Customer Reviews

101 French Proverbs

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

101 French Proverbs was recommended to me by my French teacher--a woman born and raised in France. The books trade paperback format devotes a full page to each proverb and provides a clever cartoon and a little story in French, some in the form of a dialogue, to further illustrate the proverb's meaning.
All proverbs are grouped in the following categories: Our Animal Friends---proverbs containing similes likening human behavior to that of domestic animals, Animals in the Wild----human behavior likened to non-domestic animals, Occupations---Behaviors attributed to certain occupations, Eating in Style --- proverbs where food positively and negatively reflects life, Life Day by Day---axioms to make daily life livable, People --- of the "too many cooks spoil the broth" genre, The Blue Planet --- proverbs involving a natural setting, Time Flies --- common sense sayings revolving around duration and time of day and Words to Live By --- A catch-all category for those proverbs that defy categorization. At the end of the volume, each of the 101 illustrative stories and dialogues are translated in English. At the tail end, the proverbs are listed alphabetically in French with corresponding page numbers.

This book is simply great--its a lot of fun, and can be used almost like a calendar where one page is read and savored a day. The use of idioms is extensive and can be used to further anyone's study of everyday French.

Recommended to all students of French who want to interject a little fun into their grammar and vocabulary memorization.

I ordered this book to further my reading skills of French material.It did.Perfectly. I am an intermediate self-taught French language student,and this little book helped out quite a bit,plus it was fun to read.Can't get any better than that.
I recommend it to anyone who loves the French language.You will learn a lot here.And,while reading the proverbs in French,you will discover that you know a lot more words than you thought you did,which was a nice discovery for me.I liked this book a lot,and I think you might,as well!

This is a great book! I'm currently a level two French student and this book is incredible. Each proverb has the French at the top, then the translation, followed by the English equal. The pictures are fantastic and very funny! Short conversations are included to help with context and their translations are in the back. I highly recommend 101 FRENCH PROVERBS. It is a great source of information.

I completely agree to the former reviewer, including reasons why he recommend it, so I add only some points.

The word-for-word translation, for example - "there's more than one donkey called Martin in the market place" - is very useful for beginners to increase whose vocabulary. Its cartoon will help it.

And I think maybe you can enjoy this book not only for learning French language.
Indeed, I found an interesting fact - some French proverbs are very close to OUR JAPANESE/ASIAN proverbs in detail, rather than to English ones. For example, what you shouldn't do at once is "to chase two hares" both in France and Japan, and every jar does find a lid in France, so does every pot in Japan.
I don't know if sometime someone introduced them or it's only a coincidence, but there're something make me touched, the fact different peoples have same manner of thinking. So it seems there're more common points than differences, as it's said.
I thank the authors for they made me find it.

Highly recommended!

I thought that this would be an amusing way to work on my French now that I live and have a job in Paris. I enjoy reading through this book, and learning about the proverbs. However, I brought it with me one day to show my French co-workers and they were amazed. They had heard of less than 10% of the proverbs in the book. So... if you want to find a pleasant way to enrich your knowledge of French trivia and culture, then buy this book. But if you are looking for a way to better communicate in French, this probably isn't for you.

For people learning French or advanced French speakers, this book gives cultural insight so we can better understand French culture and not be left in the dark when proverbs are used. Very useful.

101 French Proverbs
A fun little book with excellent cartoons organized by subject. This is sure to lighten up you classroom. I'd like to see this author compile a larger book with a grammatical/verb index in back for easier use.