by Carolyne Lee, an Australian Francophile

For a few weeks now I’ve been listening to various French radio stations via my computer,  thank to a great application called Radio Sure. This free internet radio application permits access to hundreds of radio stations all over the world–all in real time. With the Radio Sure program open on my desktop, as shown, I group all the stations by language, to make it easier to brows the French language stations; then I scroll through the French list to find my favourites. My current one is called Nostalgie La Legende–chansons francaises, a bit like ‘golden oldies’. It seems to play all the French songs from my childhood, through to those from the eighties. I can have the radio on in the background while working on other programs, or even while doing something else in the room. I have just the standard application, but you can buy fancy ‘skins’ quite cheaply from the Radio Sure website, including some that look like actual radios.

I’ve blogged before about Radio France International, and in particular their Apprendre (Learn French) section. I attribute my (albeit very quotidian) fluency almost entirely to this service—or at least to the way in which I make use of it.

It all began a few years ago when I was in the middle of my first longish stint living in Paris, and was bemoaning to an American friend that my French was not improving as much as I had hoped.  My friend told me that when she had first arrived a few years earlier, she had heard of a method (I forget its name) which works by training the ear to better understand French by playing a recording of someone speaking over and over again for several hours per week. So she had dutifully gone to this company, parted with quite a lot of money, put the headphones on, and sat there for a few hours a week. When I asked her what the recording was, she said it was mainly Le Petit Prince.

 Now I love Le Petit Prince, and have ever since I read it in my year 12 French class a million years ago, but I couldn’t see how listening to the same thing over and over would be:  a) very interesting, and b) would not be more efficacious if one listened to a variety of things, changing them every few days perhaps.

 I promptly went to FNAC and bought myself a tiny radio and headphones, and began listening to several of the Paris radio stations. I remember one of them—France Info—simply being news bulletins over and over, which was very good as I began to learn many new words over the course of a few periods of listening. The station France Culture was also interesting, with extended discussions on various topics.

I found that even if I did not understand much of the radio program (which happened for the first few weeks, and even later if I was tired or distracted), by the time I arrived at work and had to use a very mundane level of French for greetings and fairly routine things, I could understand everyone much better. Clearly this was something to do with my ear being ‘trained’ to be more receptive to French.

Back in Australia of course, I could not get access to the French radio stations. This drove me to the Radio France International website, to see what they had in podcast versions, and then I found their Apprendre section which is a treasure-house of learning experiences.  I love the daily Français Facile. This is a 10 minute news podcast, with a transcript so that one can even follow the text while listening. There used to be two Français Faciles each day until M. Sarkozy cut back the funding (the radio staff were on strike for weeks, and the Apprendre section was the hardest hit—a very dark period for me indeed!). But then they came back with one per day, and which I regard as pure gold.

There are several other types of podcast I use regularly from the Apprendre section of RFI, all in MP3 format.

Les mots de l’actualité : This is a short daily segment on a word taken out of the news bulletins and explained, its origins traced, and so on. The presenter, Yvan Amar calls this : une chronique pétillante qui éclaire en deux minutes un mot ou une expression entendue dans l’actualité  (‘a sparkling column which in two minutes throws light on a word or expression from current events’).

Today’s word is le deluge. These podcasts usually lasts 1-3 minutes, and also have a transcript listeners may read.

 My absolute favourite is La Danse des Mots, also presented by Yvan Amar. There are about  3-4 per week of these programs (some are repeats from the last year or so), each lasting about 20 minutes.

 Yvan Amar describes his program thus : Le français sur Internet, l’évolution de l’orthographe, le Camfranglais qu’on parle au Cameroun, et même ailleurs, l’explosion de la littérature francophone tout autour du monde. Des sujets qui montrent bien l’intérêt extrêmement sensible que l’on porte aujourd’hui à nos façons de parler.  S’interroger sur la langue n’est pas seulement une curiosité aiguë : c’est un révélateur du monde où nous vivons. (French on the internet, the evolution of spelling, Camfranglais, which they speak in the Camerouns, and even elsewhere, the explosion of French literaure all around the world : these subjects are well placed to show us the very noticeable interest that there is today in our ways of speaking. To interrogate the subject of language is not only a matter of keen curiosity : it’s revealing of the world in which we live.)

Rather than trying to describe the particular subject matter of this program, I suggest readers check it out themselves by looking at the range of recent programmes in the Danse des Mots archives. Depending on the type of cell phone you use, I think it’s possible to download the podcasts directly, but as my cell phone is rather last-century, I download the MP3s onto my computer and then transfer them with a cord connected to my iPod equivalent.

When I’m out, I always have my iPod with me, and listen while walking to and from work and while walking around during the day (so I clock up about half an hour of listening there), while riding on public transport, and also when I have to wait in doctors’ surgeries, or wait for any other purpose. All this exposure to French, just fitted into the spare moments in my day!

I’m certain all this listening I do is the reason I’m able to avoid my level of French going ‘backwards’ in the 6-9 month periods when I have to be back in Australia. 

My hometown newspaper the Melbourne Age features a long article today on how the Atlantic salmon are returning to the Seine, and how this is a sign of the improved water purity. Love the picture of the fisherman at Suresne with his 7kg salmon!

 Like many Australian women, I LOVE French bed linen, and have bought several sets over the past few years. Last month I bought a beautiful set by Anne de Solène in the soldes at BHV (I’ve just discovered her website and you can see the one I bought on the left).

The only problem with buying bed linen in France to bring back to Australia is that the standard sizes are different, so you need to have the dimensions of your bed, and your doona, written down.

I discovered this after I brought my first set of French bed linen back to Australia a few years ago. The fitted sheet was perfect, but the housse de couette (doona cover) was 30cm too wide. But instead of taking it in and cutting off the excess, I decided to run a line of stitching down each side, on the outside (as opposed to the inside) of the cover, 15cm in from the edge. After the doona was inserted, it was held in place, and the extra material hanging down beyond the line of stitching created a ‘valence’-effect on each side of the bed, complementing the wide ‘sleevy’ thing at the bottom of French doona covers, which also creates a valence, at the end of the bed.  I’ve always preferred this to the Australian type with buttons or fasteners, and which barely cover the end of the mattress.

With the doona cover I just bought, I had the problem again, and worse, because I could only obtain the larger size, judging from the dimensions on the packaging; but I loved the design so much I HAD to take it, especially at BHV soldes price.

Back in Australia, after carefully measuring both my mattress, the height of my bed and my doona, I found the new cover was 20cm too long, and 60cm too wide. So I sewed a straight line of stitching along the top, 20cm in from the edge, and another two lines, similar to what I’d done with the previous doona cover, one down each side, 30cm in from each side edge.

At the top I then had a piece of fabric to fold over near the pillows, which works well, and a valence on each side, which doesn’t quite reach the floor.

Obviously you need to know the height of your bed if you are going to do this, and if you are innumerate like me, you might want to check all the measurements twice, and draw diagrams to guide your sewing, as I did.

 But the effect is stunning, and of course completely unique (duhh… until everyone reads this, I guess)…

My blog is now featured on the cover of my new book–Word Bytes: Writing in the Information Society! (can be bought at http://tinyurl.com/m9mnev )

 I’ve been meaning to go to the fabric market—Marché St Pierre—for some time, and today I decided I would finally do it, heat wave or no heat wave. While hordes of tourists and everyone else were dragging themselves up the hundreds of steps to Sacré Coeur, which looked to me more like an ascent to purgatory in a temperature that must have been over 30 degrees, I headed into the (mostly) air-conditioned fabric shops.

 I’ve recently taken up dressmaking after a long break from it. After spending so many years in academia, living inside my head (as my physiotherapist tactfully puts it!), I find that I often ache to be doing something with my hands, and sewing is just the thing.

Choosing dressmaking fabric is a wonderfully sensual experience, and especially at the Marché St Pierre. It’s a cornucopia of colours, patterns and textures. I like to let the various pieces of fabric that attract my eye suggest to me what they ought to be made into.

A couple of today’s suggestions were: a fitted pinafore dress in a small check of red and black fine wool (at 3 Euros per metre!), for when I return shortly to the Melbourne winter; a French version of a liberty print in grey, blue and muted red cotton twill is just asking to be made into a long-sleeved crossover dress; two pure cottons, one beige and one white, each embroidered with lacy patterns in the same colour, will make cool summer dresses (I couldn’t get summer out of my head, thanks to the searing heat here in Paris at the moment).

 My favourite fabric shop was Tissus Reine for variety and sheer sumptuousness (the French liberty print came from there), but I found my best bargains at Les Coupons de Saint-Pierre, and some of the smaller shops. Some specialise in curtains and upholstery fabrics, while others have all types. Today I was only interested in the tissus habillements (dressmaking fabrics).

 On the hill above, the white domes of Sacré Coeur shimmered in the hot air, while inside the fabric shop the voice of Serge Gainsbourg played in the background. For a brief time, I thought I was in heaven.