Practice and improve your French with Valentine's Day

Image illustration Elisabeth newsletter

🎁 Get 3 gifts to improve your French

They will allow you to overcome a blockage. Panicking or not understanding when someone speaks to you in French 🤯.

They are free and without obligation 🙏.

Leave your name and email to receive your gifts ⬇️

It's free and you can unsubscribe at any time 🙏

Practice and improve your French with Valentine's Day

Transcript of the video

I gave you flowers yesterday. The day before yesterday!

For or against Valentine's Day?

Valentine's Day is the holiday for lovers. But a lot of people also find it a bit of a commercial holiday, a bit old-fashioned. In general, either we love it or we hate it. Today, I suggest you use the theme of Valentine's Day and love to practice your French and learn new vocabulary.

Welcome to my channel! If you don't know me, I'm Elisabeth from HELLOFRENCH. Every week, I post videos to help you improve your French. Like and subscribe ! Let's start right away with the history of Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is a chestnut.

The word chestnut, we use it to talk about something that comes up every year. For example: Halloween, Valentine's Day, April 1ᵉʳ... These are chestnut trees. This holiday is celebrated every year in honor of Saint Valentine. But who is this Valentine? There are a tremendous amount of legends, stories around this holiday.

Let me tell you one. In one of the legends, Valentine was a Roman who supposedly lived in the IIIᵉ century during the reign of Emperor Claudius II. Emperor Claudius must not have been very nice because he was nicknamed Claudius, the Cruel. Claudius had a lot of trouble, he had trouble recruiting new soldiers.

So he thought about it and he said that probably the reason why he couldn't get new soldiers, good soldiers, was because they were too busy finding women and having children. So he decided to ban marriages.

This is where Valentin comes in. Valentin would have been a priest who would have made marriages in secret. When the emperor Claude would have discovered it, he would have been furious. He would have had him arrested and executed on February 14th. In any case, today, Valentine's Day is the holiday that is associated with lovers, with the celebration of the loved one, the person we love. It is a rather romantic holiday, even very romantic.

It is a holiday that couples use to spend time together, have romantic dinners together, celebrate their love. Is Valentine's Day a commercial holiday? I think we can all agree that it is, at least a little bit. Even if for some people, there is a big sentimental attachment to this holiday... It's a moment in the year that brands use to promote themselves, to put themselves forward. So notably florists, jewelers, but also for example chocolate makers or cosmetic brands.

It's true that it can be quite common to buy a perfume for Valentine's Day. So obviously, the meaning of Valentine's Day is up to each person, each person lives it as they see fit. No one is obliged to celebrate it. What can you do on Valentine's Day in France?

Well, in France, but that must be the case almost everywhere. The most common thing to do is to go to a restaurant. So almost every restaurant will have a special menu for Valentine's Day.

That's really the classic one. Or you can also have a couple's dinner at home, a romantic dinner at home. What is also very common is to give flowers to the person you love on Valentine's Day. We says I love you in French. In fact, I don't think you'll find any florists closed on Valentine's Day, because it's a very important day for their business. Is Valentine's Day more important in the United States than in France?

Well, I think so. The United States has a long tradition of celebrating Valentine's Day with advertising campaigns that are quite aggressive and a strong commercial presence in stores. So it can give the impression that Valentine's Day is more important in the United States, that it is more celebrated in popular culture.

If you are American, tell me if this is really the case. But in any case, in the movies that we can watch or in the American series that we can watch in France, we see very often in the colleges or in the high schools that the students make cards or write cards to each other for Valentine's Day.

In France, it's not done at all. So I would say that in France, Valentine's Day is celebrated, but maybe in a slightly more subtle way. It's maybe a little less commercially oriented than in other countries, like it might be in the US. Do I celebrate Valentine's Day?

Well, it's been a long time since I've celebrated this day or done something special, or had someone give me something for Valentine's Day. I gave you flowers yesterday! The day before yesterday! That's just what I was going to say, that for me, it's not an important holiday at all. It's not something I care about at all. I'd rather it be a bit of a love fest every day than this day. Even, I find it a little embarrassing to go to a restaurant specifically on February 14th where you're just going to have a lot of couples around you. I find that a little awkward.

I'm not very comfortable. And like I said, I prefer to have little touches all year long for the person I'm with or, I prefer, that the person I'm with has little touches for me. Like for example, last week I was sick and my husband bought me the cookies I like at the supermarket. He brought me flowers, even though it wasn't a specific day. It was not the day of the lovers' day.

So I think it's even more touching, because it's not an imposed date. My husband thought of it on his own. Oooooh voilà! Yes, bravo! I really think the last time I did something for Valentine's Day was in 2017. And it was with a with a friend. She came to my house. We ate a raclette in front of the show Top Chef, which is a very famous cooking show in France, and I think that was the last time I organized in quotes something.

Anyway, if you are planning to celebrate Valentine's Day, I wish you a very nice day. I hope you will have all the attention you deserve and don't hesitate to tell me in comments what you have planned or what you would like your husband, your wife, your boyfriend or your girlfriend to organize for this lovers' day. I say to you very soon and I send you a lot of love.

Share this article
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
Email

My French lessons 🇫🇷

Dialogue courses to improve your French

Boost your understanding in French 🚀

40 conversations + cards to understand everyday French.

You understand French spoken at school or in movies but you panic when you have a real conversation with a native French speaker 😱 ?

Work on your listening comprehension with 40 dialogues from daily life in France (+ vocabulary cards + comprehension quiz).

Each month, a new dialogue is added.

45 minutes of conversation with Elisabeth

Boost your French speaking 🚀

45 minutes of conversation in French with me (+ working document)

Want to practice your French speaking skills, gain fluency and confidence? Book a private conversation session with me.

More than a simple conversation, I accompany you in your progression...

At the end of each session, I will send you a PDF summary sheet with your mistakes and corrections.

90 days to progress in French

90 days of exercises to progress in French

90 days to progress in French through your daily life.

This booklet will guide you through your day to improve your French in 15 minutes a day.

Free resources that might interest you

please message on gray background
Expressions
Melanie

Please in French + examples

 Asking for permission in French There are very simple ways to ask for permission to do something. There are also more formal ways to ask for permission if you want to be on the safe side! Nothing of the sort

Expressions
Elisabeth

LEARN FRENCH IN 2 MINUTES - French idiom: Ça va sans dire

Transcript of the video Hi everyone, hope you're well. Welcome to this new video where we're going to look at a French expression together in a few minutes. Today, we're going to see together the expression "ça va sans dire". Before

Expressions
Elisabeth

LEARN FRENCH IN 2 MINUTES - French idiom : Mine de rien

Transcript Bonjour tout le monde, j'espère que vous allez bien. Today we're going to look at a French expression in a few minutes. Before we start, feel free to activate the French or English subtitles if you need them.

Videos that might interest you

fr_FRFrançais
Scroll to Top