- Pour
ceux qui n'ont pas saisi, voici le résumé de l'histoire
en anglais
- 9 a.m. Monday. Mireille's phone rings.
Wrong number; the caller wanted the Salvation Army. At 9:03,
the phone rings again. This time it's Robert. Timidly, he asks
if he can see her today. She's going to Chartres, to visit that
little museum near the cathedral. Could he come along? If he
insists. How should they get there -rent a car? Too expensive.
Bus? Too slow. Airplane? Chartres is too close. On foot? It isn't
that close. Bicycle, horseback, motorcycle, hydrofoil, helicopter,
all rejected. What, then? The train! Of course! All Robert has
to do is take the métro to the gare Montparnasse. Lost?
Nonsense! No one gets lost in the métro!
- Next we see Robert lost in the métro-or
nearly, in spite of Mireille's excellent directions. Finally,
only ten minutes late, he finds her at Montparnasse. Robert wants
to buy two first-class tickets, but Mireille already has hers,
and it's second class. When everything is in order they board
the train, which departs on time.
- As the train passes through Versailles,
Mireille suggests they drop the formal vous. Even though tu is
common among young people, this represents a step forward. And
she invites him to dinner with her family on Thursday and to
a movie afterward. Things are moving along!
-
- NOTES
culturelles en anglais
- Le train. Trains
in France are one of the best and safest means of transportation.
Frequent, fast, comfortable, and punctual, they make traveling
through the country easy and pleasurable. The national rail network
is administered by the Société Nationale des Chemins
de Fer (SNCF), a state-run company whose latest achievement is
the development of the train à grande vitesse or TGV,
the fastest train in the world.
-
- Le château de
Versailles. It began as a hunting
pavilion under Louis XIII (1601-1643). Louis XIV (1638-1715)
turned it into a monumental palace and made it his capital; it
remained the royal seat until the fall of the monarchy in 1789.
An architectural masterpiece, the château has elaborate
interior decoration, furniture, and works of art, which, with
its incomparable gardens, make Versailles the archetype of French
classical art.
-
- Expressions corporelles
au téléphone. Only words are transmitted in telephone conversations,
yet the role of the body in communication is so automatic that
expressions and gestures contribute to the message even though
their share of it does not get through. Turn off the sound and
watch Robert's and Mireille's facial expressions and gestures
on the phone: the eyes, for example, which roll up as the speaker
searches for a solution when a woman gets the wrong number and
asks Mireille for the Salvation Army, when Robert asks Mireille
if he may accompany her to Chartres, when he considers the best
way to get to Chartres, when Mireille ponders her replies.
-
- Le mode indicatif. It is used to express reality. If Robert, stuck
in a phone booth without exact change, says "La vie n'est
pas facile," he is using the indicative. Fortunately, language
does not limit us to talking about what is or is not. It also
allows us to speculate, to suppose, to imagine what might or
might not be. The conditional fulfills one of these speculative
functions. It is used to hypothesize how thing would be if a
certain condition were present.
Robert knows that in life there are all sorts of problems: La
vie n'est pas facile. That is a fact, so est is in the indicative.
But he feels that the problems Mireille mentions when he tries
to wangle an unvitation to accompany her to Chartes are not real
ones. If there were no more serious problems than those, "La
vie serait facile!" (although in fact there are, and so
it isn't). Since the condition (= no problems) is definitely
contrary to reality, its outcome is expressed in the conditional.
-
- Auto-Test
en français
- Complete the following sentences.
(6 pts)
- Comment va-t-on au Louvre? ___________
pied, ____________ métro, __________ voiture ?
-
- On peut aller à Rome ______ train
ou ______ avion.
- Il fait beau, allons-y _________ vélo.
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