Author Charles Timoney recently discussed his new book ‘A Certain…Je Ne Sais Quoi: The Ideal Guide to Sounding, Acting and Shrugging Like The French” at Smiths Paris Bookshop. Timoney, who has lived and worked in France for 25 years, told his audience that he learned quickly that his ‘O Level French’ was scarcely enough to cope with life here. He noted “Even if you did understand what was being said, there was always that key word that you didn’t understand…and that was to say nothing of all the words that don’t mean what you think they mean in French.”
Learning to speak the French that people here actually speak was the inspiration for both Timoney’s popular first book “Pardon My French” and his latest book “A Certain…Je Ne Sais Quoi.” “Life would have been a whole lot easier if I’d had a book like that 25 years ago,’ he says. Indeed Timoney’s entertaining and very useful new book promises to make life just a little easier for Parisian anglo newbies with a host of tips on common blunders English-speakers make when attempting to communicate in French.
The book is available in Paris at WH Smith, 248 rue de Rivoli, M. Concorde, 75001 Paris.