French Idioms and Expressions - Help Needed

[issemiyaki]

Does anyone have any idea as to how to acquire more idiomatic expressions that would be appropriate for the boardroom, for conferences and for formal level speeches?

I found this book online, but I'm not sure if it's still relevant or not.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= ... 1up;seq=14

I've also been trying to read L'Express and Le Monde, paying close attention to the headlines.

Look forward to your responses.

[DaveBee]

Does anyone have any idea as to how to acquire more idiomatic expressions that would be appropriate for the boardroom, for conferences and for formal level speeches?

I found this book online, but I'm not sure if it's still relevant or not.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= ... 1up;seq=14

I've also been trying to read L'Express and Le Monde, paying close attention to the headlines.

Look forward to your responses.

1. Your hathitrust link is broken.

2. I've recently bought a book on french expressions called 'la puce à l'oreille'. (ISBN:2715813740). It's amusing to read a few pages at a time, but I doubt I'm going to remember many. A reference book possibly, but a web search is still my first option when confronted by something that looks like it might be an idiom. That or just passing over it.

3. I wouldn't try to use idioms myself. If they come out, fine, but I wouldn't deliberately phrase a remark to include one.

[issemiyaki]

Dave the link is fixed.

And I am trying to deliberately practice idioms. That's the only way I'll learn them. You have to crash and burn a few times until you get them.

It's just frustrating, you put in English Business idioms, and you get great results on Google. For French, it's almost as if they never heard of the concept. And there are, for sure, certain Idioms and expressions that are more aligned to the business world, but I guess no one has taken the time to create a collection.

Hopefully I'm wrong.

Please any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Again, I'm looking for French BUSINESS idioms - something that you can use in the boardroom, conference or in Speeches.

[DaveBee]

Dave the link is fixed.

And I am trying to deliberately practice idioms. That's the only way I'll learn them. You have to crash and burn a few times until you get them.

It's just frustrating, you put in English Business idioms, and you get great results on Google. For French, it's almost as if they never heard of the concept. And there are, for sure, certain Idioms and expressions that are more aligned to the business world, but I guess no one has taken the time to create a collection.

Hopefully I'm wrong.

Please any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Again, I'm looking for French BUSINESS idioms - something that you can use in the boardroom, conference or in Speeches.

There are some business oriented french language qualifications.

The suggested support material might be worth looking into. Book list PDF

[tastyonions]

What you probably want are books grouped with the keyword "Français sur objectif spécifique" (FOS).

Something like this: http://www.pug.fr/produit/1180/97827061 ... %20travail

Of course, these kinds of books are a lot more than simply lists of idioms. They aim to give people the background knowledge as well as linguistic competence for doing business in French.

[Cavesa]

You might like Vocabulaire Progressif du Francais des Affaires and Communication progressive du français des affaires, if the books are as good as the rest of the series. CLE also makes a series of thin books with vocab (+exercises) for various professions, you might want to have a look at français.com and affaires.com (yes, this a horrible name for books. shouldn't the marketing people tell them to make all their stuff better googlable? ), I used two other tiny booklets from this series. Tiny but useful. As was said, PUG published Le français du monde de travail, which could be very good, if it is like their medecine book from the same series.

I also recommend tv series, as usual. I learnt vast majority of my medical English from House . Not my medical French, I haven't had the nerves to watch another medical series since House and MASH. Perhaps a well chosen series in French (a good quality dubbing could serve just as well as an original) that would take place in an office could be helpful.

Another thing are books. Books about your field of work. You can definitely draw a lot of expressions and vocabulary from such books (textbooks for students of the field are usually great), even though there are likely to be limits to how much they can help with purely spoken stuff.

I hope something from this will be helpful.

[issemiyaki]

Good News!

I just started with a great tutor, and sure enough he spotted the problem. He said I needed to be to talk more like people in a bar, regular everyday French. That's where you get all the juicy parts of the language.

Because even though people are in formal surroundings, the register of the language constantly fluctuates, and a lot of this stuff is not in books.

So, of course, he has me listening to a segment of a movie where the language register goes from standard to vulgar back to standard again.

And that's exactly what politicians do. Anyone ever heard Jacque Chirac speak unscripted? The point is not to speak like a street thug, but learning how people twist words expands the range of what I can understand.

So, I guess it's off to the movies for me for while.