French Resources
A Short Course in Reading French by
This textbook teaches the basics of French grammar, reinforcing its lessons with exercises and key practice translations. A systematic guide, the volume is a critical companion for university-level students learning to read and translate written French into English; for graduate scholars learning to do research in French or prepping for proficiency exams; and for any interested readers who want to improve their facility with the French language. In addition, A Short Course in Reading French exposes readers to a broad range of French texts from the humanities and social sciences, including writings by distinguished francophone authors from around the world. The book begins with French pronunciation and cognates and moves through nouns, articles, and prepositions; verbs, adjectives, and adverbs; a graduated presentation of all the indicative and subjunctive tenses; object, relative, and other pronouns; the passive voice; common idiomatic constructions; and other fundamental building blocks of the French language. Chapters contain translation passages from such authors as Pascal, Montesquieu, Proust, Sartre, Bourdieu, Senghor, Césaire, de Certeau, de Beauvoir, Barthes, and Kristeva. Drawn from more than two decades of experience teaching French to students from academic and nonacademic backgrounds, Celia Brickman's clear, accessible, and time-tested format enables even beginners to develop a sophisticated grasp of the language and become adept readers of French. There is an answer key for translation exercises and for non-copyrighted translation passages available to professors and teachers who have assigned this title in a class. Please provide your name, title, institution, and number of students in the course in an email to coursematerials@columbiauniversitypress.com.
Call Number: PC2117 .B847 2013ISBN: 9780231156769Publication Date: 2012-12-04
Dictionary of Louisiana French by
The Dictionary of Louisiana French (DLF) provides the richest inventory of French vocabulary in Louisiana and reflects precisely the speech of the period from 1930 to the present. This dictionary describes the current usage of French-speaking peoples in the five broad regions of South Louisiana: the coastal marshes, the banks of the Mississippi River, the central area, the north, and the western prairie. Data were collected during interviews from at least five persons in each of twenty-four areas in these regions. In addition to the data collected from fieldwork, the dictionary contains material compiled from existing lexical inventories, from texts published after 1930, and from archival recordings. The new authoritative resource, the DLF not only contains the largest number of words and expressions but also provides the most complete information available for each entry. Entries include the word in the conventional French spelling, the pronunciation (including attested variants), the part of speech classification, the English equivalent, and the word's use in common phrases. The DLF features a wealth of illustrative examples derived from fieldwork and textual sources and identification of the parish where the entry was collected or the source from which it was compiled. An English-to-Louisiana French index enables readers to find out how particular notions would be expressed in la Louisiane.
ISBN: 9781604734041Publication Date: 2010-09-30
Schaum's Outline of French Grammar by
Schaum's Easy Outline of French is a pared-down, simplified, and tightly focused review of the topic. With an emphasis on clarity and brevity, it features a streamlined and updated format and the absolute essence of the subject, presented in a concise and readily understandable form. Graphic elements such as sidebars, reader-alert icons, and boxed highlights stress selected points from the text, illuminate keys to learning, and give you quick pointers to the essentials.
ISBN: 9780071546065Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Practice Make Perfect:French Vocabulary by
Focuses on practical, everyday vocabulary words Contains sample sentences that illustrate/clarify each point Includes numerous practice exercises Comes with answer key for fast reference and feedback
ISBN: 9780071594615Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Digital Collections
The ARTFL Project
Les Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes
Language-Learning Resources
French Grammar Central
Cultural Resources
Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S.
Musée d'Orsay
Musée Rodin
News Organizations
Le Figaro
Le Français Facile avec RFI
Le Monde
La Recherche
TV5 Monde
Modern France: A Very Short Introduction by
In this Very Short Introduction, Vanessa Schwartz argues that modern France, as both a world stage and a global crossroads, is an essential actor in the development of contemporary culture. Indeed, French is the only language other than English spoken on five continents, and more people still visit France than anywhere else in the world. French fashion continues to dominate haute couture and, at the same time, French people are at the forefront of international style, which was as true in the first half of the twentieth century as it is today. This tension between Frenchness as both particular and transnational remains one of the most compelling qualities of the culture. If French culture and culture producers are working around the globe, if Paris is an international capital, the marvel is that France still manages to attract visitors from all over the world seeking out the drama of its historic castles and significant battlefields, its more than 300 cheeses and the renowned wines grown in its rich soil. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam
ISBN: 9780199874903Publication Date: 2011-01-01
French Literature: A Very Short Introduction by
The heritage of literature in the French language is rich, varied, extensive in time and space, and appealing both to its immediate public--readers of French--and also to a global audience reached through translations and film adaptations. The first great works of this repertory were written in the twelfth century in northern France, and now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this literature includes authors writing in many parts of the world, ranging from the Caribbean to Western Africa. This Very Short Introduction gives the reader a basic orientation to this lively literary world by focusing on texts (epics, novels, plays, poems, screenplays) that concern protagonists whose adventures and conflicts reveal shifts in literary and social practices. From the hero of the medieval Song of Roland to the Caribbean heroines of I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem or the European expatriate in Japan in Fear and Trembling, these problematic protagonists allow us to understand what interests writers and readers across the wide world of French literature.
ISBN: 9780191574375Publication Date: 2010
French Post-War Social Theory: International Knowledge Transfer by
A detailed, imaginative approach to five key social theorists who have helped to shape modern thought. Robbins is a world class expert and his book represents a significant development in the field of french social theory.
ISBN: 9781282241510Publication Date: 2011-01-01
A New World Begins by
From an award-winning historian, a magisterial account of the revolution that created the modern world The principles of the French Revolution remain the only possible basis for a just society -- even if, after more than two hundred years, they are more contested than ever before. In A New World Begins, Jeremy D. Popkin offers a riveting account of the revolution that puts the reader in the thick of the debates and the violence that led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a new society. We meet Mirabeau, Robespierre, and Danton, in all of their brilliance and vengefulness; we witness the failed escape and execution of Louis XVI; we see women demanding equal rights and black slaves wresting freedom from revolutionaries who hesitated to act on their own principles; and we follow the rise of Napoleon out of the ashes of the Reign of Terror. Based on decades of scholarship, A New World Begins will stand as the definitive treatment of the French Revolution.
Call Number: DC148 .P665 2019ISBN: 9780465096664Publication Date: 2019-12-10
The Story of French New Orleans by
What is it about the city of New Orleans? History, location, and culture continue to link it to France while distancing it culturally and symbolically from the United States. This book explores the traces of French language, history, and artistic expression that have been present there over the last three hundred years. This volume focuses on the French, Spanish, and American colonial periods to understand the imprint that French socio-cultural dynamic left on the Crescent City. The migration of Acadians to New Orleans at the time the city became a Spanish dominion and the arrival of Haitian refugees when the city became an American territory oddly reinforced its Francophone identity. However, in the process of establishing itself as an urban space in the Antebellum South, the culture of New Orleans became a liability for New Orleans elite after the Louisiana Purchase. New Orleans and the Caribbean share numerous historical, cultural, and linguistic connections. The book analyzes these connections and the shared process of creolization occurring in New Orleans and throughout the Caribbean Basin. It suggests "French" New Orleans might be understood as a trope for unscripted "original" Creole social and cultural elements. Since being Creole came to connote African descent, the study suggests that an association with France in the minds of whites allowed for a less racially-bound and contested social order within the United States.
ISBN: 9781496804907Publication Date: 2016-02-04
Spanish Resources
Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses by
Go beyond conjugation and learn the right verb tenses for speaking and writing in Spanish If you are looking for help memorizing Spanish verb conjugations, then any Spanish verb book will do. But if you are interested in becoming fluent, you'll need to learn how these language building blocks are used in everyday speech and writing. That's where Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses comes in. The ideal reference/workbook for beginning to intermediate Spanish-language learners, Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses shows you when and why to use certain verb tenses and gives you plenty of examples, increasing your confidence in choosing the right word. Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses lets you: Learn when and why to use different verb tenses Reinforce your knowledge with everyday examples covering a wide range of topics Build your verb skills using more than 250 engaging exercises With numerous skill-building exercises, comprehensive verb conjugation tables, and the proven Practice Makes Perfect format, you will learn to speak and write in Spanish fluently in no time at all. Topics include: Present Tense; Conjugation of Regular Verbs; Ser and Estar; Hay; Tener; The Personal a; A Dozen Highly Useful Irregular Verbs; Saber and Conocer; Stem-Changing Infinitives; Noteworthy Infinitives; Reflexive Verbs; Gustar et al.; The Present Progressive; The Past, Future, and Conditional Tenses; The Preterite Tense; The Imperfect Tense; The Future Tense; The Conditional Tense; The Present Perfect Tense; The Past Perfect Tense; The Imperative, Subjunctive, and Compound Tenses, and the Passive Voice; The Imperative; The Present Subjunctive; The Imperfect Subjunctive; The Future Perfect; The Conditional Perfect; The Present Perfect Subjunctive; The Pluperfect Subjunctive; The Passive Voice
ISBN: 9780071639316
Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Irregular Verbs up Close by
Solve the mysteries of Spanish irregular verbs Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Irregular Verbs Up Close puts the spotlight on this tricky grammar trouble spot. It boasts plenty of opportunities for practicing your language skills, as well as extensive examples based on a conversational style that will keep you engaged. The book also features a unique answer key that gives you more than just a listing of correct answers; it clues you in on the "why" behind them. This book includes: Hundreds of exercises for practice, practice, practice A helpful answer key that provides detailed explanatory material for all answers Includes a special TurboVerb (TM) chart, developed by the author, that sorts out your difficulties with irregular verbs--tense by tense Topics include: Overview of the Spanish Verb System, The Four Microsystems of the Spanish Verb System, Present System I: Present Indicative, Present System II: Present Subjunctive, Present System III: Imperatives, Infinitive System I: Imperfect Indicative, Infinitive System II: Future, Infinitive System III: Conditional, Preterite System I: Preterite Indicative, Preterite System II: Imperfect Subjunctive, Participial System I: Gerund for Progressives, Participial System II: Past Participle for All Seven Perfect Tenses, Participial System III: Past Participle for the Passive Voice and as Adjective
ISBN: 9780071718097
Speed up Your Spanish by
'Excellent book. The chapters put together and systematise a lot of material that is often taught in an anecdotal or haphazard sort of way, if at all. Students will learn a great deal from the book and have their confidence in using Spanish considerably boosted as a result.' - Jonathan Thacker, Merton College, University of Oxford, UK 'An invaluable, highly original and methodically sound approach to correcting and eliminating common, yet difficult-to-eliminate errors.' - Manuel Delgado, Bucknell University, USA 'The user-friendly format and page layout makes Speed Up Your Spanish a highly practical reference source for students and teachers.'- Ma Victoria García Serrano, University of Pennsylvania, USA False friends, idiomatic expressions, gender and capitalization are just some of the areas that cause confusion for students of Spanish. Learning how to avoid the common errors that arise repeatedly in these areas is an essential step for successful language learning. Speed Up Your Spanish is a unique and innovative resource that identifies and explains such errors, thereby enabling students of Spanish to learn from their mistakes while enhancing their understanding of the Spanish language. Each of the nine chapters focuses on a grammatical category where English speakers typically make mistakes in Spanish. Each chapter is divided into sections that classify the concepts and errors into subcategories. Full explanations are provided throughout with clear, comprehensive examples and exercises to help the learner gain an in-depth understanding of Spanish grammar and usage. Key features: carefully selected grammar topics and examples based on the most commonly made errors exercises throughout to reinforce learning shortcuts and mnemonic devices providing vital learning strategies a Companion Website available at www.speedupyourspanish.com providing supplementary exercises as well as audio files. Suitable both for classroom use or self-study, Speed Up Your Spanish is the ideal resource for all intermediate learners of Spanish wishing to refine their language skills. Javier Muñoz-Basols is an Instructor in Spanish at the University of Oxford. Marianne David teaches Spanish at the Trinity School in New York. Olga Núñez Piñeiro is Senior Lecturernbsp;in Spanish at the University of Westminster.
ISBN: 9780203871218Publication Date: 2009-10-16
Medical Spanish: The Instant Survival Guide by
Every English-speaking health professional who works with Spanish-speaking patients will appreciate this handy resource. Two of California's leading Spanish language educators present a wide variety of questions dealing with a full range of health issues -- from medical to administrative, from psychiatric to nutritional, from greetings and social amenities to medical forms. Designed to elicit a 'yes or no' answer, these questions are ideal for users with no knowledge of Spanish. The new 4th Edition offers updated and expanded coverage of mental health and psychiatry, workplace injury and occupational health, AIDS/HIV, child and adult vaccinations, environmental toxins, sun exposure, sports medicine, cancer, and much more. Offers a user-friendly organization that makes the right content easy to find quickly. Covers both emergency and routine situations. Includes cultural considerations, highlighting cultural and religious issues that can affect health care. Provides a Glossary of commonly used terms. Presents updated and expanded material on mental health and psychiatry · workplace injury and occupational health · AIDS/HIV · child and adult vaccinations · environmental toxins · sun exposure · sports medicine · cancer · and many other important topics.
Call Number: PC4120 .M3 L5 2005ISBN: 9780750674942Publication Date: 2004-11-23
Spanish Vocabulary: An Etymological Approach by
Unlike other vocabulary guides that require the rote memorization of literally thousands of words, this book starts from the premise that using the etymological connections between Spanish and English words--their common derivations from Latin, Greek, and other languages--is the most effective way to acquire and remember vocabulary. This approach is suitable for beginners as well as for advanced students. Teachers of the language will also find much material that can be used to help motivate their students to acquire, and retain, Spanish vocabulary. Spanish Vocabulary is divided into four parts and four annexes: Part I provides background material on the origins of Spanish and begins the process of presenting Spanish vocabulary. Part II presents "classical" Spanish vocabulary--words whose form (in both Spanish and English) is nearly unchanged from Latin and Greek. Part III deals with "popular" Spanish vocabulary, which underwent significant changes in form (and often meaning) during the evolution from Latin to Spanish. A number of linguistic patterns are identified that will help learners recognize and remember new vocabulary. Part IV treats a wide range of themes, including words of Germanic and Arabic origin, numbers, time, food and animals, the family, the body, and politics. Annex A: Principal exceptions to the "Simplified Gender Rule" Annex B: 700 words whose relations, if any, to English words are not immediately obvious Annex C: -cer verbs and related words Annex D: 4,500 additional words, either individually or in groups, with English correspondences
ISBN: 9780292794757Publication Date: 2008
Digital Collections
Anthology of Spanish Poetry
DialNet
Dominio Público
Handbook of Latin American Studies from the Library of Congress
Language-Learning Resources
Cambridge Spanish-English Dictionary
News Organizations
La Hora - Guatemala
El Universal - Mexico
El País - Spain
La Nacion - Argentina
El Comercio - Peru
El Telégrafo - Ecuador
Writing Across Cultures by
Ángel Rama was one of twentieth-century Latin America's most distinguished men of letters. Writing across Cultures is his comprehensive analysis of the varied sources of Latin American literature. Originally published in 1982, the book links Rama's work on Spanish American modernism with his arguments about the innovative nature of regionalist literature, and it foregrounds his thinking about the close relationship between literary movements, such as modernism or regionalism, and global trends in social and economic development. In Writing across Cultures, Rama extends the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz's theory of transculturation far beyond Cuba, bringing it to bear on regional cultures across Latin America, where new cultural arrangements have been forming among indigenous, African, and European societies for the better part of five centuries. Rama applies this concept to the work of the Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist José María Arguedas, whose writing drew on both Spanish and Quechua, Peru's two major languages and, by extension, cultures. Rama considered Arguedas's novel Los ríos profundos (Deep Rivers) to be the most accomplished example of narrative transculturation in Latin America. Writing across Cultures is the second of Rama's books to be translated into English.
ISBN: 9780822395508Publication Date: 2012-05-29
Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture by
Provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary view of Latin American history and culture from prehistoric times to the present. Covers cultural issues and includes numerous biographical profiles of important figures in politics, letters and the arts.
ISBN: 9780684315904Publication Date: 2008-06-01
Embers of the Past by
Embers of the Past is a powerful critique of historicism and modernity. Javier Sanjinés C. analyzes the conflict between the cultures and movements of indigenous peoples and attention to the modern nation-state in its contemporary Latin American manifestations. He contends that indigenous movements have introduced doubt into the linear course of modernity, reopening the gap between the symbolic and the real. Addressing this rupture, Sanjines argues that scholars must rethink their temporal categories. Toward that end, he engages with recent events in Latin America, particularly in Bolivia, and with Latin American intellectuals, as well as European thinkers disenchanted with modernity. Sanjinés dissects the concepts of the homogeneous nation and linear time, and insists on the need to reclaim the indigenous subjectivities still labeled "premodern" and excluded from the production, distribution, and organization of knowledge.
ISBN: 9780822378815Publication Date: 2013-09-11
The Disinherited by
Few would doubt that Spain has for several centuries made a huge contribution to Europe's culture. We all carry in our heads a seductive picture of what Spain stands for: its music, painting, buildings, and history. But what we do not understand is how much of this was the achievement of a very specific group: the Spanish in exile. Henry Kamen's The Disinherited is the most significant and enjoyable book on Spain to appear for many years. He creates a picture of a dysfunctional, violent country that, since the destruction of the last Muslim territories in Granada in 1492, has expelled wave after wave of its citizens in a brutal attempt to create religious and social conformity. Muslims, Jews, Protestants, liberals, Socialists, and Communists were all driven abroad at different times, and consequently what we think of as Spanish culture was substantially their invention--a creative response both to having no home and to the shock of encountering new worlds. With brilliant sympathy, Kamen describes these diverse exiles' travails as they scattered across Europe and Africa, across North and South America, many of them debarred by religion or politics from ever returning to Spain.They engaged in an unending project of fantasy about their old homeland--from the Sephardic communities of Amsterdam to the exiled Granada Muslims in Morocco, from liberal historians inventing the Black Legend of the Inquisition to painters in Paris inventing turreted, sensual Orientalist fantasies about the Alhambra. The twentieth century saw fresh waves of exile--from Picasso to Miró, Dalí to Buñuel, from Casals to Falla to Rodrigo--converting Spain itself into a cultural wasteland but enriching other cultures enormously. The Disinherited is a landmark work of cultural recovery, showing how Spain's history has created a "virtual" culture imagined by people often thousands of miles from home--but whose impact on the world has been incalculable.
Call Number: DP48.K35 2007ISBN: 9780060730864Publication Date: 2007-11-27
Spanish Visual Culture by
This book is the first to explore three visual media in contemporary Spain: cinema, television and the internet. It also examines cultural products in each of these media in terms of three vital themes: emotion, location and nostalgia. The first two chapters focus on emotion. They analyze the 'emotional imperative' in a recent Almodóvar feature film and in Spanish television's top-rated period drama, and investigate the politics of affect in TV drama in the last decade. The next pair of chapters deal with location. They use cultural geography to re-read contradictory accounts of the movida (the post-Franco cultural boom) and examine an attempt to anchor a US-derived genre (the youth movie) in the urban landscape of Madrid. The fifth and sixth chapters introduce the theme of location into nostalgia. They treat the unique cases of a successful Spanish heritage movie and a contemporary Spanish thriller remade in Hollywood. The peunultimate chapter investigates electronic artists and the virtual universe, and the book ends with a look at the implications of Hispano-Mexican co-productions and the interconnectedness of economic and aesthetic cultural forms.
Call Number: NX562 .S66 2006ISBN: 9780719075179Publication Date: 2006-11-30
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