I recently stumbled across a blog written by a French veterinarian. He writes short fictional pieces about his interactions with clients and their pets but he also posts details on new regulations for the handling of horses to be slaughtered (for meat) and political demonstrations by French vets and vet techs (vétérinaires en colère!) protesting laws restricting their ability to use antibiotics to treat their patients. This is related to EU laws restricting the use of prophylactic antibiotics on production animals (I could write an entire post on that topic alone but will restrain myself today).
I was quite excited to find the blog for a couple of reasons. Particularly in his fictional pieces, his language and tone are conversational. Compare that to the stiff French used by Le Monde. I try to read one or two articles a week from their site. When you combine the formal language with a grim news story, it can be a real slog (although this morning there is an article on the front page about the growing small-scale pot cultivation business in France; at least not so grim). The French vet uses the verb "tweeter" (pronounced "tweet-ay"), meaning "to tweet" as in post on Twitter; the sun would have to burn out before the venerable Le Monde stooped to using that...even though that is how regular people talk. So I'm finding it easier to read the vet blog without referring so often to my dictionaries. I can read his pieces out loud to practice phrasing, the natural pauses that you make when you speak. Reading Le Monde articles makes me sound like a robot.
But another reason I'm glad I found the blog is that it gives me a chance to learn some French science words. To be completely fair, my instructor is not a scientist. She has us watch movies and read fictional excerpts and poetry, and she talks a lot about French culture, but if I want to make a comment in a class discussion from the perspective of a scientist, I struggle to find the words. Even little things like numerical quantities are not commonly part of our reading.
And the internet being the multi-tentacled octopus-thing that it is, the many links on the French vet blog will open up even more sites with new perspectives and new words.
(The title of this post is a phrase that translates directly as "throw an eye at this site" but translates idiomatically as "take a look at this site".)
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