I used to say I spoke English, Yiddish and Rubbish - but my Yiddish was non-existent!
Now I confess to speaking English and 'Foreign' to the confusion of all! If I can't find a French word I latch on to another from anywhere and pronounce it 'as if French'. Amazingly this works at least 40% of the time - which really does surprise me.
What I do love is the emphasis on grammar, about which I know practically zilch. I still get by and after reading the opening stanzas of an English Pocket Grammar for French (name withheld), and not having understood ONE single word or explanation which was apparently in English, I gave up.
Better to smile a lot, point, or do the old hand-signals routine. That also helps, and I have already mentioned the wonderful 'Gallic Shrug' which can cover just about every situation in French.
True Krister, however I would never try Finnish in such a discussion because our French friends usually wish to compare with Latin languages and line up Spanish and Italian immediately. It is why I said that German does not wash in that context.
Just before I went to bed last night, one of the group phoned me and asked if I could help him get his English back and then above school standard. His wife, he said, is not bad and can cope. Next year they intend to leave their children with grandparents and go to the USA in the summer and he wants to be able to understand at the very least and speak enough to get by. I shall have to brush up on some of it myself in order to get there, like the majority of people I stumble round blind corners and pick up the nearest, most convenient word instead of the correct one when speaking.
I have the impression that the verbs être, avoir, aller and faire are very irregular in most languages. Maybe because they are the most used. I know Swedish, Finnish, English, French and German
A language that definitely uses all letters is Finnish. It's written as it is pronounced, and pronounced as it is written. If you need a long vowel sound, you put two of them, like aamu (morning). Same for consonants: takki (coat, jacket)
Brilliant Brian. Simply sublime.
One of the best articles I’ve seen.
You vernacularly strike at the heart of the subject.
Well written.
Alastair, I meant every letter in the Italian written form. such as the alphabet. My wife with Italian mother tongue would kill me for the way I let you understand that. She has spent much time getting the g and gh to pass my lips correctly, which given how awful my little Italian is seems a lot of effort for not much ;-) So yes, absolutely spot on, they use 25 letters in a 25 letter alphabet. So too do Germans in their 27 letter alphabet (never forget ß is classed as a letter) but not being a Latinate language not one to use with the French guys.
Jacqueline, me too. 'Pension book year' this and my recollection of words that used to slip off my tongue is receding fast, but then for me it will be a choice of which one will still function sufficiently when gaga hits square on!
Hi Brian, what an interesting post, as a result, and speaking as complete language duffer, I can definitely say there has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about.
However on seeing Italian is a language that uses every letter., My pedant circuit kicked in, as I believe that Italians do not use the letter J. They only have a 25 letter alphabet ( although I am sure its true that they use all 25!)
Cheers
Alastair
I did English as two separate subjects for 'O' level, English literature and English language - gaining my only 'B' in English language. That was in 1982, the same year as I failed my French 'O' level - twice! Now I struggle to write correctly in either language.
Connor makes me feel very old. I spent years learning English grammar and took English language at 'O' level (which I passed!). It has really helped me with learning French. If I can't think of a word for something in French I go down the road of 'How would they say that' and sometimes it works. As I am at the point in my life where I am losing words all the time maybe my French vocabulary will soon catch up.
Conor, you are younger than me clearly. In my time, half past dinosaur, we had English grammar, usage and literature as three different subjects. I managed to fail 'O' level English four times and never resat but have Lit and other languages at 'O' and 'A'.
Didn't Beckett start by writing 'Mercier et Camier' in the late 1940s which Simone de Beauvoir slagged off as terrible French. He wrote 'Waiting for Godot' later and in English at that. The man was terribly full of blarney anyway, so benefit of the doubt.
I do the same checks as you, despite eddicashun and also mainly write for my supper and often blush when editors and proof readers' comments arrive.
Samuel Beckett said, I believe, that French is more precise than English and so wrote in the former.
Also I can't remember studying English grammar almost as a separate subject to the language itself, the way they do here in France with French, so that must mean that we have less of the stuff, or that it is learnt naturally.
As someone who writes professionally in English (I'm a translator), I very occasionally find myself wondering about grammar issues (which vs that, neither/nor, etc.), whereas in French if I'm writing a two-sentence email I find myself checking things just to make sure they're right.
Afterthought: if anybody has some good jokes about the French losing to Italy -- AGAIN!!! -- please share!
The 'inner core' is entirely 'outsiders', which is to say that all of these men (and their partners) come from other parts of France entirely. My Swiss OH and I were not the only ones putting children into the school from outside. The sport freak is the father of one girl's best friend, so that cemented that, and he is admired by other men for his sporting abilities. So we were 'in' inside the second school term after arriving. As for the coffee sessions, they are not so often anyway, but all of the men with regular jobs are very late, the self employed ones late too and I found the bit under half an hour easy to find anyway. But that is France and turning up on time for you.
As for the language, I already know that most of them want to have lessons from me but I have never taught languages so I am reluctant. I am a cheat in a way, not only my classics but an Italian speaking OH and her family naturally, plus having worked in Hispanic South America for many years myself and thanking my lucky stars for the torturous years of Latin... I don't, to be honest, know very much about the origins of English really, but having been bilingual in that and German for my whole life can usually guess that bit of it. Using somebody's tablet there at the café helped a lot too, plus the fact I kept the 'notes' I was compiling and could send them to myself to put the blog post together.
There's much more to life than sport, or at least I hope I proved that point!
Interesting conversation and also impressed that you've invited into the inner core, it took me 5 years to receive my first invitation to have a coffee with the girls at the school gate. It seems more of a habit of the men than women.
Interesting history of the origins of the English language, I need to brush up on that, I often have students tell me English is more difficult for them because they have more of an affinity for the Latin origin languages (meaning Spanish & Italian) and I protest that English has its origins there too - I need a better explanation as to why they perceive it not to be so.
Happy to have stumbled on your post via twitter. Bonne Continuation!