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It’s raining lightly.

  • Writer: Flight Attendant Phrases
    Flight Attendant Phrases
  • Jun 30, 2019
  • 1 min read

English: It’s raining lightly.

French: Il pleut légèrement.


Sometimes, your pilots may specify that it’s raining lightly, or that it’s snowing lightly. Whether it’s raining lightly or not so lightly isn’t horribly important to most passengers and we often don’t even translate “lightly”, simply opting instead for just “rain” or “snow”, without specifying how light or heavy it is.


Previously, we saw “turbulences légères” “light turbulence”. (Usually singular in English, plural in French).


If you wish to translate “raining lightly” or “snowing lightly”, you can add on “légèrement” “lightly”.


Léger/Légère=Light (not heavy)

Légèrement=Lightly

Il pleut légèrement=It’s raining lightly

Il neige légèrement=It’s snowing lightly

Want to learn to speak the French you need to work as a flight attendant? Learn even more with Canadian French for Flight Attendants.


Seoul, May 2019. Séoul, mai 2019. Namzan Park is in the heart of Seoul and situated on a mountain. Though certainly not as high as Bukhansan, I went to Namzan Park the day after I climbed Bukhansan. So...I opted to take the cable car up...and from the top, you get a great view of the city and can go up Seoul Tower if you wish.







It’s snowing.

  • Writer: Flight Attendant Phrases
    Flight Attendant Phrases
  • Jun 25, 2019
  • 1 min read

English: It’s snowing.

French: Il neige.


Flying in the winter months in Canada (and elsewhere in the world), this is one you'll need to translate fairly often.


As with “il pleut” “it’s raining”, we also have the analogous expression “il neige” “it's snowing.”


“Il” once again functions as the impersonal pronoun “it”. The verb is “neiger” “to snow” and conjugated with “il”, it becomes “il neige.” As mentioned in the previous post, you may instead hear the noun “pluie” (f) instead of “il pleut”. Similarly, the noun “snow” happens to be “neige” (f) as well, and you may hear the noun form more often than the verb form “il neige”, which can also sound a bit "textbooky", like “il pleut”. "Il neige" is still technically correct and fine to use.


Our Canadian French for Flight Attendants audio course opts for the more versatile noun form “neige”(f) for our snow-related translations.

Want to learn to speak the French you need to work as a flight attendant? Learn even more with Canadian French for Flight Attendants.


Seoul, May 2019. Séoul, mai 2019. Pictures from two Buddhist temples in Seoul: Bongeunsa and Jogyesa, the former featuring the large Buddha statue, and both beautifully decorated with colourful lanterns.



It’s raining.

  • Writer: Flight Attendant Phrases
    Flight Attendant Phrases
  • Jun 18, 2019
  • 3 min read

English: It’s raining.

French: Il pleut.


Your pilots might announce that it's raining at your destination.


“Il pleut” is the generic way to say that it’s raining, and is the way that most French courses will teach students how to say “it”s raining”. “Il” is usually the pronoun “He”, but in this context (and many other contexts in French), it’s known instead as an impersonal pronoun, translating better as “it”, as in “it is raining”.


“Pleut” is the conjugated form of the verb “pleuvoir” “to rain”.


“Il pleut” is technically correct, but is a little bit “textbooky”. As a learner though, it’s perfectly fine for you to use this.


To announce future arrival weather, you can say "il va pleuvoir" "it's going to rain".


In reality, you’ll hear many of your colleagues (and French weather forecasters) use the noun “rain” “pluie” (f).


Our Canadian French for Flight Attendants audio course also opts for “pluie” as we can use it easily without having to form full sentences, nor do we have to worry about conjugating it in the present tense and in the future tense.

Want to learn to speak the French you need to work as a flight attendant? Learn even more with Canadian French for Flight Attendants.


Seoul, May 2019. Séoul, mai 2019. This is a tour I booked from Seoul to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which serves as a buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea. Very interesting. Learned lots.


Some highlights:

-On the bus ride to the DMZ, guard posts and barbed-wire fences can be seen from the highway at certain points, and North Korean soil beyond the fence and the water.

-Imjingak is a memorial park and the last point before you enter the DMZ, where your passports are screened by South Korean soldiers. Peace monuments, statues representing people searching for family members during the Korean War, currently unused railway linking the North and the South.

-Dora Observatory. Rows of binoculars are set up on the top floor of this observatory, through which you can look at North Korea. There are small farmers' villages on both sides of the border within the DMZ. From the observatory, you can see Kijŏngdong, North Korea, widely regarded as a "propaganda village" by those outside North Korea. Buildings are painted bright colours, but only on sides visible from the South. Modern telescopes suggest that many buildings lack glass windows and even floors. It's believed that the people seen there are soldiers in disguise, taking care of the city, in order to preserve the illusion of activity and life. (Source: Wikipedia-Peace Village North Korea)

-The Third Tunnel is a tunnel dug by the North under the DMZ in order to invade the South, as surface invasions are hindered by tight security and tons of active land mines still remaining in the ground from the war. It's the third tunnel (out of four) that has been discovered by the South, thanks to a defector. (The North denies digging them). Your allowed to go in the tunnel, which is very deep and very long, but pictures are not allowed inside.

-Dorasan Station. In the future, when there's peace in the Korean Peninsula, this station hopes to be the link between South Korea and North Korea, and in turn, the rest of Asia, Europe, and onward.



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