néanmoins je l'ai écouté; story of my life

J'étais pressée ; néanmoins je l'ai écouté pendant une heure // I was in a hurry; nevertheless I listened to him for one hour.

And once again, Transparent Language word of the day holds the stage.

What a strange word "nevertheless" is, don't you think? French "néanmoins" is no better, same sort of combination of complete negation and an adverb "moins" (less), making it what? Less than nothing?

Come to think about it, Russian "тем не менее" is not exactly logical either.

In other news, this is the last leaf of my sketchbook which I started  back in November.

Cave à vin

Mon ami qui habite à Bordeaux a une impressionnante cave à vin. //
My friend who lives in Bordeaux has an impressive wine cellar.

Today’s phrase is from the same source, Transparent Language, with a slight change. I was perplexed by the lack of spatial preposition à (as in à Bordeaux) in the original phrase (Mon père qui habite Bordeaux a une cave à vin impressionnante).

Google translate also thinks that à is required, so let’s have it. I am still at such a basic level of French that I can’t be sure if both variants are correct (or one of them, or none). So... let’s just concentrate on cave à vin (wine cellar), shall we?

Pictures related to cats, bottles and wine @ Shutterstock.

Un flocon

Tu as un flocon sur le bout du nez ! // You have a snowflake on your nose!

Today’s picture is straight from my “French word of the day” email. ’Tis the season to be jolly, etc. You know. “Jolly, with mistletoe and holly and other things ending in ’olly” (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather).

We are are nearly done with our pre-Christmas exams, and Thursday is the last day of classes before the break. We have already got about a hectare-of-amazonian-forest worth of papers each to study over Christmas, which I fully intend to do, of course.

The cat, as it happens, doesn’t have a visible nose. So this is probably your only chance to find out where his nose is supposed to be.

Pictures of snowflakes @ Shutterstock.

Souvent, le chat rêve

Souvent, le chat rêve d'avoir sa propre petite île. Et parfois il ne le fait pas. // Often the cat dreams of having his own little island. And sometimes he does not.

Today, we had a whole bunch of tests, including the small monologue based on a questionnaire which I already mentioned.
I wanted to be (or seem) smart, so I included words like parfois (sometimes) and souvent (often) in mine. Unfortunately, the whole French pronunciation business went right out of my head when I needed it most (as usual, I must add). I am afraid I didn't seem quite as smart as I wished.
So I am using this picture to fix if not the pronunciation, then at least the spelling of these words in my mind.
There was a higher than normal number of sharks this year at the Fuerteventura Kite Festival. That explains the fins, I guess.
In other news, I have completely filled a small-format sketchbook bought at Flying Tiger and started drawing in a slightly bigger one from MUJI. The paper is whiter and smoother; it doesn't absorb the ink as well. I smudged the outline when trying to remove the pencil marks. I should wait longer next time.

Hier le chat s’est reposé. Aujourd’hui le chat se repose

Hier, le chat a reposé. Aujourd’hui, le chat repose.* //
Yesterday, the cat rested. Today, the cat is resting.

Today we briefly touched on Passé Composé, a verbal tense similar to present perfect in English, although is doesn’t always translate into it. Two auxiliary verbs can be used — avoir and être (to have and to be). To have, avoir, is used in most cases. (Counterintuitively, we started with The Other One, être, as in “hier, ils sont allé”, “yesterday they went”).

I am not sure if Passé Composé sounds natural in this little description of the cat’s daily routine. But I wanted to use it anyway.

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* UPD: a correction just arrived from Twitter (AnessNuts) — it must be “hier le chat s’est reposé , aujourd’hui le chat se repose” — i.e. it is a reflexive verb and these take être as an auxiliary. By a strange coincidence this was exactly what we talked about in class today.

Pictures related to cats and sleep @ Shutterstock.

Le cheval a huit ans

Le cheval a huit ans / The horse is eight years old

This time the phrase comes from Duolingo site. I thought it was rather adorable and lends itself well to a little drawing.

Judging by the discussion under the phrase, native English speakers find it difficult to accept that age construction can contain verb “to have” (“avoir” in French, “a” in third person singular) and not the equivalent of “to be”. Fortunately I have already passed though this stage with Spanish. Spaniards also “have” their years, not “are” them, if I may say so.

Come to think of it, the Russian construction “Тебе сколько лет?” — “Мне 50”, implies by the grammatical cases that somebody went and gave the years to the speaker. I.e., the question can be interpreted as “How many years (were given to) you?” and the answer “I (was given) 50”. If so, Russians also “have” their years.