crisps is another one, never had a student or stagiaire yet who can pronounce the sps at the end ;-)
I get that one too Brian and you would have thought that would be a very difficult one for the French to pronounce if it were a real word.
My OH has never got certain things in English. One examples is clothes, for which she says clotheses. My very posh spoken younger one has picked that up and I am treated as the odd one out!
The cross channel sheep will be leaving at.... :-D
ship and sheep too but more boring, my OH can't pronounce them either - I found that out last time we went to the uk!
My mrs always pronounces innappropriately b1tch and beach, sh1t and sheet. She also announced recently that she was listening to "saoul" (soul) music.
I can only assume she was listening to one of Winey Alehouse's final concerts.
I never got past bare basics, but when I was working in the Andes their language Quechau had no articles as I found out. Root nouns with suffixes also made things like going to, having, doing or being very easy. Oh for such a language, I promise I'd work hard and learn it this time round.
they're both words that need to be used with care, Sandra, as chienne has the same meanings in French as in English bitch and bitch :-O
So, Andrew, you don't use la chatte, but one can use la chienne, n'est-ce pas?
Guy, you missed the exagerated point I was making about Mädchen, but yes too all diminutives, simply looking at it from another language point of view and then what it should etymologically be 'die Magd' then comes out feminine... But yes, living, spoken language is what real language is.
Brian: das Madchen - it's because of the diminutive 'chen' that it becomes neutral. All such diminutives in German (and in Dutch) become neutral.
About the Academie: there was a programme we watched lately about dialects and languages throughout France (on the Beeb, I think it was) - fascinating.At the end, they featured an old chap from the AF who was scathing about dialects and those odd languages - everyone should speak proper AC French! Doesn't he understand that it's in the spoken language, dialects etc that a language is alive? But then, that's not what they want, is it?
About different dialects from place to place: I grew up in Flanders, where that is exactly so - although probably less now with tv etc. My parents came from two villages either side of a small town, and spoke a similar dialect but with very obvious differences, mainly in sounds of vowels, but also the odd word.
Ha ha ha - yes my Brian wasn't working at that moment, nice one Brain! only teasing ;-)
I suppose having been bi-lingual from the time I acquired language and having learned others since I should be over the mysteries by now. But no sirree. Then there is a being on half cock thing that Andrew mentions. Steve's 'le' I have had too working out why 'der Knabe' or 'der Junge' (both 'the boy', masculine noun) then 'das Mädchen' (' the girl' neutral noun). Why? I've looked at grammar, etymology and other possible clues. I am still frustrated. Then we have just over 6,900 living languages in use in just under 200 countries on this planet. Does that not imply that with an average of 345 or so languages per country it gets a bit 'overcrowded' sometimes. I know that there are countries such as India with on the way to 1000 who have hindi and English as the official languages - what about the rest, do they all have one or the other or both and so why don't they get rid of the rest? I do not advocate that, but I just want to ask it because... So, is French that funny?
PS, Andrew a couple of posts down - look through carefully and then extract me from your head, it is getting a bit cramped in here!
As a fle teacher I sympathise with you - there are some good guidlines as I'm sure you know but when the brain's not working on full power...!
We asked our FLE teacher for some hints on which gender words might be.
So she writes on the blackboard le masculine et LE feminin. At which point I gave up.
the best being the occasional unknowing anglaise saying "est-ce que t'as vu ma chatte ?" :-O
I often use un pétasse rather than un torchon but I make no mistake about gender there!!!
Hilary, like you I've studied languages Italian anf french to degree level, then a masters degree in Français langue étrangère here at uni in France and the Gender thing is still a problem when I'm tired or the brian just doesn't want to work. What's interesting is watching my kids, 5 and 3, and their cousins who never have a problem with gender or making the right agreements etc - it's automatic, rather like us using the present continuous with some verbs but not others...!
@ Hilary - "Like" - very funny.
Thanks for the recommendation on the book (The Discovery of France by Graham Robb). I've just ordered it from Amazon. I have always been fascinated by languages, having studied French & German to A Level and then a degree in English Language (not Literature). I'm now a court translator (French/English) but am always learning.
I agree with Andrew's comments about the logic of gender in French. It's difficult enough remembering the gender of nouns, but why isn't there a rule that they can stick to? I mean it is "LA porte" and "LA monnaie", so why is it "LE porte-monnaie" ;)
And don't get me started on words that can be either la or le but mean different things (e.g. le poêle for stove or la poêle for frying pan). How come the French don't understand if you get the gender wrong? Especially if the context must be quite clear. I once mistakenly asked for a "timbre fiscal" in a Tabac for 'la greffe' rather than 'le greffe' and the buraliste made out like he didn't understand me. Really? Did he really think I needed the stamp for a transplant rather than to pay the court? lol
Nick - yes that was one of the main aims of the académie française, one of the best ways of unifying a people is often seen as having a unifying standard language. Conscription and supression of regional languages and dialects was also used in France as in Italy, where unification didn't happen until 1861 but linguistic unification took far far longer.
Ricky - the occitan here is different to the occitan spoken by my parents in law just the other side of the aveyron, which is different to that spoken in Albi and Toulouse...! the accent changes completly just the other side of the Lot valley once into the Cantal too and Shakespear would definitely have been re-written. Although the Italians did things the other way round almost going back to the classics of Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch who all wrote in the Florentine vernacular rather than latin and which then gave birth to modern Italian.
Christine - go for it, everything helps, just find what works for you ;-)