Saturday 18 June 2016

False friends

English has borrowed many words from French, and their meanings have often been subtly changed.  This gives rise to linguistic "faux amis", or false friends; words that have similar pronunciations but different meanings.

The french word librairie in modern french means "bookshop" (although in ancient french it meant library) and nowadays a library is a bibliothèqe (f).  Modern libraries often lend out more than just books; they lend CDs, DVDs and so on, and so the library in Evron is known as the médiathèque.

They hold breakfast meetings there once a month, (with free coffee and pastries), when they give a themed presentation on their new acquisitions.  Our flute quartet was invited to come and play some american music as part of a presentation of new material of american origin.  The audience numbered about 30, and covered all ages.

I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't been in the médiathèque before, and it's really rather good.  They have a broad selection of books, CDs and DVDs, and I noticed a few that I would be very interested to read or play.   The discovery of the day was the jazz flutist Elena Pinderhughes who appears on a CD called Stretch Music, with trumpetist Christian Scott and others.  I also learned that there is new (to me) CD of that peerless singer Eva Cassidy, called Night Bird, to which I shall certainly devote an intense listening, as soon as I can.

I joined the library, it cost 12 euros and I  can borrow up to 12 items from each of four different libraries in the area.  As can Anita too.  Plenty.



2 comments:

Helen Devries said...

Whewn I first moved to France the local town had a bibliotheque which over the years converted itself to a mediatheque: it was well used, ran events - and was cheap to join! Gradually the villages acquired their own lending libraries to supplement the bibliobus which did monthly visits.
Great fears for funding given the amalgamation into a new region - and given the gaping hole in the finances of the old Poitou Charente...

CherryPie said...

It sounds like you have found a rich source of music to explore :-)

Eva Cassidy was an Angel that fell too soon, her music speaks to the soul. I will look out for the CD that you mention.

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