My friend Claire works as a librarian, archivist at the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds in Paris. This institute is a school for deaf people created by l’Abbé de l’Epée en the 18th century.

On the podcast, we have known Claire for a few years now. We first met her as an history student at La Sorbonne, then at l’Ecole des Chartes a prestigious Parisian school specialising in historical sciences. She shared with us a promenade in the Quartier Latin in 2020, then last year she told us about the discovery of an incunable (a book printed in Europe before 1501).

In today’s episode, she shares with us the strange request of a researcher that contacted the institute and was looking for a rather big painting of the 19th century specially created for the choir of the Institute’s chapelle by a famous painter.

In the notes that come with the transcript, we will stop together on the different expressions that Claire uses that give so much life to what she tells us. This is also a way to understand and to see that French is largely made of fixed expressions. A better way to speak French is to learn how to use all those expressions. This is what we’ll see today with examples.

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