice longer than usual because next week and the week after the podcast will on holidays. 

In the notes that come with the transcripts, you will find photos with comments of the different places Pauline and I went to. 

So, to cultivate your French, and improve your listening comprehension, you could subscribe to the transcript and receive the text, notes and photos by email. The subscription costs 4 euros a month.

You can subscribe at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

There were a lot of anniversaries in 2022 : the 4th centenary of Molière’s birth, the 2nd centenary of the deciphering of the hieroglyphes by Jean-Francois Champollion, the centenary of Marcel Proust’s death and the centenary of the publication of Ulysses by James Joyce, in Paris. 

Yes, in Paris ! It was the American owner of the bookshop Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach, that published the famous book in 1922. 

With my friend Françoise, a reader of Ulysses in English,  we went to different places related to James Joyce in Paris. A little odissey of our own.

The bookshop Shakespeare and Company owned by Sylvia Beach doesn’t exist anymore, though I’m sure you have heard about a famous bookshop, named Shakespeare and Company, near Notre-Dame. Haven’t you?

What is the story of this bookshop? This is what this episode is about. You can imagine Françoise and I in Paris on a cloudy day. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, we will focus on all the numbers and dates that this episodes contains. 

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Last Saturday, there was a Kung-fu completion near Paris. La coupe de France de Kung-fu. It’s opened to anyone belonging to a club. There was 4 of us from my club : Alistair, Julien, Paul (12) and me.

Preparing a competition requires a lot of energy and in my case I have to deal with stress. I presented a routine without weapon (mains nues) and one with a sabre.

What is the aim of going to a competition? This question might occur at some point. This is what this episode is about. In a way, I think we can make a link between this question and learning French. Learning French has the reputation of being difficult. Yes, it is. But step by step you can make progress and be proud of yourself ! I’m proud of you, my dear listeners.

In the notes that come with the transcript, we will focus on natural French sentences and expression. Of course, there will be a special focus on a sentence I have chosen for you «  j’aurais pu sans doute faire mieux ».

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Many famous paintings became famous because they were scandalous. This is the case of Le Radeau de la Méduse by Théodore Géricault. The young painter, aged 27 years old, painted about the wreck of the Medusa near the cost of today’s Mauritania. 147 persons were left on a big raft on which most of them died. Only 15 people survived the 13 days before their rescue. 

The wreck happened in 1816 and it was scandalous because the French captain was incompetent. 

Géricault gets passionate about the subject; He meets two survivors, study dead bodies in the hospital, study how to paint to sea, etc. 

The painting was first shown at the Salon in 1819, only 3 years after the wreck of the Medusa. The Salon is the official art exhibition at that time.  My friend Anne-Laure will tell you how the painting had been received at that time. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, we will focus on the vocabulary and expressions that Anne-Laure uses to describe what people felt about the painting. 

So to cultivate your French and boost your listening comprehension, subscribe to the transcript at cultivateyourfrench.com. The subscription costs 4 euros a month. When you subscribe you get the 10 latest transcripts for free. 

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This Monday, I had the chance to visit with a class the Assemblée nationale. The visit was absolutely thrilling. The official seat of the Assemblée nationale is the Palais Bourbon. This palais was build in front of the place de la Concorde, on the left bank of the Seine. It was built in the 18th century for one of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan’ daughter. 

There are a lot of nice rooms and nice paintings to see but what we all enjoyed the most was the opportunity to watch the debates going on for 5 minutes. This was really an experience and this is what this episode is about. 

In the notes that come with the transcript, I will highlight for you the expressions and sentences that you might use when you talk about a speech. 

We will also study a specific sentence, the last one because it contains all the elements to understand the used of the passé composé and the imparfait. 

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A few weeks ago, my friend Anne-Laure and I spent a day in the 11th arrondissement, le quartier du faubourg Saint-Antoine. This neighbourhood in the East part of Paris has a special identity that comes from the Middle Ages. There was a major trading center related to wood and a lot of cabinet-makers had their worshop there. This is the reason why it is organised with courtyard sand passages : when you make furnitures you need space and air. Then, in the 19th century there were a lot of factories. The Seine was not far away, so it was easy to have that type of business there. 

Before visiting two different passages, Anne-Laure and I had to find a place to have lunch. Let’s start with this ! 

In the notes that come with the transcript, we will focus on a specific sentence that uses the gérondif, a form that comes from Latin ! Yes, thrilling ! As usual, I will also highlight for you

Voilà, to cultivate your French and work on your listening comprehension you can subscribe to receive the transcript by email at www.cultivateyourfrench.com

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Last week, we had a good week, we spent a week in Jura. The girls were eager to go to the Jura sud equestrian centre, for them it’s the best place in the world. They would usually spend the whole week there, but as November the 1st was a bank holiday, it was planned that they would start going on Wednesday. We have a ritual to end those beautiful days, we go to the Crêperie in Pont-de-Poitte. 

In this episode, I will tell you about the equestrian centre and the crêperie. And, in the transcript, I will highlight for you the sentences or expressions that are very natural in French and the you could use in your own conversations.

We will also focus on a short sentence of the text because it contains a verb at tense that could be surprising ! 

To cultivate your French and receive the transcript by email, please subscribe to the transcript at www.cultivateyourfrench.com the subscription costs 4 euros a month !