This week Sophie joins us from Le Marais where she is talking about the French institution that is le goûter - the late afternoon snack. She discusses a number of items of vocabulary including être accro à quelque chose, meaning “to be addicted to something”, and she also talks about some French delicacies in the form of Millefeuille and Madeleines. Find out more about Le Marais on Wikipedia.

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Sophie is back with this episode which she recorded a few weeks ago in Paris. This week she looks at the expression se méfier de quelque chose, meaning “to be wary about something” and also faire gaffe, meaning “to watch out”. For the cultural section she’s in the Jardin des Plantes, the main botanical garden in Paris. There’s more info on Wikipedia about Le Jardin des Plantes.

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In this Christmas edition of On Location French, Sophie talks about some of the festive vocabulary she’s picked up while preparing for the holiday season.

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In this week’s episode Sophie looks at “verlan”, a type of French slang which is very common in many parts of France. It involves reversing the order of syllables within words and can be confusing for learners. In the cultural section Sophie introduces us to the area around Rue Cler in Paris. For more information about Verlan, you can view an article in Wikipedia in English or French.

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Welcome to this festive edition of Radio Lingua News. In this update we’ll be telling you about the fantastic milestone we reached this week, and explaining how you can save 25% on our premium memberships until the end of the year.

100 million downloads

Early on Friday morning we clocked up our 100 millionth download. Over the past five years learners from around the world have downloaded our free language lessons and we’re delighted to have reached this amazing milestone. We’d like to thank all our listeners for continuing to enjoy our language lessons, and a special thank you to all our members who help to support all of our developments.

Winter sale now on

To celebrate this milestone we’ve launched our winter sale, so you can now get 25% off our memberships and premium versions of the courses. In most cases these premium versions include lesson guides in pdf or ebook format and extra audio or video content. All the courses available on our website can be purchased at this special reduced rate by using the coupon code winter2011 at checkout. The sale will continue until midnight on New Year’s Eve – or Hogmanay as we say in Scotland, so you still have almost two weeks to take advantage of these special prices, and get a head start on your language learning for 2012.

Update on current shows

The reaction to our new show for Spanish learners, Q&A Spanish, has been fantastic. We’re delighted that lots of you are now emailing us with your questions, or leaving voicemails so that we can include your questions in the show. JP and Nahyeli are enjoying answering your questions – even the difficult ones! If you’re learning Spanish and you’ve not yet listened to Q&A Spanish, you can find out more about the show, download the episodes, and find out how to contact us to ask your question at qandaspanish.com. We’re also really pleased with On Location French, our new video blog produced by Sophie in Paris. Sophie records her regular videos with a small camera and microphone all on her own in Paris and although we had some teething problems with sound, things are settling down now. She’s been including some really interesting phrases – and this week’s expression is a fantastic construction to add to your vocabulary! You can access On Location French on iTunes, Blip.TV or of course at onlocationfrench.com. Turning to our other courses, although we’ve had a delay with our new One Minute Languages series, we’re getting back on track and there will be new episodes out this week of our Dutch, Flemish and Arabic courses. As far as Coffee Break French is concerned, we’re now into the final eight lessons of Season 3 and in these episodes we’ll be going back through the texts used in this season and picking out some of the most important grammar points, then helping learners practise these constructions with a series of translation and dictation exercises. There will be lots of extra members-only content, so with our winter sale currently on, perhaps now is the time to take advantage of our special pricing.

Happy holidays!

Finally, we’d like to wish you all a very happy holiday season and hope that you get the chance to relax, spend time with your friends and family, enjoying everything that the festive season brings, and get the chance to work on your language – or put it into practice if you happen to be travelling! Don’t forget that you can join us in our Festive Phrases video series each day of December until the 25th to learn a festive greeting in a different language. Use the link on the home page of the Radio Lingua site to open each day of our linguistic Advent Calendar. Until the next time, happy holidays from everyone here at Radio Lingua!

This week Sophie has been finding out about abbreviations used in French, including what MDR in a text message means. In the cultural spot for this week she has been visiting the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Jardin des Tuileries to view a very famous Monet painting.

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In this latest episode of On Location French Sophie has had some interesting traffic-related experiences and she tells us about the language she’s picked up as a result. Expressions include en cours, les heures de pointe, and griller un feu rouge. She also talks about her recent walking tour around the 5ème arrondissement.

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Sophie recorded this most recent episode at the weekend in the run-up to Hallowe’en. She introduces the phrase avoir la trouille, meaning “to be scared”, and also lets slip her love of all things Harry Potter – en français, bien sûr! In her cultural input she tells us about her recent trip on a bateau mouche along the Seine.

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This week Sophie talks about the expression arriver à faire quelque chose, meaning “to succeed in doing something”. She provides examples in the positive and negative. She also talks about a recent visit to the Pompidou Centre.

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In this week’s first episode, Sophie talks about the expression se débrouiller, meaning “to get by”, or in some contexts “to muddle through”. She also taks about a recent visit to l’Hôtel des Invalides.

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