7.10 Un blog de voyage — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read a travel blog post in the informal written French of the internet: three days in Marseille. Recognise the features of informal written French: on for we , dropped negation in c'est rien , ça , exclamations, and a direct address to the reader. Follow a narrative in the perfect with on and the agreement of the participle that comes with it: on est arrivés . Pick up the vocabulary of travel and of a southern French city. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Le matin, les pêcheurs vendent leurs poissons directement sur le quai. In the morning the fishermen sell their fish directly on the quay. Les rues sont étroites, il y a des escaliers partout The streets are narrow, there are stairs everywhere On voit toute la ville, le port, les îles et la mer à perte de vue. You see the whole city, the port, the islands and the sea as far as the eye can see. les calanques, ce sont des petites baies entre des rochers blancs the calanques are little bays between white rocks où on trouve des épices, des fruits et des produits du monde entier where you find spices, fruit and products from all over the world on a bu un dernier café en terrasse au soleil we had a last coffee at an outside table in the sun Prerequisites : 7.9 — this reading follows 7.9 Reading . You need the perfect with être from 3.9 Conjugation , reflexive verbs from 4.12 Grammar , and the travel and city vocabulary of 5.6 Vocabulary . About this text This is a blog post written for this course, about 620 words long, in the style of a personal travel blog. Its author, Julie, is an invented character: a young woman from Paris who spends three days in Marseille with her boyfriend and tells her readers about it, day by day, with advice at the end. The places are real. Marseille is the second city of France, a port on the Mediterranean founded by Greek settlers about 600 BC, with a reputation, a football club and an accent of its own. The text is written as many French people write online: in correct French, but close to speech. It uses on for we , short exclamations, the occasional dropped ne , and informal words like copain , super , sympa and bisous . After two fairy tales of the seventeenth century, it is the French of today. Informal written French On for we . In speech and informal writing, on replaces nous almost entirely: on est arrivés , on a mangé , on s'est perdus . The verb is third person singular, but when on means a group, the participle of verbs with être usually agrees in the plural: arrivés , perdus , levés , baignés . Grammars accept both forms, and this blog uses the plural. The dropped ne . C'est rien , that's nothing , is the spoken form of ce n'est rien . In speech, French drops the ne of negation most of the time; in writing it is kept, except in informal texts like this one. The blog keeps it elsewhere, je n'ai pas de mots , which is typical: informal writing mixes the two. Addressing the reader. The post opens with salut tout le monde , speaks to the readers as vous , and ends with questions and dites-moi tout dans les commentaires . Vous here is plural, not formal: the readers are many. Words of the internet. Publié le , posted on , les commentaires , the comments , and the closing bisous , kisses , the friendly sign-off of French messages, which does not imply anything romantic. Reading it a second time, day by day The introduction. Ça fait longtemps que je n'ai rien écrit ici uses ça fait … que with the perfect: it's been a long time since I wrote anything here . Day 1: the Old Port. The arrival, the great staircase of the station, the fish market and the old quarter, le Panier . En sortant de la gare is the gerund of 4.22 Grammar : on coming out of the station . On s'est perdus deux fois, mais ce n'était pas grave pairs a perfect with an imperfect: the event and the comment on it. Day 2: Notre-Dame and the sea. The basilica on the hill, called la Bonne Mère , the boat to the calanques , and the fish soup of Marseille, la bouillabaisse . The quarrel about the water is reported speech from 4.21 Grammar : mon copain a dit qu'elle était glacée . Day 3: markets and museums. The Mucem, a museum of Mediterranean civilisations opened in 2013, and the market of Noailles. The last paragraph uses the pluperfect of 4.17 Grammar , tout ce qu'on avait vu . The advice. A series of imperatives in vous : prenez , évitez , prenez le temps . Je suis preneuse , I'll take them , from preneur , is an idiom for welcoming offers or suggestions. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. Three days in Marseille Posted on 12 May by Julie Hi everyone! It's been a long time since I wrote anything here, I know. But I'm back with a new trip: three days in Marseille, the second city of France. I'll tell you all about it. Day 1: the Old Port We arrived on Thursday morning, my boyfriend and I, on the train from Paris. Three and a half hours of travelling, that's nothing! Coming out of Saint-Charles station, we had our first surprise: the great staircase, with the whole city below and the sea in the distance. Honestly, I wanted to stay there all day. We dropped our bags at the hotel, a cheap little hotel near the Old Port, and set off on foot. The Old Port is the heart of the city. In the morning the fishermen sell their fish directly on the quay. There were crowds, noise, shouting, and a smell of the sea everywhere. I loved it. At lunchtime we ate in a little restaurant in the Panier district, the oldest district of Marseille. The streets are narrow, there are stairs everywhere, and the walls are covered with drawings. We got lost twice, but it didn't matter: that's how you discover the best places. Day 2: Notre-Dame and the sea The next day we got up early to go up to Notre-Dame-de-l