en finir

At last, perhaps? I saw it on an ad. Google translate says 'finish with the feet dry' so maybe it is more like finish (the day) with dry feet?

Composter

Composter translated by Google Translate
Automatic translation (English):ticket punch?
Original text (French):
billet a composter
...avant l'accèss au train. So that'd be get ticket punched before you get on the train?

And you'd say it like

poubelle

rubbish?

update: in fact recipient for rubbish (trashcan, rubbish/dust bin) and a family name?

risquer de

This is a bit literal but something like 'risk of getting', see tu risques de te faire pincer trés fort

And for more see http://www.wordreference.com/fren/risqu%C3%A9

pincer

something like pinch?
I like the construction 'tu risques de te faire'. And notice 'sur la porte' , wonder whether this is about putting your hand on the door or whether on, in, over are conceptualised differently in French?

craquants

So what is a craquant price?

Can only assume it is good : -), cracking and crunchy, though craquants videos on youtube imply some other uses (cute, tasty?) as does the wiktionnaire

And how do you say it? Like this - '' spl0uf

d'accord

Ok, so I know what d'accord means but I loved the way the ticket conductor went up and down the train saying nothing more than "d'accord" in various ways that suggested varying degrees of accord.
Me, I'm gonna model my pronunciation on this and try not to pick up too much creole(?) - yep I'm singing along ;-)

soyez prudents

be careful/prudent? Again an imperative and a road sign

serrez a gauche

something like keep left? Seen on the motorway approaching peage.

incivilité

l'incivilité n'a pas sa place. Incivility is of course uncommon in England ;-).

But what does the rest of the phrase mean? Is it a clever pun? ... has no place/seat?

update (14/04/10):
- Last night I requested a pronunciation on forvo and someone did it by the morning :-)
- When I updated this post in draft.blogger I noticed a 'define' option on the post editor toolbar, which gives (but interestingly this only works if you write it without the accent, err why?):

• Incivilité désigne un comportement qui ne respecte pas une partie ou l'ensemble des règles de vie en communauté telles que le respect d'autrui, la politesse ou la courtoisie.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incivilité
• Manque de civilité; Action ou parole contraire à la civilité
http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/incivilit%C3%A9
• incivilites - désagréments tels que le bruit, le chahut, le vandalisme, les injures, l’absence d’écoute qui alimentent un climat malsain dans la vie de l ...
http://www.mieuxvivre.espacedoc.net/index.php?id=595

chausse deforme

deformed road ;-)

bouchon

As in bouchon de quatre km dirrecion sud. Heard it on the radio and avoided it on the road, now that is a listening test. Kind of feel like bouchon must have other meanings too and it does; e.g. Tout ce qui obstrue un orifice, un conduit : Un bouchon de cérumen. Also reminds me of bouche as in mouth, related?

So, how do you say it? bouchon on forvo

beignets

Yum, motorway snack to help the coffee go down. So can mean doughnut and other similar stuff I guess. Try an image search.
Not sure how to pronounce, listen here www.forvo.com/search/beignet

baisse de la tva

baisse is something like go down? reminds me a little of bajar in Spanish. I guess tva is vat?

So VAT goes down and the price does too

a louer, a vendre

For let, for sale, as seen on apartments e.g. http://www.google.com/m/search?site=images&source=mog&hl=en&gl=uk&client=ms-android-google&q=a%20louer
Note it's a louer, a vendre

allumez vos feux

Noticed this on road signs outside tunnels. Love it because it makes me think 'light your fires', though presumably French speakers don't think that ;-)
Better translated as 'turn your lights on', perhaps?
Pron of feux: http://www.forvo.com/word/feux#fr
No pron of Allumer on forvo but follow the song link at the end of this post for a nice use.
Allumez is also I guess an example of imperative as with other road signs e.g. 'serrez a gauche'
A little research into uses of allumer suggests many other interesting ways it can be used including some more like the fire lighting associations I have from English, e.g. allume moi, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFgbMjKobI4

Hmmmm....

Well, what happened?

I did actually collect something like an average of 3 or 4 words or phrases a day (30 in 8 days) on the Nexus BUT I didn't blog them.

First thing is I found it very difficult to get wireless access on the Nexus at times when I could think, reflect and 'blog'. Basically, this is a technical/cost issue. I didn't want to be paying 'roaming' data costs and for one reason or another I couldn't connect to the various wireless networks available to me in the evening, after the kids were asleep, which is basically when I had time.

More, interestingly, I didn't feel an urgency to 'blog'. Usually I wanted more time to investigate meaning and try and build up my understanding or research pronunciation before posting my thoughts publicly. Now that I do have wireless and I'm less intensively being on holiday I will be trying to research a bit more the stuff I did add to my vocab list and eventually blogging it.

So, what worked? The reminders going off on the phone were quite useful little prompts to reflect on the language I had hears, seen or need and add it to the list BUT they often went off at the wrong times. This  partly because of the difficulty of predicting routine on holiday. Might have been helpful to set up a motion related filter (if moving probably not a good time to prompt to add something to the vocab list!).

Camera was really useful for capturing written language in signs and also the situations/settings associated with other language experiences. I also felt audio recording would have been helpful on many occasions but rarely had the nerve to ask people to repeat what they had said so I could catch it better, let alone ask whether I could record them ;-) Thinking about it though I could probably have made more use of the more competent French speaking friends and family that were often to hand and recorded them. Continuous passive audio capture would have been really useful for all those moments when I kind of got what was meant but couldn't remember or separate out all the words.

What would have been really useful for all those times I wanted to investigate the day's words and phrasesa little more ? Well, if I had had offline resources on the phone, at least a bilingual dictionary and something for pronunciation...

une poche

When struggling with carrying several bits and not using a plastic bag, the cashier asks 'you want a bag' or some such. I think he said 'voulez vous une '. My expectation is that a bag would be un sac, but maybe poche is also sometimes used to mean a small plastic bag?

dois-je

dois-je: I got an email "pour quel logement dois-je vous faire le contrat". So, I guess that's like "which lodging should I make the contract for?"

Pronounced as in: http://www.forvo.com/word/quand_dois-je_la_rendre_%3F#fr, something like when should I return it?

A few more examples: http://www.google.com/m?hl=en&gl=gb&client=ms-android-google&source=android-browser-key&q=dois-je

And a translation/discussion:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=908816

Do I understand it: maybe 2/5
Can I use it: perhaps 2/5

comme il faut

comme il faut: seems to mean something like 'as should be'?

It's spoken like this http://www.forvo.com/word/comme_il_faut

And there is some discussion of modern uses here: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1331743

And a translation and synonyms here: http://thesaurus.com/browse/comme+il+faut

I like this tango/song "comme il faut" (sung in Spanish - es como debe ser), think it helps me get the meaning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVBWvxfhPTc&feature=youtube_gdata

There also seems to be a more recent song with this title in English but I didn't like the lyrics