By January of this year, I could no longer bear waking up every morning listening to clock radio news about That Orange Bastard. So I switched the dial to ICI Musique, the French-language equivalent of English Canada's CBC Music.
Now I'm awakened by the program Quand Le Jour Se Lève (When Day Breaks) which plays light, pleasant classical and baroque music.
MUCH NICER TO WAKE UP TO!
Its host, François Lemay, has a beautiful, mellifluous voice, so lovely to listen to. Every morning, he starts off by saying "Bonjour, mes chers amis mélomanes." It was no problem for me to understand "Good morning, my dear friends" but WTF does "mélomanes" mean?
After three or four months of just lazily wondering about it, I bestirred myself to look up "mélomane" using an online translator. I discovered that, as a noun, it means "music lover" and, as an adjective, it means "music-loving." So "mes chers amis mélomanes" means "my dear music-loving friends."
Well! I was so thrilled -- out of all proportion, really -- to learn this new and previously unknown word "mélomane" that it kickstarted my interest again in speaking more French. So I began to ask myself -- where and how can I speak more French in . . . EDMONTON, ALBERTA?
The adventure had begun!
