{"id":5886,"date":"2006-11-29T15:09:55","date_gmt":"2006-11-29T20:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/?p=5886"},"modified":"2012-07-12T15:22:48","modified_gmt":"2012-07-12T19:22:48","slug":"the-new-york-times-reviews-the-story-of-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/the-new-york-times-reviews-the-story-of-french\/","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times Reviews The Story of French"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/11\/29\/books\/29grim.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-610\" style=\"border: 0px;\" title=\"The New York Times\" src=\"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/logo_nytlogo379x64-300x50.png\" alt=\"The New York Times\" width=\"300\" height=\"50\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/logo_nytlogo379x64-300x50.png 300w, https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/logo_nytlogo379x64.png 379w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>The French Have a (Precise and Elegant) Word for It<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By William Grimes<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201caffreux\u201d \u2014 that is, \u201cawful\u201d or \u201cdreadful.\u201d Not \u201cterrible,\u201d the obvious word, but \u201caffreux,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>The unique relationship between French speakers and their language is one of the grand themes in \u201cThe Story of French,\u201d 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-Beno\u00eet 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 \u201cthrown in the towel on French,\u201d they are spoiling for a fight.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/11\/29\/books\/29grim.html\" target=\"_blank\">Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The French Have a (Precise and Elegant) Word for It By William Grimes During the 2004 presidential primaries, Senator John Kerry , a fluent French &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,51,27,24,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5886"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5892,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5886\/revisions\/5892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nadeaubarlow.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}