Les départements

Since 1790, France has been divided into 95 and four overseas départements. Each is run by its own local council, the "conseil général", which has its headquarters in the principal town ("le chef-lieu du département"). Every département has a code number which appears as the first two figures of postcodes and the last two figures on vehicle registration plates..

 La bibliothèque nationale

The "BN", as it is popularly known, was founded in 1537 by Francis Situated in the rue de Richelieu in Paris, it is a copyright deposit library holding important historic collections of printed and manuscript material. The building has become too small to house the collections adequately, and most of its material has been transferred to the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand in the south-east of the city.

 Les "beauf"

The word beauf is an abbreviation of is a pejorative and humorous term used to refer to stereotypical ordinary Frenchmen who are perceived as being somewhat vulgar, narrow-minded and chauvinistic.

Les  ".grandes écoles"

The grandes écoles are competitive-entrance establishments where engineering, business administration and other subjects are taught to a very high standard. The most prestigious include "l'École Polytechnique" (engineering), the three "Écoles normales supérieures" (humanities), "l'ENA" (the civil service college), and "HEC" (business administration).

Pupils prepare for entrance to the grandes écoles after their "baccalauréat" in two years of "classes préparatoires" (nicknamed "hypokhâgne" and "khâgne" for humanities and "hypotaupe" and "taupe" for science).

Les DOM-TOM

Les départements d'outre-mer et les territoires d'outre-mer

There are four "Départements Réunion and French Guyana ("Guyane"). They are run in the same way as metropolitan "départements" and their inhabitants are French citizens.

The "Territoires d'outre-mer" include French Polynesia, Wallis-and-Futuna, New Caledonia and polar territories. They are independent, but each is supervised by a representative of the French government.

La langue d'oc et la langue d'oil

The terms langue d'oc (also called "occitan") and langue refer to the local languages and dialects spoken in the southern and northern half of France respectively."Oc" and "oïl" mean "yes" in southern and northern dialects respectively.