X-Nico

15 unusual facts about French


Anglo-French

It may also be used erroneously to describe the Anglo-Norman language, the dialect of Old Norman used in medieval England

Nationality – a person with one English parent and one French parent may be said to be Anglo-French

Canada–France relations

While the gradual conquest of New France by the British, culminating in Wolfe's victory at the Plains of Abraham in 1759, deprived France of her North American empire, the 'French of Canada' - Québécois or habitants, Acadians, Métis, and others - remained.

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

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'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.

In 1970, the company purchased Widmer Wine Cellars of Naples, New York.

Gulden's

Gulden's, a brand of American mustard, is the third largest American manufacturer of mustard, after French's and Grey Poupon.

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.

Léo Lévesque

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

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.

Mirliton

Chayote or mirliton (French Creole - also mirleton), a pear-shaped vegetable or its vine

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.

Robert Marien

Robert Marien, born May 5, 1956, is a Québécois (Canadian) actor, singer, and songwriter who has performed in the musical Les Misérables in Montreal, Paris, New York and London.


30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS

Soldiers of the division together with an unspecified Italian unit killed 40 civilians in Étobon, France on 27 September 1944, in retaliation of the support given by villagers to the French partisans.

Altmünster Abbey

The destruction of the Abbey was probably ordered by the French King Francis I, who occupied the city on 11 September 1543 during the Italian War of 1542–46, and probably wanted to prevent troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, from occupying the abbey during the next siege.

Brico Dépôt

Brico Dépôt is a French chain of DIY and Home Improvement stores, headquartered in Longpont-sur-Orge.

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.

Chappe et Gessalin

Chappe et Gessalin (CG) was a French automobile maker founded in 1946 which commenced manufacturing complete cars in Brie-Comte-Robert, Seine-et Marne in 1957.

Château de Brissac

The second battle was between Pierre Gagnaire and Iron Chef French Hiroyuki Sakai, with theme ingredient lobster, and was won by Gagnaire.

Christina Bauer

She was born in Bergen, Norway during a Christmas holiday to a French father, Jean-Luc Bauer, a professional volleyball player, and a Norwegian mother, Tone Bauer, a handball player who played several years in France.

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.

Debacq

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

Dominique Fidanza

In 2006, she moved to France to participate at the French reality television show Star Academy France and she arrived at the end of the show but she lost against Cyril Cinélu.

EFEO Chinese transcription

The Chinese transcription of the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) was the most used phonetic transcription of Chinese in the French speaking world until the middle of the 20th century.

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.

Ghana Empire

French colonial officials, notably Maurice Delafosse, concluded that Ghana had been founded by the Berbers, a nomadic group origination from the Benu River, from Middle Africa, and linked them to North African and Middle Eastern origins.

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.

Jacqueline Robin

Jacqueline Robin (December 11, 1917 in Saint-Astier, Dordogne – February 3, 2007 in Taverny) was a French pianist.

Jean de Pourtales

Jean de Pourtales (born August 19, 1965) is a French racing driver from Neuilly-sur-Seine.

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 III de Grailly, captal de Buch

While attempting to lift the siege of Soubise his force was surprised by a French force led by Owain Lawgoch, a Welsh soldier of fortune in the French service.

Jean-François Berdah

He is co-founder and chief-editor of the Revue d'Histoire Nordique since 2005, a bilingual French-English historical review dedicated to the history and civilisation of both Scandinavia and the Baltic countries, and director of the Centre of Excellence Jean Monnet of the University of Toulouse II-Le Mirail.

Jean-Louis Jaley

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

Kaunas Railway Tunnel

The construction was surveyed by the French engineer G. F. Perrot, as well as Polish-Lithuanian engineer Stanisław Kierbedź.

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

Laurie Zimmer

After playing the female lead opposite Darwin Joston and Austin Stoker in Assault on Precinct 13, Zimmer appeared (as Laura Fanning) in two 1977 French films: Jean Eustache's Une sale histoire ("A Dirty Story") and Charlotte Szlovak's Slow City, Moving Fast (also known by the French title D'un Jour a L'Autre).

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.

Martine Blanc

Martine Blanc (born 16 September 1944 in Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dôme) is a French author and illustrator of ten books for children including The story of Timothy, the Two Hoots series in collaboration with Helen Cresswell, and All about Jesus.

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.

Montmorency, Victoria

Montmorency was named after a local farm, Montmorency Estate, which in turn was named for the town of Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, where the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived briefly.

Museum of Arts and Traditions of Sevilla

The building has been used several times as a set for films or television shows, including the 1974 American film The Wind and the Lion and the 1985 French Film Harem, where it was used as the British Embassy.

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.

Piano nobile

The piano nobile (Italian, "noble floor" or "noble level", also sometimes referred to by the corresponding French term, bel étage) is the principal floor of a large house, usually built in one of the styles of classical renaissance architecture.

Pointe-Noire

Congolese oil has been largely exploited by the French company Elf Aquitaine since its discovery around 1980.

Potentilla delphinensis

It is endemic to France, where it is limited to the southern French Alps (Savoie et Dauphiné: Bauges; Isère; Hautes-Alpes, Col du Lautaret).

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.

Punta Bagnà

Administratively the mountain is divided between the Italian comune of Bardonecchia (southern face) and the French communes of Modane (north-western face) and Avrieux (north-eastern face).

Roads Committee

In Jersey, the Roads Committee (French: Comité des Chemins) is the highway authority for Parish roads in each Parish.

Robert Falk

During the Khrushchev Thaw Falk became popular among young painters and many considered him to be the main bridge between the traditions of the Russian and French Moderne of the beginning of 20th century and Russian avant-garde and the Russian avant-garde of the 1960s.

Seichō Matsumoto

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

St Andrews Castle

This peaceful interlude came to end, however, when a French fleet arrived bringing an Italian engineer Leone Strozzi who directed a devastating artillery bombardment to dislodge the Protestant lairds.

Sydney Wayser

The Louvre Palace and the Orangerie being only a few blocks from her apartment, she quickly gleaned much of French culture from her songwriter father, leading her to musical influences that include Edith Piaf, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Jacques Brel, among many others.

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend

Sturges directed only one more film in his life, the 1955 French comedy Les carnets du Major Thompson (released in the U.S. as The French, They Are a Funny Race).

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.

Wiedergänger

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