X-Nico

15 unusual facts about French


Cariso

Cariso singers, called chantwells, sang primarily in French creole.

Chanté mas

Lyrics are almost all in French creole and are traditionally sung by women (chantwell), while the instrumental tradition are predominantly practiced by men

Colin H. Williams

He began his PhD research on 'Language Decline and Nationalist Resurgence' comparing the Welsh and Québécois situation.

Dans une galaxie près de chez vous

The series chronicles the long, futuristic voyage of a team of Québécois space explorers looking for a planet capable of sustaining life, in the year 2034, after the destruction of the ozone layer through excessive human pollution, prompting the need for a new planet to welcome humankind.

French-American School of New York

69% of the students are of French origin, 21% are American, and 10% come from all over the Francophone world and represent fifty nationalities.

French-Andrews House

In 1919 it underwent a careful restoration under the auspices of preservationist George Francis Dow.

French's

They also were a prominent sponsor of the Rochester Red Wings baseball club, often in conjunction with a local brand of hot dogs, Tobin's First Prize.

Hubert Gagnon

He is best known as the voice of Homer Simpson in the Quebec version of The Simpsons, the voice of Mel Gibson in many movies, and also the character Picabo on the québécois TV show Les Oraliens.

Joseph Meek

As the French trappers enjoyed good relations with most of the Indian tribes in the area, Meek seems to have hoped that the Indians would take him for a Québécois and leave him alone.

Léo Lévesque

Léo Lévesque is a Québécois poet, essayist, and writer born in Montréal.

Lewis A. Coser

In contrast, the non-coincidence of economic and political disenfranchisement among Quebecers reduces somewhat the severity of their conflict with English Canada, especially with the rising prosperity of the French Canadian new middle class operating in the public sector and corporate world.

Lyonel Trouillot

Lionel Trouillot (born Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on December 31, 1956) is a novelist and poet in French and French Creole, a journalist and a professor of French and Creole literature in Port-au-Prince.

Nothing but a Heartache

A French-language rendering entitled "C'est insensé" was recorded in 1969 by Québécois singer Donald Lautrec.

Ramón Mujica Pinilla

He has written books on the mystical intellectual sources of St. Rose of Lima, the first saint of the Americas, and on the political dimensions of her Creole and Indian cult that prepared the ground for Peru's political Independence from Spain in 1821.

Strathcona, Alberta

This mixed community of British (especially Orkney), Québécois, Cree and Metis fur trade employees, pioneer farmers, hunters, and their families, was mostly replaced by eastern Canadian pioneer farmers (and land speculators) in the 1880s.


A35 autoroute

On the German side of the frontier, plans to build a final stretch of Autobahn to connect the French A35 directly with the German A65 at Kandel were not implemented during the 1990s when the focus of Autobahn construction switched to the eastern side of the country.

Al Cliver

From 1975 to 1988, he was in a relationship with French actress Annie Belle and has acted alongside her in the films Forever Emmanuelle, Blue Belle, Velluto Nero and Un Giorno alla fine di Ottobre.

Alain Lanty

He has composed songs for a great number of French artists including Renaud, Florent Pagny, Marc Lavoine, Dani, Régine, Maurane, Hélène Ségara, Jean-Luc Lahaye.

Albert Spaier

Studying at the Sorbonne, he volunteered to fight for the French at the outset of World War I, and became a French citizen soon afterwards.

August von Werder

Promoted general of infantry, and assigned to command the new XIVth Army Corps, Werder defeated the French at Dijon and at Nuits, and, when Charles Denis Bourbaki's army moved forward to relieve Belfort, turned upon him and fought the desperate action of Battle of Villersexel, which enabled him to cover the Germans besieging Belfort.

Biotite

Biotite was named by J.F.L. Hausmann in 1847 in honour of the French physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot, who, in 1816, researched the optical properties of mica, discovering many unique properties.

CAP Scientific

CAP (Computer Analysts and Programmers) merged with the French firm Sema-Metra SA in 1988 as Sema Group plc which was acquired by Schlumberger in 2001 to become SchlumbergerSema, itself acquired by Atos Origin in 2004.

Castelnau-de-Lévis

The village at the base of the château is the site of a motocross championship, the Championnats du Monde MX3 et d’Europe 125 de Motocross. The track is also scheduled to host the French 2009 Sidecarcross world championship Grand Prix on 29 March 2009, however, this will still have to be confirmed by the FIM.

Celia en el mundo

Eventually, she befriends a young French girl named Paulette who becomes her constant companion throughout many adventures and misadventures.

Charles Eloi Demarquet

Among his notable descendants are his own oldest son, Carlos, an Ecuadorian politician who served as Quito's cantonal leader (Jefe Politico) from 1886 to 1892, and the French historian and Academician Jean-Jacques Chevallier.

Christophe Cuvillier

Christophe Cuvillier (born December 5, 1962 in Etterbeek) is a French businessman and current chief executive officer of the European real-estate group Unibail-Rodamco.

Debacq

Charles-Alexandre Debacq (1804-1863), a French historical and portrait painter.

Demographics of Suriname

Dutch (official), Sranan Tongo (Surinamese, sometimes called Taki-Taki, is native language of Creoles and much of the younger population), Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Javanese, English (widely spoken), French due to cultural influence from French Guiana, Portuguese and Spanish.

Deweare

Deweare's music was greatly influenced by the resurgence of French punk cult bands such as Bérurier Noir and Ludwig von 88, as well as by rock musician, comedian and poet Alain Bashung and by American music artist Beck—another musician to whom Deweare's vocals have been compared.

Entrevaux

The remaining population staged an uprising, cutting the throat of the governor, and offered the town to the French Dauphin, King François I.

Escaladieu Abbey

Escaladieu Abbey (French: l'Abbaye de l'Escaladieu) was a Cistercian abbey located in the French commune of Bonnemazon in the Hautes-Pyrénées.

Fashoda Incident

When one draws a line from Cape Town to Cairo (Rhodes' dream) and another line from Dakar to French Somaliland (now Djibouti) by the Red Sea in the Horn (the French ambition), these two lines intersect in eastern South Sudan near the town of Fashoda (present-day Kodok), explaining its strategic importance.

Gyosei Junior and Senior High School

American and French missionaries belonging to the Order of Saint Mary founded Gyosei High School in Tsukiji, Tokyo in 1881.

Hillside Beach, Manitoba

During the fur trading expeditions of the Voyageurs and Coureur des bois the lagoon was part of a portage for traveling between the Winnipeg River and Lake Winnipeg en route from French eastern Canada to the Red River Valley, avoiding the long often choppy route around Elk Island.

History of Vanuatu

The Convention of 16 October 1887 established a joint naval commission for the sole purpose of protecting French and British citizens, but claimed no jurisdiction over internal native affairs.

Illegalism

Bonnot's perceived prominence within the group was later reinforced by his high-profile death during a shootout with French police in Nogent.

Jean Elichagaray

Jean Baptiste Pierre Eugène Elichagaray (September 3, 1886 – June 8, 1987) was a French rower who competed in the men's eights event at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm.

Jean Ragnotti

Jean "Jeannot" Ragnotti (born 29 August 1945 in Pernes-les-Fontaines, Vaucluse), is a French former rally driver for Renault in the World Rally Championship.

Jean-Jacques Pierre

Jean-Jacques Pierre (born 23 January 1981 in Léogâne) is a Haitian footballer currently plays for French club SM Caen.

Jean-Louis Jaley

Jean-Louis Nicolas Jaley (born in Paris in 1802, died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1866) was a French sculptor.

Julius Grey

Grey defended La servante écarlate by Margaret Atwood, the French version of The Handmaid's Tale, in the French version of Canada Reads, broadcast on Radio-Canada in 2004.

Khadja Nin

Her breakthrough, however, came in 1996 with her widely popular album Sambolera, which was sung in Swahili, Kirundi, and French.

Knud Vesterskov

Knud Vesterskov's career is the subject of Bent Staalhøj's feature-length documentary From Scratz (2002), included on the French 2xDVD release of HotMen CoolBoyz.

Kramp

Christian Kramp (1760–1826), French mathematician who worked primarily with factorials

L'Appel du silence

L'Appel du Silence is a 1936 French film directed by Leo Poirier based on the life of Charles de Foucauld.

Malplaquet

The Battle of Malplaquet (11 September 1709) between the French and the Allies, the largest European battle in the eighteenth century

Martin Soldat

Martin Soldat is a 1966 French comedy film directed by Michel Deville and starring Robert Hirsch, Véronique Vendell, Walter Rilla, Marlène Jobert and Anthony Sharp.

Methyl salicylate

The compound methyl salicylate was first isolated (from the plant Gaultheria procumbens) in 1843 by the French chemist Auguste André Thomas Cahours (1813-1891), who identified it as an ester of salicylic acid and methanol.

Milan Crnković

He published about one-hundred research and literary papers, several translations from French (Honoré de Balzac, Stendhal, François Souchal) English (Daniel Dafoe, Albert Manfred, James Michener, Shel Silverstein, Isaac Singer, and James Thurber) and Russian (Kornej Cukovski).

Milieu

Milieu is the word for environment in French, and, for hundreds of years, also in Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish, English, and other languages that were strongly influenced by French culture and French language, primarily during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Morry Taylor

In February 2013, Taylor met harsh criticism in France after a letter he wrote to the French minister of industrial renewal, Arnaud Montebourg.

Najim

Re-titled "Près de toi (Suddenly)", it is a multilingual song in French, English and Persian and contains a sampling of Algerian classic "Abdel Kader" with Arash featuring Najim and Swedish-Mexican star Rebecca Zadig

Ouvéa cave hostage taking

Bernard Pons, French Minister for Overseas Territories at the time, who dealt with the matter.

Pierre Bellocq

Pierre Camille Lucien Hilaire Jean Bellocq (born November 25, 1926 in Bedenac, Charente-Maritime, France) is a French-American artist and horse racing cartoonist known as "Peb".

Pulau Aur

The 1804 naval Battle of Pulo Aura between the British and the French took place in the island's vicinity during the Napoleonic Wars.

Sebastian Castellio

Having been educated at the age of twenty at the University of Lyon, Castellio was fluent in both French and Italian, and became an expert in Latin, Hebrew and Greek as well.

Seichō Matsumoto

In 1987, he was invited by French mystery writers to talk about his sense of mystery at Grenoble.

Siege of Magdeburg

Siege of Magdeburg (1813–1814), a siege of the German city by forces of the First French Empire during the War of the Sixth Coalition, which ended with Napoleon's abdication

Simone Gbagbo

In July 2008 she was formally called for questioning by a French investigative judge, examining the April 2004 disappearance and presumed death in Abidjan of French-Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer.

Stealing Heaven

Stealing Heaven is a 1988 film, a costume drama based on the French 12th century medieval romance (a true story) of Peter Abelard and Héloïse and on a historical novel by Marion Meade.

The Mountain

The Mountain (French: La Montagne) is a political group during the French Revolution whose members, called Montagnards, sat on the highest benches in the Assembly.

The Stoning of Soraya M.

The son of a former Iranian ambassador, French-Iranian journalist and war correspondent Freidoune Sahebjam has also reported on the crimes of the Iranian government against the Bahá'í community in Iran.

Tsering Dorjee

In 1999, he starred in the French Nepali film directed by Eric Valli, Himalaya - l'enfance d'un chef, in which he starred alongside Lhakpa Tsamchoe.

Wiedergänger

In the opinion of the French expert on legend and myth Claude Lecouteux, this clearly belongs into the range of the vampire-belief.