What Topics for Smalltalk in easy French?

Small Talk
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What are your ideas for Topics… which can be the basis of a simple/easy conversation with French folk…

I’ll start of with Weather / Meteo

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Aujourd’hui il fait beau, j’espère demain aussi :sunglasses:

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Well done Mark

Now how about another Topic… :roll_eyes:

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I always just talk about Brico!

Specialist subject this year have been fireplaces/chimneys and lawnmowers - I am such an interesting party animal!

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We talk about dogs, our dog, the neighbour’s dogs.
The usual questions in the street.
Quel race? She’s a Keeshond so quite unusual.
Elle est une fifi?
Then they ask how often we have to brush her, how old she is.
All the time they are fussing her we are watching her eyeing up their baguette!

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Right now it’s how many boar were killed at the weekend, what the special offers at the fish stall are, and the latest story of a local badly brought up, and badly controlled, dog.

But otherwise, how charming child X is, or asking how your vegetable garden is going are relaible topics.

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Gardening, what vegetables you grow, if you have fruit trees do you make jam :slight_smile:
Est-il vrai que les Anglais mange la sauce à la menthe avec de l’agneau :rofl:

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La plupart de mes conversations sont avec des hommes qui passent ma porte quand je m’occupe au jardin. La santé est un sujet courant. Je suis en bonnes termes avec divers geueles, estomacs, épines, yeux, hanches, genoux et reins Normands. Scalps aussi, je auriais du rechercher ce mot-là, mais je suis oisif.

Un homme du coin est un imitateur doué qui me fait rire copieusement par ses représentations de Colombo, l’investigateur maladroit de télévision américain, General de Gaulle, John Wayne, Mitterand…

Son repertoire est grand. On peut passer 45 minutes à se souvenir de filmes de la deuxieme guerre mondiale et en chantant à duo :notes: "You must remember ziss, a keess is is just a keess, a sigh is just a sigh… :cry::notes::broken_heart:

PS A corriger au-dessus colonne vertébrale au lieu d’epine :cold_sweat:

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J’ai eu beaucoup de difficultés avec Smalltalk, c’était pas avec les concepts de programmation orientée objet, mais avec la syntaxe plutôt bizarre de cette langue.

Oh, je me trompe - vous voulez dire les conversations de moins importe avec voisins, passants et gens divers pour passer le temps du jour.

Malheureusement je trouve mon français parlant est pas assez bien pour la tâche.

:slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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We talk about what is going on in the neighborhood, but it is usually when we have a social event as we do not live in the village and houses are scattered.
Today is Monday, so it is the day for Les Dames de Lundi.
We are a small group of both french and english women that I started and we meet every week in each others homes.
We tell each other what has happened to us during in the week, but in the other language.
We then read a bilingual book.
Today we are starting a new book of short stories from Jack London.

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That sounds an interesting group, Jane…

At a local meeting… I was asked to read an extract from my favourite English book… and I read from The Hound of the Baskervilles… Some of them understood enough to get the gist… but we all had fun with my effort of an explanatory “translation” afterwards … :relaxed:

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I am not a Sherlock Holmes fan.

One of our group liked gothic novels and short stories.

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I love Sherlock Holmes.

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We’ve got all the books … … and dvd/videos with a variety of actors… wonderful stuff… :relaxed:

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My neighbours seem to be vying with one another … as to the definitive moment when Autumn arrives… some reckon it is the Grue migrating south… others the changing colour of the leaves… the barometer etc etc.

Whatever, they always reckon UK has worse weather than here and by the sounds of the forecast for next week… when one of them says to me … il neige en angleterre … it will be true :open_mouth::roll_eyes::relaxed:

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We were taught by some friends to use the expression , je voudrais or voudrais vous at the begining of a request, it seems to have a desired result, as our francais is not good.

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Yes, indeed… works well…

Most important is to say bonjour… before all else… that gets the pleasantries out of the way…

then I continue with “s’il vous plaît” … that gets their attention, and finally I follow up with the request… or question… :relaxed::relaxed:

and a big merci afterwards…

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There are a lot of Sherlock Holmes based programmes on French TV so it might well be a good subject to talk about.

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I have just recently found (in English) the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett. It was in our ‘local’ entreaide shop. I had never seen it before and although I have read and loved the books, and the old films, have never seen the dvd’s before.
I am currently watching it with mum and we are hooked. 23 dvd’s for the princley sum of 2 euros ! :slight_smile:

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Jeremy Brett was briefly married to Anna Massey. He was also in the film My Fair Lady.
I read somewhere that he became so engrossed in the Sherlock Holmes character that it made him ill. Definitely my favourite Holmes.

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