France
 

I need to know the name of the french countryside. Im going blank.<BR>please reply.<BR> erniy

HI ERNIY,<BR> It's called &quot;la campagme&quot;..

Thank you!!!

A typo, no doubt... La campagNe...<BR><BR>but there is also another expression, &quot;la province&quot;, not to be confused with &quot;Provence&quot;, nor &quot;les provinces&quot;. As I understand it, &quot;la province&quot; might be vaguely construed to mean &quot;all the rest of France (excluding Paris)&quot; even though that includes cities and towns as well as actual rural areas. I think it gets translated, at various times, as &quot;out in the country&quot;, &quot;in the heartland&quot;, or &quot;out of the city&quot;.<BR><BR>I hope I am spitting back out some excessively rusty memory - - or something I lkearned wrong in the first place. Seems like I heard it (maybe not the first time) not too long ago, on an action of French in action&quot; from Professor Capretz.<BR><BR>Best wishes,<BR><BR>Rex<BR>[email protected]<BR>

There's also le paysage, which I think is closer to &quot;countryside,&quot; as opposed to just &quot;country&quot;(as in &quot;we're going to the country for a picnic).

<BR>Where's Eye Spy? She's the expert!!

Provence is an area SE in France, the provinces are the rest of france's countryside OUTSIDE the metropolitan areas.

Some confusion here. A few translations: <BR><BR>la campagne : the countryside<BR><BR>la province : all of France except for Paris (the &quot;sticks&quot; or the &quot;boondocks&quot; if you will - hence the English adjective provincial)<BR><BR>le paysage : the landscape<BR><BR>la Provence : an area in Southern France<BR><BR>Hope this helps,<BR>Andre

I think a nice name for the French countryside would be Kermit. And before any French Fodorites start attacking les roast beefs, perhaps we could rename the English countryside Ermintrude.

I'm not a French language expert, but I do know that both &quot;campagne&quot; and &quot;paysage&quot; mean <BR>&quot;countryside,&quot; but with different connotations. Which word you might use will depend upon precisely what you mean by &quot;countryside&quot; in context: the place where you may physically be, or go, or leave (la campagne), or the place you might see when you're there or might imagine, describe or depict (le paysage).

cmt,<BR><BR>With all due respect, paysage means landscape, NOT countryside. An urban landscape translates to &quot;un paysage urbain&quot;.<BR><BR>Andre

Was it The Three Sisters who were always complaining about being stuck out in the provinces....ah, but they were in Russia, weren't they?

I think we all really KNOW and agree about the meaning of &quot;paysage&quot; and of &quot;campagne&quot; in French and the only argument, IF any, may be a difference in our notions of the scope of the meaning of &quot;countryside&quot; in English, i.e., whether it encompasses scenery. In any event, I did just find &quot;countryside&quot; translated as BOTH &quot;campagne&quot; and &quot;paysage&quot; in dictionaries. I can't go copying enitire dictionary definitions here, but will post just a little. From Larousse Grand Dictionnaire unabridged (1998), here's the French for &quot;countryside&quot;: <BR><BR>campagne<BR><BR>[scenery] paysage<BR><BR>in the___ -- &agrave; la campagne<BR><BR>there is some magnificent____ around here -- il y a des paysages magnifiques par ici<BR><BR>And from Le Robert Micro (1998), the definitions of &quot;paysage&quot; include:<BR><BR>1. Partie d'un pays que peut voir un observateur. <BR><BR>2. Espace g&eacute;ographique d'un certain type<BR><BR>and for &quot;campagne&quot;:<BR><BR>2. les terres cultiv&eacute;es, hors d'une ville<BR><BR>3. endroits o&ugrave; on cultive la terre, on &eacute;l&egrave;ve des animaux, loin des villes<BR><BR><BR><BR>I didn't look all this up before my last post, but not that I have checked a few sources, I'm satisfied that at least I'm not &quot;wrong.&quot;<BR><BR>

Does that mean I'm right ?

uh-oh busted:<BR>I don't think the French were the first to use the &quot;province&quot; concept - AFAIK it was the Romans who refered to every place outside of their capital but within their empire as the &quot;provinces&quot;.<BR><BR>CMT:<BR>This may be overkill, but I disagree with the Larousse translation - the Robert on the other hand mirrors exactly what I was saying ;-). <BR>&quot;Il y a des paysages magnifiques par ici&quot; could also be used by someone referring to urban, mountain or desert scenery.<BR><BR>Here's hoping I got the last word in ;-)<BR><BR>Andre

I agree with Andre. At least on ordinary use, using &quot;paysage&quot; to mean &quot;countryside&quot; seems a strech to me. I'm not an expert but I use French in daily basis. So I'd say the first response by bigguy &quot;la campagne&quot; was the simple and correct answer.

While were discussing the finer degrees of nuance, where does &quot;la patrimoine&quot; fit in???

who knows what erniy really wanted, but I suspect it was the provinces or simply Provence, because he/she didn't say &quot;what is the French word for countryside&quot; but what is the NAME of the French countryside. Big difference. However, you do hear &quot;a la campagne&quot; a lot in various phrases, so it could be that's what erniy was looking for. I can't imagine paysage would be the word sought in that phrasing of the question.<BR><BR>&quot;countryside&quot; isn't used that much in English, anyway, it seems to me--when it is, it usually would mean landscape in a discussion. Nobody would say I'm going to the countryside. Even that Larousse definition reinforces that and says that same thing, that countryside is paysage when it means landscape or scenery.<BR><BR>I don't understand what patrimoine has to do with this discussion, though, as it means heritage in relation to a country.

Know wonder we're having trouble with Franch.... LOL