{"id":848,"date":"2009-07-15T19:58:54","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T19:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/?p=848"},"modified":"2009-07-15T19:58:54","modified_gmt":"2009-07-15T19:58:54","slug":"french-phrase-for-today-faire-le-pont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/15\/french-phrase-for-today-faire-le-pont\/","title":{"rendered":"French Phrase for today: Faire le pont"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I met my tutor for my sixth French lesson in the past fourteen days. I returned home with a French phrase that I’d like to share, and a set of photos to show you part of our new world. <\/p>\n

First, the phrase — “faire le pont” — can be translated literally as “to make the bridge.” Not very interesting so far, as it sounds like a lot of back-breaking labor and possibly a waste<\/a> of taxpayers’ money. But let me give you some context, a conversation between two friends last week, in the French town<\/a> of Thionville<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Colette: Where are you going for Bastille Day? Will you faire le pont<\/em>? Will you go away on vacation?<\/p>\n

Ad\u00e8le: Yes, we’re going to faire le pont<\/em>, and we’ll go to Spain and Portugal.<\/div>\n

So here’s the scoop. Bastille Day fell on Tuesday this year, and it’s a public holiday. So, if you want a nice, long weekend, you can take Monday off and “bridge” the weekend with the holiday. <\/p>\n

Thus, the French phrase, “I’ll make the bridge.” I’ll take Monday off and fly to Iberia<\/a> on a four-day trip. What a lovely idea!<\/p>\n

If you want to use it for yourself, say, “Je fais le pont.” (Click here to hear an MP3 file of my heavily-accented pronunciation.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

It’s getting late, so I’ll save the photoset for tomorrow. Until there, here’s a photo of a bridge (“un pont”) that I passed under today…
\n\"Pont<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I met my tutor for my sixth French lesson in the past fourteen days. I returned home with a French phrase that I’d like to share, and a set of photos to show you part of our new world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[704,620],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}