If the mention of toile fabrics conjures up bucolic scenes of cows, roosters, and Marie Antoinette at L’Hameau, think again. How else, for the price of a yard of fabric, can you enjoy subjects as rich as “The Vampires,” “The Monuments of Paris,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and “Don Quixote”?
In French, the word toile means “canvas or linen.” However, it’s almost synonymous with the fabric originally printed in the village of Jouy, southwest of Paris, near Versailles. In 1760, Christopher-Philippe Oberkampf established a cotton print factory in Jouy. Being an artist and a keen entrepreneur, he capitalized on the rapidly growing middle class interest in home furnishings. Historically, the French fabric industry was subsidized by the court, and its products were used for courtly interiors. Fine silks being cost prohibitive to the middle class, a cheaper alternative was needed. Oberkampf inspired by the cotton prints imported from India, eventually made the fabric a purely French invention.
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PREPARE. Try to set aside your mother tongue’s accent and be prepared to make some adjustments. If you find it difficult, don’t worry and don’t be disheartened. You can’t do this with just a snap of a finger, so make it gradual. Adapt to the French accent little by little.
LISTEN. To get a good grasp on how French words are spoken, you must listen carefully. Listening is your key. Listen and pay attention on how the words are pronounced. Then, listen and repeat. Repeat the words properly the way they are mentioned. You can do this until you get attuned to the French sound — like it is the only accent you know and nothing else. You can begin by listening to French audio CDs or tapes, movies and TV programs. Like music, you need to be able to dance to its rhythm and learn it by heart.
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The French language came originally from Vulgar Latin that also is known from the Roman Empire as the vernacular Latin. At the time the Romans conquered Ancient Gaul (now known as France) in the 2nd and 1st Century B.C. they spoke a Celtic language called “Gaulish”.
Around the 5th Century a Romanized Germanic Tribe invaded Gaul. Even if modern French owes much of its vocabulary and structure to Latin a couple of hundred words of German and Celtic origin make apart of it.
Only by the 9th Century the language known in Gaul was almost the same as the one we know of modern France and it was enough different of the Latin language to be a distinct language. It is also known as Old French and was used from the 9th to the 13th Century. The oldest still remaining text dated from 842 in Old French is the Oaths of Strasbourg.
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