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The threshold
What this language does
French forces you to choose: the gender of every thing, the tense of every verb, the distance to every listener (tu or vous). It is a language that makes you place yourself before you have said anything at all.
The untranslatable
What other languages borrow from us: the unease of being elsewhere, taken as a pleasure.
Hello
Bonjour
“good day” — a wish, not a statement
Work in progress
The book's starting point — the language it looks from. It is treated like the others: from the outside, with its mother (Latin) and its daughters (the creoles) standing right beside it.
Do you know this language?
Each chapter ends with a conversation with someone who lives in the language.
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