Part of academic life in every country that I’ve visited in an official capacity is going to people’s talks. I found this to be a great way to practice my French listening skills, and I always learned new technical vocabulary. I didn’t usually have to struggle through the talk announcement emails, but the consequences of Zipf’s Law are never far away, and this morning I ran into three words that I didn’t know just in the first sentence of an email announcing an upcoming series of talks by the LIMSI interns:
Les prochaines séances de séminaire du groupe ILES seront consacrées à des exposés des stagiaires, qui présenteront leur travail au sein groupe.
These are especially fun words, since all three of them have English cognates with totally different meanings:
- la séance: session; in the context of the theater or movies: showing, performance. I’m pretty sure I saw a wider range of uses in France, but don’t remember any off the top of my head.
- consacré: dedicated to, devoted to, dealing with.
- un exposé: report, account; in the context of a conference: talk, lecture; in the context of a class: presentation.
I find your linguistic observations fabulous, Kevin. What an interesting life you must lead…
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Definitely not as fabulous as yours!
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