Anna had everything figured out – she was about to start senior year with her best friend, she had a great weekend job and her huge work crush looked as if it might finally be going somewhere... Until her dad decides to send her 4383 miles away to Paris. On her own. But despite not speaking a word of French, Anna finds herself making new friends, including Étienne St. Clair, the smart, beautiful boy from the floor above. But he's taken – and Anna might be too. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with the French kiss she's been waiting for?
First published in 1961 by Stackpole Books, Street without Joy is a classic of military history. Journalist and scholar Bernard Fall vividly captured the sights, sounds, and smells of the brutal— and politically complicated—conflict between the French and the Communist-led Vietnamese nationalists in Indochina. The French fought to the bitter end, but even with the lethal advantages of a modern military, they could not stave off the Viet Minh insurgency of hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, booby traps, and nighttime raids. The final French defeat came at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, setting the stage for American involvement and a far bloodier chapter in Vietnam‘s history. Fall combined graphic reporting with deep scholarly knowledge of Vietnam and its colonial history in a book memorable in its descriptions of jungle fighting and insightful in its arguments. After more than a half a century in print, Street without Joy remains required reading.
Sophisticated travelers know it is impossible to really speak French without some guide to the subtle nuances of idiomatic expressions. Here is a book filled with expressions heard everyday in taxicabs, offices, in movies or on the streets.
If a native Spanish speaker were to tell you that the pez gordo (fat fish) met a merengue (meringue) with lots of pasta (noodles) who is going to become his media naranja (half an orange), you may not know whether to offer your condolences or your congratulations — that is, unless you’ve read this first book in David Burke’s Street Spanish series. Street Spanish 1 lets you quickly become an insider by presenting some of the most popular slang terms used throughout the many Spanish-speaking countries. With the help of entertaining dialogues, word games and drills, crossword puzzles, and word searches, you’ll finally be able to understand the everyday language used on the street, in homes, offices, stores, and among family and friends.
Idioms are those common phrases we use in daily conversations that would seem totally confusing to a stranger. This second book of the three-title revision of the bestsellers Street French and More Street French features hundreds of French idiomatic expressions. It also includes an expanded glossary, pronunciation guides, crossword puzzles, fill-ins, word games and fun self-tests. Illustrations.
Sesame Street characters help readers learn Spanish so they can connect with new friends who speak the language. Welcoming words relating to everyday life and friendship give readers new language tools to become smarter, kinder friends.
A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier—a surprising turn of events for someone who didn’t have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirely in English. Are there things she doesn’t understand about Olivier, having never spoken to him in his native tongue? Does “I love you” even mean the same thing as “je t’aime”? When the couple, newly married, relocates to Francophone Geneva, Collins—fearful of one day becoming "a Borat of a mother" who doesn’t understand her own kids—decides to answer her questions for herself by learning French. When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages—and what they say about who we are. Collins grapples with the complexities of the French language, enduring excruciating role-playing games with her classmates at a Swiss language school and accidently telling her mother-in-law that she’s given birth to a coffee machine. In learning French, Collins must wrestle with the very nature of French identity and society—which, it turns out, is a far cry from life back home in North Carolina. Plumbing the mysterious depths of humanity’s many forms of language, Collins describes with great style and wicked humor the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of learning—and living in—French.
