Eating French – A Linguistic Introduction for EFL Students

[Revised: 15 January, 2014]
 

France is famous for its delicacies. In fact, for French people, eating well is a science as well as an art. The five posts mentioned below are about different types of French food. Each post provides words that you should know if you travel to a French-speaking country. Smart tourists who are not rich don't spend lots of money on fancy restaurants. Instead, they go to French food shops. Here are the five types of food shops. 

These five language learning posts show you pictures of different French foods and use IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet) to help you how to pronounce them correctly:

1-charcuteries, 2-fromageries, 3-boulangeries, 4-pâtisseries and 5-crêperies

These shops sell: 1-cooked meat, 2-cheese, 3-bread, 4-pastry and 5-crepes.

Remember: when traveling, the best way to enjoy good food while saving money is to eat what local people eat. If you're in a hurry or on a tight budget, supermarkets are more convenient and even cheaper than the specialized food shops mentioned above, but the quality and freshness are not the same.

If you want to try some street food, frites /frit/ (French fries) and croque-monsieur /kʁɔk məsjø/ (a French style grilled cheese sandwich with ham) are two popular choices:

Sensing Croque Monsieur, CC-BY Snowpea&Bokchoi, www DOT flickr DOT com SLASH photos SLASH 28531775@N06 SLASH 4666262530

Be careful! French uses almost the same alphabet as English, but the vowel and consonant sounds are quite different. French people are very proud of their language. To be polite, you should make an effort to pronounce French words correctly.

This page gives you IPA transcriptions for unknown French words: http://project-modelino.com/french-phonetic-transcription-converter.php?site_language=english

This Wikipedia page can help you read IPA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_French