What's the difference between a baguette and baguettes? In an English bakery or supermarket, a baguette is a long French roll, with a hard, crisp outside and soft middle full of holes.
However, if you ask for baguettes in a Chinese restaurant in France you will get chopsticks. Presumably the bread roll is named after chopsticks because of its shape, or vice versa.
In an old newspaper I was about to throw away I spotted a French word, milieu. The writer describes himself as being in or near somebody else's milieu. Their, hm, that's why we use the French word, because it's hard to find an English equivalent. Milieu= (middle) surroundings, the place a person inhabits or places he moves around in, not a specific place but surroundings, their circle of friends and acquaintances, such as political, religious, income group, intellectual, and so on. For example, in my twenties I was in the student milieu, then in the business milieu, in the education milieu, and so on.
I had to look back at the word as I typed it. How do you remember the spelling? Think of it as the French for middle and place. Mi lieu.
You pronounce lieu as lee - er
French au plein milieu - right in the middle
banlieu - surburb
lieu - place
milieu(x) - real or metaphorical surroundings (pronounce me lea er) . For plural add x.
You get several example of use in a big dictionary
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/translate/french-english/milieu
Later, looking at wines, we found the grape m a ca b e o and thought of the French word macabre. To do with death.
danse - dance - an easy word, same except for the spelling
La danse macabre - the dance of death
macabre - gruesome
Then I saw exposé.
exposé - un exposé noun an article or news report which exposes or reveals something which is bad or scandalous
http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-french/exposé
Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor, speaker, writer, author.
However, if you ask for baguettes in a Chinese restaurant in France you will get chopsticks. Presumably the bread roll is named after chopsticks because of its shape, or vice versa.
In an old newspaper I was about to throw away I spotted a French word, milieu. The writer describes himself as being in or near somebody else's milieu. Their, hm, that's why we use the French word, because it's hard to find an English equivalent. Milieu= (middle) surroundings, the place a person inhabits or places he moves around in, not a specific place but surroundings, their circle of friends and acquaintances, such as political, religious, income group, intellectual, and so on. For example, in my twenties I was in the student milieu, then in the business milieu, in the education milieu, and so on.
I had to look back at the word as I typed it. How do you remember the spelling? Think of it as the French for middle and place. Mi lieu.
You pronounce lieu as lee - er
French au plein milieu - right in the middle
banlieu - surburb
lieu - place
milieu(x) - real or metaphorical surroundings (pronounce me lea er) . For plural add x.
You get several example of use in a big dictionary
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/translate/french-english/milieu
Later, looking at wines, we found the grape m a ca b e o and thought of the French word macabre. To do with death.
danse - dance - an easy word, same except for the spelling
La danse macabre - the dance of death
macabre - gruesome
Then I saw exposé.
exposé - un exposé noun an article or news report which exposes or reveals something which is bad or scandalous
http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-french/exposé
Angela Lansbury, English teacher and tutor, speaker, writer, author.
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