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Bonjour à tous et bienvenus! I apologise for the late word of the day >.< Merci de m’avoir rejoint, je suis tellement ravis de vous revoir. As I play around with the ‘French Word of The Day’ component of this website, I will eliminate and play around with the format as well. That said, I want to introduce a definition section where you can find definitions in both French and English. Let us move forward and expand our French vocabulary with yesterday’s French word of the day…‘Certitude’!  Origin: The word’s first recorded use in French dates back to the 16th century in the year 1581 by financial expert Nicolas Fromenteau. The following quote is the first literary documentation of the word found in Fromenteau’s third Finances book on page 389. « Tellement que qui voudroit representer la certitude de l'interest qu'a supporté chacun diocese, pour raison d'icelle surcharge…, » Today the word is very commonly used and is one of the 4000 most commonly used words in the Collins Dictionary.  https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/certitude Etymology: The word ‘certitude’ derives from the Middle French ‘certitude’, borrowed from Late Latin ‘certitūdō’ which itself was derived from the Latin word ‘certus’ which meant “sure” and the suffix -tūdō for noun of state. This later evolved to –tude in contemporary French. Our word of the day today has no prefix and is only comprised of a root and a suffix. The root of the word is ‘certi’ which derives from the Latin ‘certitūdō’ to mean ‘sure’. The suffix of the word –tude which derives from the latin –tūdō which is represents a “noun of state”. **State as in state of being, not regional location. ** If we combine the root and suffix of the word we get the following: certi + tude (sure + state of being) to be sure of. What is the direct translation? Keep reading to find out. Translation: Collins dictionary translates ‘certitude’ as ‘certainty’. Definition: The word certainty is defined as the following by Collins Dictionary:
Can You Use It In A Sentence? Condamnés à la mort, condamnés à la vie, voilà deux certitudes 
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Bonjour à tous! Merci beaucoup for your continued support this past year! You are all amazing and I am thankful for the opportunity provided to me in assisting this wonderful community of French Language learners in their studies. Because of each of you and your continued support, 2019 will be a huge year for IB French Survival Guide. As you may have already noticed, the website is no longer IB French B SL & HL Survival Guide. In 2019 the website will expand to provide students who are enrolled in IB French A1 & A2 SL and HL courses as well as IB French ab initio courses with the appropriate resources and materials to aid their language learning. If you see that a resource or page is no longer available, please message me and I will provide you with those resources as the layout of the website changes.  2019 is also the beginning of a new era for IB examinations. Certain components that were crucial in the assessment of your final exam grade will no longer be administered; more on this in a few weeks time. Talking about exams, the 2019 May and November examination schedules have been released. French A, B, and ab initio will observe their examinations on the same day in May 2019; November 2019 exam sessions on the other hand will see different dates for French A, B, and ab initio. May examination sessions will take place on the afternoon of 23 May 2019 and the morning of 24 May 2019 for the first round of 2019 exam sessions. November examination sessions will take place on the afternoon of 11 November 2019 and the morning of 12 November 2019 for French B and ab initio students. French A students will observe examinations on the afternoon of 19 November 2019 and the morning of 20 November 2019 respectively. See the table below for more information or download the Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet for more information.  
Thank you once again! Check back soon for more updates, more exams, more resources! 2019 will be epic!
 Bonjour à tous et bienvenus! Je suis content de vous revoir. Let us expand our French vocabulary with today’s word of the day, ‘Désespoir’! Origin: The word’s first recorded use dates back to the XII century. Trends in word usage suggest that 1734 was the beginning of this word’s rise in popularity; this of course is based on estimations by Collins dictionary. ‘Désespoir’is one of the 4,000 most commonly used words in the French Language today.  Source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/d%C3%A9sespoir Etymology: The word ‘Désespoir’ derives from the latin spērāre, which is the present active infinitive of spērō. Spērō can be defined as follows:
Contrary to our other ‘Word of the Day’s thus far, the word ‘désespoir’ is formed from a prefix and root but does not contain a suffix.
The prefix of the word originates from the Middle French des-, which originated from the Old French des-, which originated from the Latin dis-, which in turn originates from the Proto-Indo-European *dwís. Proto-Indo-What-now? I know! I know! Let us pause for a second to explain what all of this means. As students of French and even students of your mother language; at some point in time you realised that words originate from other languages. Latin and Greek are the two that often come to mind. Linguistics is like a surprise cookie; you never know what flavour you will get, but it is amazing nonetheless. A proto-language is essentially a hypothetical and undocumented parent language from which modern languages are derived from. These are languages that began from oral tradition by our ancestors thousands and thousands of years ago. Think of a proto-language as a sort of cavewoman mother language. That said, the Proto-Indo-European language group is the common ancestor of French, English, Latin, Greek, Russian, Gaelic, Hindi, and many other languages spoken in Europe and India. I decided to explain this now because our future words of the day will also feature Proto-Indo-European prefixes and suffixes and do not want to explain it again down the road. Anyway... the prefix des- essentially represents the reversal of sense of the succeeding word. In ‘désespoir’ the succeeding word is the root ‘espoir’. The root is a deverbal word, meaning a word derived from a verb, espérer which holds the following meanings:
Now that you have this information, do you think you can guess the meaning of this word? No? Let’s try together. Combine the Prefix and the root: Dés- + espoir. Let me remind you that the root of today’s word of the day, dés-, means the reversal of sense of the succeeding word, espoir, which means to hope. Despair should as a result mean the reversal of hope. Translation: Collins dictionary translates ‘désespoir’ as ‘despair’. Breaking this down a bit further, despair is defined as “the feeling that everything is wrong and that nothing will improve”. Can You Use It In A Sentence? Depuis la fin de sa rélation amoureuse avec son amant, M. Niney ne ressentait que le désespoir. Il s’est rendu compte qu’il est tombé amoureux d’elle.  Bonjour à tous et bienvenus! Je suis content de vous revoir. Let us expand our French vocabulary with today’s word of the day, ‘Ralentir’! Origin: It is estimated that ‘Ralentir’first appeared in oral tradition beginning around 1711; in written text the word first appeared in the year 1837. Louis Viardot, French author, art historian, art critic, theatrical figure, and translator first used the word in his French translation of the Spanish novel El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The word appears in Volume I, Chapter XXXIII: «... Lothaire commença à ralentirpeu à peu, par réflexion, ses allées et venues dans la maison de son ami.»  Source: https://www.akal.com/libro/el-ingenioso-hidalgo-don-quijote-de-la-mancha_35166/ Etymology: The word is derived from the archaic and now obsolete French word ‘alentir’.
The prefix originates from the Old French, a-, which stems from Latin, ad-, which denotes entering a state or making progress toward a goal, etc., The root originates from the Old French, lent, which comes from the Latin lentus. The word lent in turn translate to ‘slow’ in English. Collins Dictionary defines the word slow in the following ways:
The suffix -ir is used to denote that the word’s ending denotes that the word is a verb that may be conjugated in any of the French tenses. Now that you have this information, do you think you can guess the meaning of this word? No? Need a little help? Try this! Lets use arithmetic equations to assist us…well not necessarily, but let’s use the structure of formulas to help us with this. [R]a- + lent. + -ir (toward) + (slow) + (verbal suffix) If I had to guess based off this equation alone, I would say that the word means to move slowly towards something or to slow down. Am I right? Keep reading to find out. Translation: Collins dictionary translates the French verb ‘ralentir’ to mean “ to slow down”. Can You Use It In A Sentence? Victor ralentissait sa vitesse quand la pluie commence à tomber. Bonjour à tous! To give you a taste of what you are missing by not signing up, here is a sample Paper 2 from the examination session May 2001. Sign up and join our community of French Learners. 
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Jules FrancoFrench Language and Culture enthusiast, fashion trend-setter extraordinaire. My goal is to provide students with resources, materials, and insight that will help French Language acquisition less intimidating and more enjoyable. Archives
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