March 18, 2011

Slight disruption this weekend

There will be one or two momentary disruptions this weekend to the French Linguistics site as a few updates are installed (and tested, fixed and reinstalled... :-) Thank you for your patience!

New grammar section: French prepositions

Readers are invited to comment on an initial version of a new addition to the French grammar section of the site dealing with prepositions in French.

The prepositions are split into various sublists: "basic" prepositions, less common prepositions, rare/archaic and compound prepositions. As with much of the site, this section will be expanded in due course, and suggestions are always welcome.

March 10, 2011

Context-sensitive phrases enabled in the automatic trandslator

Those who have been using the automatic French translator may recall that some time ago, the translator included a "context-sensitive" feature offering a set of common phrases alongside the translation. For example, if you were asking the translator for what appeared to be the translation of a business letter, a list of common letter openings and closures would be included.

This feature had to be disabled a few months ago when a change was made to the translation system. However, it has now been re-enabled.

Any feedback and suggestions on this feature or any parts of the site are always welcome.

Suggestions for new French vocab/phrases

I am looking for suggestions for expanding the French vocab and phrases section of the web site. At the bottom of the page, I invite users to enter new topic suggestions.

Updates/corrections to French grammar articles

A number of updates and corrections have been made to the French grammar articles as a result of feedback that has been sent to me via the site. I am always grateful for such feedback, so if anyone spots any more typos, please feel free to let me know!

March 4, 2011

March 1, 2011

Currency Quoter tool

Users of the French Linguistics site may be interested in the Currency Quoter tool, of which an update was released today. The tool is designed for those who operate with different currencies and need to convert between them frequently, for example in order to quote prices to their clients in other currencies.

As well as converting amounts at the current exchange, the program allows you to view previous exchange rates and calculate currency exchanges at historic rates. It also includes a feature to display the likely range of values that a particular currency exchange will have in the future. This feature is designed to be useful when billing in a particular currency, to help decide how much the value billed will actually be worth when it is paid at the term of the invoice.