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| La nuit tombe très tôt en hiver // The night falls very early in the winter. |
Curiously, in Russian the night doesn’t fall, as it does in English and, it seems, in French as well. It normally descends (спускается, опускается) or advances, military-fashion (наступает). Sure, you can find mentions of the night falling (падает), but it not that common.
Maybe it’s because we are from the North, and our sun doesn’t move so fast.
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| Les enfants jouent dans la neige. Un moment parfait pour une tasse de thé. // The children are playing in the snow. A perfect moment for a cup of tea. |
The phrase about children comes from today’s Word of the Day. The other one is mine.
The kittens seem to be playing two different games. One on the left is making a snowcat (bonchat de neige), and the one on the right is playing hide-and-seek (le cache-cache).
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| Nous sommes allés nous promener de nuit, sous un beau ciel étoilé // We went for a walk at night under a beautiful starry sky |
French word of the day from Transparent Language to the rescue.
What can I say, my take on black and white van Gogh falied miserably.
Pictures related to night and starry sky @ Shutterstock.
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| Кот отмухивается // The cat is waving away the flies |
Today, let’s do something Russian for a change. Kirill wrote a nice article about Blends, Melds and Portmanteaux in his blog, where he mentioned the word отмухиваться, i.e. “wave away the flies”, all in one word (отмахиваться — wave away, мухи — flies).
I did read the book “От двух до пяти”, where it comes from, but I forgot this wonderful example completely.
So I felt compelled to illustrate it.
Pictures related to cats @ Shutterstock.
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| Et si l’on invitait mes parents pour Noël? // What about inviting my parents for Christmas? |
Poor cat. He only just settled down with a good book.
I don’t know whose voice it is. I don’t even know if it’s the same voice that asked not to leave jam on the table or if the tap was closed. For all I know, they are three different voices.
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| En montagne, il fait très froid à cette altitude // In the mountains, it is very cold at this altitude |
I do hope the cat is wearing the angora wool sweater his granny made for him.
As to the “cat-above-the-clouds” title, let me explain:
When I was writing a post about ascent of Teide, I was fascinated by the specific Latin name of one of the flowers — Spartocytisus supranubius, “supranubius” consisting of above (supra) and clouds (nubius).
It feels strangely satisfying to be able to use this seemingly useless bit of knowledge.
Pictures related to cats, clouds and Mount Teide @ Shutterstock.
