My lesson with my teacher N today was mostly conversation (tout en français, bien sur), and mostly what we discussed was the process of creating this website, www.monsieurmiller.com. Turns out I really don’t know how to pronounce the first syllable of monsieur. In general, my pronunciation is pretty terrible, but that’s an awkwardly beginner word for me not to have the correct pronunciation ingrained.
In the discussion, we talked over the nuances of construire, créer, and édifier, and decided that créer was the best word for the start of a new website. Overall good exercise of technical web vocabulary domaine, lien, site, enregistrer, navigateur, onglet, etc. Tried to articulate the difference between a page and a post, which is not clear to me even in English. N asked me whether I intended to make the site bilangue, which for the time being I am not. Once I get my feet under me I may try writing some all-French posts.
We spent a little time looking at the several idiomatic expressions using the word lieu, following this quiz from www.partajondelfdalf.com, a site I had not encountered before.
Other tidbits: the expression en avoir marre de keeps tripping me up, as I think of en as absorbing the final de as in “Essais d’ouvrir la porte” –> “J’en ai essayé.” But you need both the en and the de in that expression “Ma famille en a marre de m’écouter parler de la France.” and not “Ma famille a marre de m’écouter parler de la France.“