Читать книгу Instant! French - Nick Theobald & - Страница 3
ОглавлениеSpeak French in seconds
This little book is your passport to speaking French.
Instant! French contains thousands of practical, street-wise and occasionally risqué phrases and words.
Everything from “Don’t step in that dog shit,” to “Hello, I’d like to join the French Foreign Legion.”
Millions of us studied le français at school, so why not re-discover this beautiful language?
When you are in France, speaking French is not only polite, it’s important from a business and social perspective: you may just get better snails too.
Many phrase books require a degree in linguistics to pronounce their words and phrases - we use simple phonetics.
Thanks for buying our book. One author fancies a chateau on the Loire, while
the other one needs more conflict- free diamonds to grace his imaginary girlfriends’ fingers.
How Instant! phonetics work
With Instant! French, what you see is what you say.
English: I love you.
French: Je t’aime.
Phonetics: Je tame.
Je - as in the first sound of Zhivago.
tame - my dog is tame.
English: After you.
French: Après vous.
Phonetics: Ah-pray voo.
Ah - as in Ah-choo!
pray - what you do in church.
voo - as in the voo of voodoo.
English: Thank you very much.
French: Merci beaucoup.
Phonetics: Mair-see bow-coo.
Mair - sounds like fair.
see - see what we mean.
bow - bow & arrows.
coo - what pigeons say.
English: Excuse me.
French: Excusez moi.
Phonetics: Excuse-zay mwa.
Excuse - as in excuse me.
zay - same sound as say.
mwa - the sound humans make when air-kissing.
English: I’ve got a hangover.
French: J’ai une gueule de bois.
Phonetics: Zhay oon girl de bwa.
Zhay - the Zh of Zhivago plus an ay (same as “say”).
oon - like moon.
girl - as in girl.
de - the de of department.
bwa - the air-kissing “mwa” with a b.
English: She’s not here.
French: Elle n’est pas là.
Phonetics: Elle nay pa la.
Elle - as in the magazine ‘Elle’.
nay - that’s right, ‘nay’.
pa - the pa of ‘papa’.
la - same sound as pa.
