If you are like me, you have been curious about how other countries in the world have been dealing with the coronavirus. Every time we practice vocabulary and dialogues about going out into the world ("On va au café?"), I think about how, no, I'm not going to any cafe any time soon. Because there's a world-wide pandemic. Now that we're in Unit 2, so much of our vocabulary centers around "Les Passe-Temps," activities that we enjoy doing that perhaps we are unable to do. Here is a quote from Franceinfo, one of my favorite websites for French news. 46 millions de Français vont devoir vivre sous couvre-feu à partir de vendredi 23 octobre à minuit. In this quote, I hope you recognize the word "vendredi" from Tuesday. If you've forgotten that it means "Friday," you still might have been able to figure it out because of "23 octobre:" today's date. Here's my translation of the line: 46 million French must live under curfew beginning Friday, October 23 at midnight. Our word "curfew" comes from the French word "couvre-feu." In French, "couvre" means "to cover," and "feu" means "fire." (There's a really great French soup called "pot-au-feu:" "fire pot.") In the old, olden days, the Medieval days, a couvre-feu was a ringing bell that reminded citizens of a city to cover their fires. In old European cities, wooden buildings were crowded together and inside every single home fires were lit to cook, warm the home, take baths, everything. If one of those fires caught ahold of a wooden structure, it could soon rage across the entire city. This happened in London in 1666, in what we know as the Great Fire of London. In modern day France, the word "couvre-feu" has adapted just like our word "curfew" to mean people must be in their homes by a certain hour, in this case, "minuit." The French government is imposing a curfew to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The rate of infection is rising in France, as well as Europe in general and the United States. France is trying to prevent the severity of a "deuxième vague," a second wave of Covid infections.
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AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher during the Covid19 pandemic. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined French 1 classroom. Archives
May 2021
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