The Word Corner

Online news can be a powerful tool we can use to increase our knowledge of other languages.

Reading about a familiar topic in a foreign language helps us understand the content more easily. If you’re a language teacher you can also use this technique to help your students improve their vocabulary.

The day after Obama’s State of the Union address I went to www.yahoo.fr to see what the French press had to say about it and found some interesting phrases.

(In my case, I’m trying to improve my knowledge of French but you could use the same method to learn any second language. For instance, check out www.yahoo.es for Spanish news).

The title of the post was: Obama s’est montré à la fois humble et combatif au Congrès.

Without any knowledge of French we can quickly recognize the words Obama, humble and Congress.

Next, we zero in on two more words for additional clues:

The word combatif in this case means assertive or aggressive and montré (from the french verb montrer) means to show or demonstrate.

So now we have Obama, humble, assertive, show and Congress.

The little words are the hardest

The little words are usually the hardest to decipher since they bear no resemblance to English and we just have to look them up until we learn them.

The word fois is one of those words whose meaning changes depending on its context.

For instance,

une fois ~ one time
deux fois~ twice

In this case, the phrase à la fois means “at the same time”.

We can now figure out the sentence:

Obama s’est montré à la fois humble et combatif au Congrès

Obama shows to be humble and assertive at the same time before Congress

The preposition au can have multiple meanings depending on its usage. In this case, the meaning of au can be inferred from the context.

Google Translator

Compare the above translation with the version from Google Translator: Obama has shown both humble and combative Congress

Google translator misses a key word: au. Without the word au, we’re not really sure which of the two, Obama or Congress, is humble and assertive.

This is why online translators will never replace humans although these tools can save us some time when translating large portions of text.

Reading about current events in a foreign language is an effective way to expand and reinforce the vocabulary we’ve acquired through formal language training.

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