French learning English & vice versa

It's a lazy blogging, slapping up YouTube videos but I like to share ...

The first is a great sequence of Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau trying to learn English.

The second is from Friends. Phoebe trying to teach Joey to speak French.

The third is an advert for French lessons.

The last is a delightful young french woman telling us what NOT to say in French. I love it when she says "Don't do zat"

More False Friends

Some more of those french words that sound similar to english words but have a different meaning.

I think all newcomers to France trip up over the differeece between monnaie (change as in loose change or spare change) and money which is l'argent. Cash on the other hand is called liquid pronounced "leekeed".

Éventuellement in french implies "possibly" or "if need be" whereas eventually in english implies that something will occur, but at a later time.

This next one is a real pronunciation hassle:
In french a single s is pronounced as a z, and a double s as a soft, normal s. So when some English people pronounce dessert like "dez-urt" and desert like "dez-it" it causes mass confusion amongst the french.

These next few are a minefield:
baisser (pronounced with a soft s) means to lower.
baiser (pronounced with a z) is coarse, and means to fuck.
un bisou (pronounced with a z) or un bize is a kiss.
So, asking for a kiss, or trying to say "I kissed her" is fraught. If you're talking about kissing, use the verb embrasser to be safe, or use the noun, "je voudrais un bize" or "Vous ne me donnez pas un bisou?"

If using the verb baisser to mean "lower" pronounce it properly. Telling someone to hurry up and fuck the forklift doesn't help.


Lastly, your homework. practice these toung-twisters:
Une bien grosse grasse mère avec de biens beaux gros gras bras blancs

Des blancs pains, des bancs peints, des bains pleins

Trois gros rats gris dans trois gros trous ronds rongent trois gros croûtons ronds.

Un chasseur sachant chasser sait chasser sans son chien de chasse.

How English sounds

Over lunch and a few glasses of wine our friend Bernadette told us a phrase that the french reckon, if said quickly, sounds like English:

"Tes laitues naissent-elles? Yes! Mes laitues naissent!"*

So English must sound very sibalent to french ears.

Sge also gave us a phrase that they reckon sounds German, and I agree:

"Baisse ta gaine Berthe que je tate!"**

Said with the right rythm it comes out like "Bestagen bertke schtadt" (Which means nothing in German"

In the spirit of mock language I give you the Swedish chef



*Are your lettuces sprouting? Yes! My lettuces are sprouting.
**Drop your corset Berthe, so I can squeeze your tits.

Les Faux Amis

False Friends, is the phrase used by the French to describe english words that are similar to french words, but have a different meaning. They trip us all up.

Here are some of the false friends that I found troublesome.

Fixer in french means to fasten, not to repair. If you want something repaired you need it to be either 'depanné' or 'reparé'. Any mechanical object that is broken down is 'en panne', as opposed to 'cassé' which leans towards the sense of a broken object.

When eating, if you are full, you are not 'plein'. Petrol tanks can be 'plein' and in agricultural terms, any livestock that is pregnant is 'plein'. This is why english speaking women telling their hosts 'Je suis pleine' brings a smirk. You can rather say 'J'ai assez mangé' or 'Je cale'.

Here's a good one: 'expérience' in french means experiment, but if someone is 'experimenté' it means they are experienced!!

If you are out walking and you see a sign warning that the path is 'accidenté' it means that the path is uneven. Tho' that could lead to an accident after all.

If the French say that someone is being a 'comedian' they do not mean that they are being funny, only that they are acting. A comedian is a 'comique'

And to end this issue, (coz I've got tons of these) A few years ago, while I was still in the UK, I was talking to a french colleague on the phone. It was summer 2003, stinking hot. I said to him 'Mais vous avez le air-con chez vous?' assuming that trendy young french businessmen would use the english short version for air-conditioning. He explained that air conditioning is called 'climatisation' and that 'air' means 'to have the appearance of' and 'con' means 'bloody idiot', but stronger.

A bit like the Americans, we are divided by a common language.

A superb language resource

I give you the Le Grand Dictionnaire from the Office québécois de la langue française.

It is a very good technical French/English/Latin online dictionary. Technical terms and phrases.

Let's give it a whirl. I know many technical words in french that I learned in France. I don't know the English equivalents, because I learned everything about tile production here in France.

For example, the suspended trays that carry the tiles to the other part of the factory are called balancelles. The dictionary gives me "suspended tray conveyor" with the synonym "swing tray for overhead conveyor". Spot on, that's exactly what it is.

Last week, on the DTP press, a "goujon" was replaced by the mechanics and they put in the wrong sized "goujon" and as a result all the "bagues" on the "moules" were pushed out of place. Bagues is ring, of course, and moule is mould but "goujon"? The dictionary gives me "stud" with the explanation "A round, headless, bolt-like fastener with threads on both ends. One of its ends at least is intended for a nut." Exactly.

In the field of plumbing I come across "soupape" often. The dictionary defines it as a valve and gives an illustration of a tap and all its parts. I've also learned the the English for "bride" is "flange".

So, forget Google's language tools. before you go down to BricoDepot, or BatiLeClerc, or Brico Marché or whatever, find out the right technical term for what your looking for in Le Grand Dictionnaire

On a technical note, I leave you with the Two Ronnies classic - Fork Handles

Im in ur X Yin(g) ur Z

So, I was working a nightshift recently, and while I was stacking tiles on the balencelles I was whiling away the time thinking stupid thoughts. As I often do. My mind took me wandering and I ended up thinking about this deal where Eskimos have so many words for snow.

My first thoughts were "what's the big deal?" Off the top of my head I could think of lots of words for snow, and if I extended the boundaries to include words for frozen water then there were dozens. And then to top that, unlike polysynthetic languages, English has adjectives, with which we can modify the noun. So even if we only had one word for snow, ie: "snow" we could still say bright snow, wet snow, crispy snow, crunchy snow, crunchy white dry snow etc etc. And that beats polysynthetic languages hands down.

Anyway, it turns out to be myth anyway, because a. There is no 1 Eskimo language because there are many Eskimo peoples, and b. because their languages tend to be polysynthetic, they make words up by adding words together so the number of snow words is as unlimited as the number of noun/adjective combinations we can use.

But, researching this stuff brought me to a fascinating thing. It seems that because the Eskimo words for snow thing is such a cliche, it gets used often by journalists. As in the example "If Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, Germans have as many for bureaucracy." So often has this sentence structure been used that the google search "if eskimos" will bring up hundreds of examples, but, at the top of the list of search results will be studies and language logs on this very phenomenon, which has been dubbed a "Snowclone"

A snowclone is a type of formula-based cliché that uses an old idiom in a new context.[1] It was originally defined as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different jokey variants by lazy journalists and writers

Examples given in the Snowclone database are:
A few X short of a Y as in A few cards short of a deck, A few fries short of a Happy Meal.
have X will travel
I am X, hear me Y

What warms my heart is not only is this linguistic phenomenon catalogued and studied, but studied with a geeky seriousness.

I also love the way things link, and how the internet is both a tool for studying those links as well as beeing the cause and mover of much of the phenomenon in the first place. hence the title of this entry. I am never up to date with trends and fashions. I only discover stuff after it has passed on and is no longer cool. I found "all your base are belong to us" and LOLcats way too late.