CBC All in a WeekendnSOS Interview

CBC Radio Interview on The Story of Spanish

Listen to CBC’s All in a Weekend radio show from May 11, 2013 where host Sonali Karnick talks with Nadeau & Barlow about The Story of Spanish, their next book on Arabic and their upcoming trip to France. Listen »

Jean-Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow
Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau are bestselling authors of books on language and culture. Partners in life and writing, the couple lives in Montreal, Canada with their twin daughters.
Jean-Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow
Como escritores trilingües, Jean-Benoît Nadeau y Julie Barlow han dedicado sus carreras a cerrar brechas culturales, primero como periodistas, y ahora como autores.

Section: Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

Required reading…

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong

“…[Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong] should be handed out at Calais and Charles de Gaulle airport to anyone hoping to get a grip on France and make a holiday or life work here.”

The Daily Telegraph

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Top Book on Figuring out the French

Expatica

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong is one of the “Top 10 books on figuring out the French,” according to Expatica France, an online news and information portal for those living abroad.

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The WSJ on Sixty Million Frenchmen…

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong

“… does its job marvelously well.  After reading it, you may still think the French arrogant, aloof and high-handed, but you will know why.”
The Wall Street Journal

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The New York Times Reviews The Story of French

The New York Times

The French Have a (Precise and Elegant) Word for It

By William Grimes

During the 2004 presidential primaries, Senator John Kerry , a fluent French speaker, dropped a remark to an inquiring journalist for French television. Life on the campaign trail, he said, was “affreux” — that is, “awful” or “dreadful.” Not “terrible,” the obvious word, but “affreux,” a more subtle choice. For the French, selecting the precise word is the equivalent of a firm handshake or a level look in the eyes in the United States. With two simple syllables, Senator Kerry had passed a crucial French character test.

The unique relationship between French speakers and their language is one of the grand themes in “The Story of French,” a well-told, highly accessible history of the French language that leads to a spirited discussion of the prospects for French in an increasingly English-dominated world. The authors, Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, are bilingual Canadians with a sense of mission. They value French as a vehicle of expression uniting 175 million people scattered in a linguistic archipelago across several continents. They also see it as a counterweight to American political and cultural power. Unlike the French elite, which has “thrown in the towel on French,” they are spoiling for a fight. Read more »

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So What Makes The French So French?

The Telegraph

What makes the French so infuriatingly French?

By Philip Delves Broughton

From our old apartment in Paris, I used to walk our dog down the Boulevard Saint Germain past the once bohemian, now touristy, Cafe des Deux Magots. At around 7.30am, while Paris slept, lined up in the windows of the cafe, each at their own individual table, would be four or five American men peering over their coffee cups into the street. You could tell they were not French from their books, their baseball caps and the fact they were up that early.  
Read more »

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We’re from Mars, the French are from…

By Peter Oliva

In 1831, 66 years before Edmond Rostand created the Gascon character Cyrano de Bergerac, a little-known German correspondent was writing a series of letters home to his newspaper, the Augsburger Allgemeine. His name was Heinrich Heine and he was in Paris.

“France,” wrote Heine, “is the Gascon of Europe.” Read more »

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The Wall Street Journal Reviews Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

Wall Street Journal

 

 

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong

By Solange De Santis

It is hard to imagine a better moment for trying to understand the French, so recently the enemies of American foreign policy and still the butt of American jokes. With perfect timing, Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, a Canadian couple, have produced “Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong” (Sourcebooks, 351 pages, $16.95). One imagines a corresponding book titled “But 60 Million Americans Want to Spit in Their Eye.” Read more »

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FREE Sample Chapters!

The Story of French
The Story of Spanish

The Story of Spanish

The history of the Spanish language (May 2013).

The Story of French

The Story of French, US ed.

The first biography of the French language.

The Story of French

The Story of French, Can. ed.

The first biography of the French language.

Story of French

The Story of French, UK ed.

The first biography of the French language.

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong

A voyage through the French mindset.