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Clever animation and song about café (coffee)

Whilst surfing the net, I stumbled upon this awesome animation in French about drinking coffee.

I thought it needed to be shared - It reminds me of myself and Nespresso

Ferrari Speeding through Paris

My uncle sent me this short film and it had me sitting on the edge of my seat. The film itself has no special effects and there appears to be doubt as to the real model of the car. Was it a Ferrari or was it a Mercedes? Certain sources claim that the vehicle driven may have been a Mercedes , but the soundtrack was dubbed with Ferrari engine sounds.

Claude Lelouch… histoire louche?

Apparently, there are several different urban legends that have sprung up around this film, other than the type of car driven. Was Lelouche arrested for filming this? (He didn’t have a permit). Was the actual driver a Formula 1 driver?

Regarless of the underground nature of the film or the debate surrounding the circumstances of its creation, if you know the streets of Paris, you should check out this clip.

C’était un rendez-vous

Great example of cinéma vérité

This court-métrage from 1976 was fimed using a camera mounted to a car (more than likely a Mercedes) and shot in one take. Whether the engine sounds were enhanced later or not, the soundtrack is so powerful that at moments, you feel as though the car and a dog on the sidewalk are growling at each other.

The natural lighting provided by those old yellow/orange headlights they used to have in France, makes it seem at moments as if the pigeons were on fire as they flew out of the way of this speeding car. Very vintage and nostalgic Parisian.

The streets of Paris

On your marks, get set, go!

And watch out for the pedestrians, street cleaners, other cars and the roundabouts!

(Click on the rectangular button to go full screen)

Une holding ou un holding ?

Cette année je vois le mot holding partout (sans doute à cause des holdings ISF et la loi TEPA). Ce qui me gêne est le fait que les Français emploient parfois le déterminant masculin et parfois féminin quand ils utilisent le mot holding.

Qu’est ce qu’un holding

holding n.m. ['ɔldiŋ]

“Entreprise qui possède les actions d’autres sociétés, accomplit les opérations financières qui s’y rapportent, et dirige ou contrôle leur activité.” [Dictionnaire des anglicismes, 1980, REY-DEBOVE et GAGNON]

“Société financière qui possède les actions d’autres sociétés, accomplit les opérations financières intéressant ces sociétés et dirige ou contrôle leur activité.” [Le Grand Robert]

holding - l’anglicisme de l’année

holding - d’où vient ce mot ?

Il s’agit en fait d’un mot emprunté à l’anglais [et attesté en français depuis 1930], abrév. de holding company, de to hold «tenir», et company «compagnie». [Le Grand Robert et le TLFi]

le genre du mot holding en français

“Conformément à la tendance générale pour les emprunts désignant un inanimé, le mot est au masculin. Cependant, sous l’influence de la lexie société holding, on trouve parfois le féminin.” [TLFi]

Donc, cela veut dire que depuis plus que 70 ans le mot holding existe en français, mais que les locuteurs de cette langue ne se mettent pas en accord sur son genre grammatical.

Le mot holding dans les dictionnaires français

Que disent les dictionnaires français

Malheureusement, les meilleurs dictionnaires de la langue française ne nous aident pas non plus avec nos recherches pour LE VRAI et SEUL genre grammatical de ce terme. Le meilleur de tous ces dictionnaires (le TLFi), donne à ce mot le genre masculin. C’est uniquement dans la rubrique ‘remarques’ qu’on retrouve mention du genre féminin. (Une tactique de lexicographie descriptive et non nécessairement prescriptive). Le Grand Robert fait de même. Le Petit Robert (2006) indique : n.m. ou f.

et les dictionnaires spécialisés en anglicismes ?

Le Dictionnaire des anglicismes de REY-DEBOVE et GAGNON ne fait aucune référence au genre féminin. Le fameux Dictionnaire des anglicismes de Höfler consacre trois articles entiers mais différents à ce référent (holding company, holding, et holding trust).

holding company n. f. “société anonyme qui contrôle, grâce à ses participations financières, un groupe d’entreprises de même nature, liées ainsi par une communauté d’intérêts”

holding n.m. même sens - Il indique aussi des variantes grammaticales du genre féminin attesté en 1927 et 1937.

holding, l’approche prescriptive ou descriptive

Vous le savez peut-être, les dictionnaires adoptent un style de description des mots en usage dans une langue. Les dictionnaires susmentionnés nous indiquent donc tous que le mot holding (employé seul) doit avoir le genre masculin, mais indiquent aussi qu’il retrouve les attestations de l’emploi du mot holding au féminin.

Que dit l’Académie française sur le mot holding ?

La neuvième édition du dictionnaire de l’Académie, nous indique que le nom holding est féminin (et parfois masculin).

Holding - masculin ou féminin ?

holding : résultats de nos recherches

La vérité est que les bons lexicographes décrivent la langue comme elle est attestée. Les gens qui sont en train de propager et faire répandre le mot holding en ce moment sont en fait des journalistes, des économistes, les commerçants des produits financiers et les sociétés de gestion.

Que dit Google sur les holdings ?

Si vous ne savez plus où regarder pour trouver le vrai genre du mot holding, demandez à Google.

2 990 000 pour une holding

28 900 000 pour un holding

le genre gagnant ?

Masculin! Nous aimerons bien croire l’Académie, mais malheureusement si l’on ne cite pas ses sources, on n’est pas une source fiable. Il serait vraiment triste de croire que toutes les recherches et le travail effectués par les grammairiens, linguistes et lexicographes des bons dictionnaires ne soient pas reconnus.

Investir dans un holding ou une holding ISF ?

C’est la saison de défiscalisation

Donc pour tous les gens qui sont redevables pour l’impôt sur la fortune cherchant une réduction isf, demandez un holding isf et non une holding isf. Cela ne veut pas dire que les sociétés de gestion qui ont commercialisé leur holding comme une holding ont un produit inférieur aux sociétés de gestion qui commercialisent un holding. Je ne vais pas les nommer ici, mais tous les meilleurs holdings isf sont disponibles chez mes-fcpi.fr

Conclusion sur le holding

Donc, pour conclure - je dois dire qu’après avoir rédigé cet article, la langue française me semble encore plus bizarre qu’auparavant.

Non seulement les locuteurs n’adhèrent pas tous aux mêmes règles, les dictionnaires ne le font pas non plus. Comment peut-on maîtriser cette langue?

Rude de chez rude adj. composé [rudəʃerud]

very impolite; très impoli(e)

etiquette & étiquette

in English the word etiquette is most commonly used in the sense “system of rules and conventions that regulate social and professional behaviour”‘. Proper etiquette is associated with polite society, good breeding etc.

Interestingly enough, even though English borrowed this word from French, the most common sense associated with the word étiquette in modern French is “petit morceau de papier fixé à un objet pour en indiquer la nature, éventuellement le prix etc”; ” little piece of paper attached to an object to indicate its nature, price etc.”.

I could explain to you what happened to the words etiquette and étiquette (how a Germanic word basically meaning “to stick, to pierce” was borrowed by Picard then Old French and was used to describe a type of sign stuck into the ground to indicate a type of goal in certain games, then went on to describe a small written thing, and eventually the behavior of the royal court, then good manners in general, etc.), but I am not able to describe what actually happened to French people’s interpretation of polite etiquette.

bonnes manières - good manners

“attitudes, gestes considérés comme la marque de la bienséance, du savoir-vivre” ; “attitudes, gestures which are considered as the mark of socially correct behavior”.

So even if French and English don’t share the prinicipal meaning of etiquette, good manners & bonnes manières seemed to be defined pretty similarly. So how is it that I am constantly bombarded by bad etiquette and even worse manners?

personal hygiene in public

Not once, not twice, but repeatedly, I have encountered people clipping their nails in public. Ceci n’est pas une blague -je t’ai vu, je t’ai entendu. I don’t know who raised these people or if they honestly do not believe this behavoir to be extremely rude (rude de chez rude); but this is just disgusting.

Se couper les ongles en public - cutting one’s nails in public

The latest instance of public nail clipping I encountered was on the bus yesterday. When I take the public transport, I expect to have some time to sit in peace and work. Yet thanks to Rudy McRuderson sitting across the aisle, I was forced to endure 20 minutes of public manicuring. I may be wrong in assuming that trimming your nails in public is rude in France, but I did notice that 2 different women looked around questioningly when they heard that awful sound of the clip, clip, clip of someone’s dirty fingernails falling to the floor of the bus.

After about 5 minutes, I caught the eye of the woman who was doing this, I don’t know how she managed to go that long without feeling my burning stare. I mouthed the words, ‘c’est impoli’ (that’s impolite). She looked at me, smiled in a devious manner, and stopped ; but continued staring at her nails, then started up again. She continued for 15 more minutes, avoiding the burning stares of new passengers getting on and hearing the clipping sound. The last 3 minutes of her route, she had no more nails to clip so she just played around with her nail cutter, making the clipping noise just to irritate people.

So for all of you public nail clippers out there, stop it. It is called personal hygiene for a reason, it’s personal and should not be done in public.

The Metro’s dirty dirty secrets

Les sales secrets du métro parisien

Other than some of the obvious gross and dirty things one finds in the Parisian metro, I was suprised to learn that some Parisians were totally unaware of one of dirtiest secrets of the Parisian metro. I’m talking about the dirty spots.

dirty spot n. (m.)¹ ['dɜrtispɒt]

area along the Parisian metro’s platform [usual painted white] which has become discolored as a result of passengers getting off and on at this location.

¹ if used as an anglicism in French, (or michèlisme) I am assigning it the ‘genre masculin’. [almost 90% of French nouns borrowed from English (aka anglicisms) are considered masculin]

Line up correctly au quai, OK

Nowadays on a few lines of the metro, the spots where the doors will open along the platform have been painted with indications so people know where to line up. Even though a lot of passengers still just try to get right in without letting people off first, these new painted lines will show you were to line up. If you are on a line that doesn’t have the painted indications, look for the dirty spots! They may be difficult to notice when you are right on top of one (as the entire things looks pretty dirty in general), but look down the quai “platform”, and you should be able to see them. I took a picture to help you out:

Phonetic alphabet in HTML [əvɐuβzεð]

Phonetic characters on your website

If I’ve learned anything in my linguistics and lexicography classes, it is that the best way to describe the prononciation of a word is to use the IPA, “international phonetic alphabet” (in English - API in French ([alphabet phonétique international]). So to provide you with such features as French pronounciation along with my definitions, I’ve use IPA. I thought I’d share the source for all of the HTLM codes for these special caracters.

Code for special characters online

If you need the code for a rhotic schwa, the Zulu voiced lateral fricative, or just your basic schwa - Penn State University organised and published the perfect tool : an index of the Unicode Entity Codes for Phonetic Symbols.

Other special unicode characters

If the symbol for the bilabial click and the front-round glide aren’t enough for you, I’ve found yet another source. If you need even more specialised characters, check out the Unicode Consortium - it enables people around the world to use computers in any language : Unicode Character Name Index.

Awesome design and cool music…

Always on the search for new techniques and ideas, I came across this cool clip of how to make stuff in Photoshop and Illustrator.

I thought it needed to be shared. The music is awesome! I believe it is The Trapeze Swinger by Iron & Wine. It goes very interestingly with the animation

Back to the bises

In a previous article I gave my impressions of the French custom of exchanging cheek kisses aka faire la bise. (Last time I said faire les bises, but one of my colleagues corrected me), so I’ll trust him and just know that French is a difficult language with a lot of things that seem to make little sense [plus I couldn't find any good examples in the TLFi]. So even though I have never seen French people just do one bise, I will use the “locution verbale” faire la bise (au singulier, même s’il y a en fait plusieurs bises) when referring to this French custom.

Status update your bises

So as I have mentioned before with French culture sometimes people with whom you interact may change their behavior towards you. This could be just a special occasion occurrence and you shouldn’t count on it happening again. Or… you may have being upgraded to someone who deserves a bise.

Biseworthy

I must take this time to retract some of my prior statements concerning who is biseworthy. I had stated that you don’t faire la bise with your marchand de journaux, apparently, if this evening is any indication, I was wrong.That’s right folks, my newsvendor bised me.

I am not exactly sure how I went from mere magazine buyer to bisable, but it has definitely been an interesting relationship to watch evolve. I am not sure of every detail but the evolution went something like this:

The Daring Tutoyement

I sometimes like to play it fast and loose with my use of the tutoiement in French, most often I don’t do it on purpose. To me the vouvoiement takes a conscient effort on my behalf and I often slip up and just spout out whatever you happens to slide off of my tongue. More often than not it is just tu. Especially when one has acquired the habit of using the “marqueur discursif” tu vois? at the end of certain utterances then gets mocked while making a sentence worthy of the Little Prince English to French translation.

Yeah folks, that’s right, Antoine de Saint Exupery wrote that book in English. I don’t even think that he is the one who actually translated it into French, unlike Samuel Beckett, who first wrote En attendant Godot in French then insisted upon translating it himself into English, his native tongue.

If you didn’t catch that, it meant I was using the vous and tu forms in the same sentence. So needless to say to, I tutoyed my marchand one day. I think he liked it.

The small talk

From then on we were 2toyin’ each other  like we were old school chums. Anyways, since he seemed to be a nice enough guy and as it turns out shares a similar education background as me, I would wave at him or chat with him a bit as I bought my magazines. Sometimes I didn’t even buy anything, I just asked him how things were.

The theory shattering bise

Today it came, the bise that made me re-examine my preconceived notions about fairing la bise. Why shouldn’t you give the people the bise that you see most often in your everyday life and with whom you enjoy nice conversations? If it happens that it is your marchard de journaux, don’t bise a snob.

Don’t engage the bise

Well, that may have left some of you wondering when you should approach someone for the bise. My best advice - let them come to you.  Some of you may know the word laisser faire in English (borrowed bien sûr, from French) in the economic or governmental sense of the term, I adopt its other meaning, “noninterference in the affairs of others”. Basically, je laisse faire.

Voilà, hope you learned some interesting things about “French kisses” (in the cheeky sense). I know I did.

publicité non sollicitée

So, one of annoying things about living in an appartment in a city, is that you may receive junk advertisements in your mailbox. I came home tonight to find the entire wall of mailboxes jammed full of papers that had been haphazardly shoved partially in the slots. Obviously these companies didn’t pay postage to mail me this document, and they didn’t even address it to me. So I have come up with a plan to stop the absurd waste of paper of unsolicited advertisements. The installation of a stragetically placed sign reading: “Pas de publicité! Vous êtes filmé(e).©” If that doesn’t scare off these flyer-flingers, the next step would be to add another line of text to the sign claiming that violators will be found using their finger prints and tracked down…