Pardon My French

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View books by Charles Timoney.

Keeps its promise - Rated
This book is both entertaining and instructive.Written in an easy, informal style, it certainly has added many more every-day French words to my vocabulary. I can't wait to try out some of the terms & expressions on my next trip to France! The small size also makes it very handy to slip into the door pocket, or a large bag. Worth buying.

OK but not great - Rated
This book is OK, as mentioned before it is really just a long list split into different categories. This book only touches upon certain subjects lightly, littering descriptions with reminders that the author isn't going to include obscenities, which is ok, but i don't see why is has to keep on telling us this. This book doesn't really give an insight into French culture either, it just briefly mentions what we already know. If you actually want to get a clear picture of what France is like that comes not just with a few words, but with whole phrases, how to use them and more importantly how to actually pronounce them (without knowing that you won't use these words as you'd just look stupid) then get "talk to the snail" by stephen clarke. All in all this is a slightly entertaining book so long as you don't actually expect to learn anything extraordinary about the french language, if you do want to learn some "real" french, better is out there.

Brilliant - Rated
I wish I'd known about this book when we first came to live in France over a year ago. My ancient O-level French was all I had to rely on at the time and that included none of the extremely useful words and phrases I now know since reading Pardon My French. Not only has it improved my understanding of the language but also my understanding of certain aspects of the French way of life which can be so different from our own. Informative, entertaining and very easy to read. Great book.

French dressing - Rated
It doesn't matter what language you learn, as soon as you have to interact with native speakers in their natural habitat you find they use a whole series of verbal tricks, tics, terms and routines you never covered in the classroom or textbook. Getting up to speed with these takes a while, not because they are difficult, but simply because they are so poorly documented. Traditional courses are always based on an `idealised' version of the language and native speakers are often quite bad at spotting the non-standard way in which their language is actually used. Indeed it often takes an alert non-native speaker to really understand what is going on! Timoney fits the bill perfectly and provides us with a useful (although not over-long) list of terms for the intermediate student. Normally this type of material is lazily presented as an alphabetic list, but here the author categorises the terms in section such as Food and Drink, Relations and so on and provides an often very funny commentary to go with each. This works very well and Timoney is an engaging and observant cultural and linguistic witness. It reads a bit like the accompanying textbook to Stephen Clarke's very funny "A Year in the Merde". It loses a star though for the annoyingly retro "Brush up your French" design of the UK edition of the book. Surely this type of book can sell without Sempé-lite drawings of baguettes and berets and the irrelevant "Unleash your inner Gaul" strap line.

A Good Fun Read - Rated
Thank you Mr Timoney for adding something more entertaining to my daughters standard French texts.