Pages with French IPA

Jean Robic (pronounced [ʒɑ̃ ʁɔ.bik]; 10 June 1921 – 6 October 1980) was a French road racing cyclist who won the 1947 Tour de France. Robic was a professional cyclist from 1943 to 1961. His diminutive stature (1.61m, 60 kg) and appearance was encapsulated in his nickname Biquet (Kid goat). For faster, gravity-assisted descents, he collected drinking bottles ballasted with lead or mercury at the summits of mountain climbs and "cols". After fracturing his skull in 1944 he always wore a trademark leather crash helmet.

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry, known simply as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (UK: , US: , French: [ɑ̃twan də sɛ̃t‿ɛɡzypeʁi]; 29 June 1900 – 31 July 1944), was a French writer, poet, journalist and pioneering aviator. He received several prestigious literary awards for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight (Vol de nuit). They were translated into many languages.
Saint-Exupéry was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, working airmail routes in Europe, Africa, and South America. He joined the French Air Force at the start of the war, flying reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940. After being demobilised by the French Air Force, he travelled to the United States to help persuade its government to enter the war against Nazi Germany.

Saint-Exupéry spent 28 months in the United States of America, during which he wrote three of his most important works, then joined the Free French Air Force in North Africa, even though he was far past the maximum age for such pilots and in declining health. He disappeared and is believed to have died while on a reconnaissance mission from the French island of Corsica over the Mediterranean on 31 July 1944. Although the wreckage of his plane was discovered off the coast of Marseille in 2000, the ultimate cause of the crash remains unknown.

René François Ghislain Magritte (French: [ʁəne fʁɑ̃swa ɡilɛ̃ maɡʁit]; 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature and boundaries of reality and representation. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.

Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961), better known by the pen name Louis-Ferdinand Céline ( say-LEEN, French: [lwi fɛʁdinɑ̃ selin] ), was a French novelist, polemicist, and physician. His first novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932) won the Prix Renaudot but divided critics due to the author's pessimistic depiction of the human condition and his writing style based on working-class speech. In subsequent novels such as Death on the Installment Plan (1936), Guignol's Band (1944) and Castle to Castle (1957) Céline further developed an innovative and distinctive literary style. Maurice Nadeau wrote: "What Joyce did for the English language...what the surrealists attempted to do for the French language, Céline achieved effortlessly and on a vast scale."From 1937 Céline wrote a series of antisemitic polemical works in which he advocated a military alliance with Nazi Germany. He continued to publicly espouse antisemitic views during the German occupation of France, and after the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944, he fled to Germany and then Denmark where he lived in exile. He was convicted of collaboration by a French court in 1951 but was pardoned by a military tribunal soon after. He returned to France where he resumed his careers as a doctor and author. Céline is widely considered to be one of the greatest French novelists of the 20th century but remains a controversial figure in France due to his antisemitism and activities during the Second World War.

Édouard Daladier (French: [edwaʁ daladje]; 18 June 1884 – 10 October 1970) was a French Radical-Socialist (centre-left) politician, and the Prime Minister of France who signed the Munich Agreement before the outbreak of World War II.
Daladier was born in Carpentras and began his political career before World War I. During the war, he fought on the Western Front and was decorated for his service. After the war, he became a leading figure in the Radical Party and Prime Minister in 1933 and 1934. Daladier was Minister of Defence from 1936 to 1940 and Prime Minister again in 1938. As head of government, he expanded the French welfare state in 1939.
Along with Neville Chamberlain, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Daladier signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, which gave Nazi Germany control over the Sudetenland. After Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. During the Phoney War, France's failure to aid Finland against the Soviet Union's invasion during the Winter War led to Daladier's resignation on 21 March 1940 and his replacement by Paul Reynaud. Daladier remained Minister of Defence until 19 May, when Reynaud took over the portfolio personally after the French defeat at Sedan.
After the Fall of France, Daladier was tried for treason by the Vichy government during the Riom Trial and imprisoned first in Fort du Portalet, then in Buchenwald concentration camp, and finally in Itter Castle. After the Battle of Castle Itter, Daladier resumed his political career as a member of the French Chamber of Deputies from 1946 to 1958. He died in Paris in 1970.

Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (French: [ɛdɡaʁ viktɔʁ aʃil ʃaʁl vaʁɛz]; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coined the term "organized sound" in reference to his own musical aesthetic. Varèse's conception of music reflected his vision of "sound as living matter" and of "musical space as open rather than bounded". He conceived the elements of his music in terms of "sound-masses", likening their organization to the natural phenomenon of crystallization. Varèse thought that "to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise", and he posed the question, "what is music but organized noises?"Although his complete surviving works only last about three hours, he has been recognised as an influence by several major composers of the late 20th century. Varèse saw potential in using electronic media for sound production, and his use of new instruments and electronic resources led to his being known as the "Father of Electronic Music" whilst Henry Miller described him as "The stratospheric Colossus of Sound".Varèse actively promoted performances of works by other 20th-century composers and founded the International Composers' Guild in 1921 and the Pan-American Association of Composers in 1926.

Maurice Blondel (French: [blɔ̃dɛl]; 2 November 1861 – 4 June 1949) was a French philosopher, whose most influential works, notably L'Action, aimed at establishing the correct relationship between autonomous philosophical reasoning and Christian belief.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləɱ‿vɑŋ‿ˈɣɔx] ; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold, symbolic colours, and dramatic, impulsive and highly expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Only one of his paintings was known by name to have been sold during his lifetime. Van Gogh became famous after his suicide at age 37, which followed years of poverty and mental illness.
Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet and thoughtful, but showed signs of mental instability. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a missionary in southern Belgium. Later he drifted into ill-health and solitude. He was keenly aware of modernist trends in art and, while back with his parents, took up painting in 1881. His younger brother, Theo, supported him financially, and the two of them kept up a long correspondence by letter.
Van Gogh's early works consisted of mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the artistic avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were seeking new paths beyond Impressionism. Frustrated in Paris and inspired by a growing spirit of artistic change and collaboration, in February 1888, Van Gogh moved to Arles in southern France, to establish an artistic retreat and commune. Once there, Van Gogh's art changed. His paintings grew brighter and he turned his attention to the natural world, depicting local olive groves, wheat fields and sunflowers. Van Gogh invited Gauguin to join him in Arles and eagerly anticipated Gauguin's arrival in the fall of 1888.
Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions. Though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression persisted, and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.
Van Gogh's art gained critical recognition after his death and his life story captured the public imagination as an emblem of misunderstood genius, due in large part to the efforts of his widowed sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. His bold use of color, expressive line and thick application of paint inspired avant garde artistic groups like the Fauves and German Expressionists in the early 20th century. Van Gogh's work gained widespread critical and commercial success in the following decades, and he has become a lasting icon of the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.

Antoine Henri Becquerel (; French pronunciation: [ɑ̃twan ɑ̃ʁi bɛkʁɛl]; 15 December 1852 – 25 August 1908) was a French engineer, physicist, Nobel laureate, and the first person to discover radioactivity. For work in this field he, along with Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie, received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics. The SI unit for radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq), is named after him.

Bernadette Soubirous (; French: [bɛʁnadɛt subiʁu]; Occitan: Bernadeta Sobirós [beɾnaˈðetɔ suβiˈɾus]; 7 January 1844 – 16 April 1879), also known as Bernadette of Lourdes, was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes (Lorda in Occitan), in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in France, and is best known for experiencing apparitions of a "young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto. These apparitions occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858, and the woman who appeared to her identified herself as the "Immaculate Conception".
After a canonical investigation, Soubirous's reports were eventually declared "worthy of belief" on 18 February 1862, and the Marian apparition became known as Our Lady of Lourdes. In 1866, Soubirous joined the Sisters of Charity of Nevers at their convent in Nevers where she spent the last years of her life. Her body is said by the Catholic Church to remain internally incorrupt. The grotto where the apparitions occurred later went on to become a major pilgrimage site and Marian shrine known as the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, attracting around five million pilgrims of all denominations each year.
Pope Pius XI beatified Bernadette Soubirous on 14 June 1925 and canonized her on 8 December 1933. Her feast day, initially specified as 18 February – the day Mary promised to make her happy, not in this life, but in the other – is now observed in most places on the date of her death, 16 April.