I'm not learning French

Sorry Vic - my children are always telling me I'm autistic & I do rather tend to think that if I find something fascinating everyone does too (& also cross-examine other people about their obscure objects of fascination)! MEA CULPA

& I suspect the slightly pejorative French bot (suffix) is linked poss via butt in low German (meaning thick or coarse, presumably from the notion of 'more' which can go two ways, more = better & more = too much) so nabot, cabot, pied bot etc.

There's this use as well in Fitzgerald (Ruba'iyat, obv)

Ah, fill the Cup: -- What boots it to repeat

How time is slipping underneath our Feet.

Unborn TO-MORROW, and dead YESTERDAY,

Why fret about them if TO-DAY be sweet?

obv you can see 'what is more' is missing

I'd have thought to boot meaning would be from Anglo-Saxon via middle English ( cf modern German bieten = to offer), so the exact equivalent of 'qui plus est'. So there'll be a stem 'bot' or the like, with a long o.

I think I am guilty of misleading you.

When I said I had no idea where that expression came from I was referring to the "to boot" part of what I said.

I have since done a little research and I'm still confused. It appears to come from our anglo saxon heritage but appears to go way back to this possibly.

Turlututu means little flute or tin whistle type instrument & is/was used dismissively when people spoke nonsense. The expression goes back to the 16th C, when I suppose it sounded amusing - it occurs in a book of jolly japes (probably not remotely funny nowadays, obviously).

ps If anyone likes mediaeval jokes in English I've got Wynkyn De Worde's joke book here somewhere, it has me in stitches (yes I'm ashamed). Mediaeval jokes = fairly simple, scatological & blasphematory - ie terrible, but then I'll laugh at anything.

good points and very funny to boot......;o))

No idea where that expression comes from, answers please, on a postcard

Practise saying "turlututu chapeau pointu" a lot. One way of 'getting' u is to say eeeee then put your lips in the position for saying o. Magic!!

Move your mouth more - when I want my pupils to improve their accents in English, I tell them to imagine their upper lip is paralysed... and though it is hard for English speakers to differentiate u and ou, spare a thought for the poor foreign learners who can't hear the difference between short & long vowels (let alone say them) & confuse sheet and shit, beach and bitch etc.

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absolutely :)

Exactly! Thanks Mike!

Deborah,

"H" is always silent.
Don't pronounce a final consonant unless it is followed by "e". That's easy.

Pronouncing "e" with its various accents and especially "u" can be a struggle for English speakers........

Lis, thank you for your kind invitation. I may take you up on it sometime! Anytime you're in Uzes, please let me know so we can meet.

Oh dear Deborah...but on a very different note, when you fancy crossing the river, come over for a cup of tea, coffee or maybe something a bit stronger...you're c 1H15min away...I do come to 'your' market once in a while... :)

Lesson today was painful! Hope I get better before I keep getting worse. Vowel sounds are the big problem.. and all those words with silent letters on the end! This may be the death of me yet. Maybe I should just move to Spain. I think I could sharpen up on my Spanish rather than start all over again...

Now I understand where Harold Godwinson went wrong. They told him the holy relics were under the table and he replied "I see no relics" and swore an oath giving the Kingdom to the Bastard. Easy mistake to make.......

Lol......yeah, that's called sign language Vic, which incidentally I often see the french doing amongst themselves....something has gone badly wrong????

This is my frustration also. One such example I came across recently is "dessus" and "dessous"....one means over and the other beneath and they sound incredibly similar.......go figure????? ;o))

Ken, you are right on. And to make it worse, several different words are pronounced the same.

Deborah - I'm a little far away to help you in person, but lots of free resources available on my Youtube channel, including a full-length intermediate course - https://www.youtube.com/user/NewLanguageGuy/videos