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Spanky’s Romulan 18 months of French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 songlines Pro Member Canada flickr.com/photos/cp Joined 5007 days ago 729 posts - 1056 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 119 01 July 2012 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Best of luck in your efforts, Spanky, and Happy Canada Day!
Numbers are tricky. (I don't know if this is apocryphal, but weren't suspected Allied spies in Europe during WW2 sometimes asked to do numerical calculations aloud..? - On the assumption that people doing it in their L2s would stumble/be much slower.) Things would be easier if all francophone countries adopted the Swiss and Belgian practice of using "septante", "octante, and "nonante". Edited by songlines on 01 July 2012 at 9:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5269 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 10 of 119 01 July 2012 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Just a quick note that in Canada "laisse faire" means the same thing and is much more common. Also "inquiète-toi pas" is more common than the grammatical form you quoted. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5754 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 11 of 119 04 July 2012 at 8:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Merci songlines et bonne fête du Canada to you (à toi? à vous? On peut se
tutoyer sur ìnternet?). I gave myself a special Canada Day present – j'ai attrapé une grippe. As I am the world’s biggest baby when I get sick, I failed to do anything elther productive or fun over the long weekend. Those mime lessons loom just a little larger today as a result….. About the septante/octante/nonante thing, given how long it took me to learn that 80 is, for the French, four twenties and 90 is four twenties accompanied by a sawbuck, I would be loathe to have to learn new terms. There are, however, lots of other things the French could do to make my life easier, like getting a better “r”. Speaking of apocryphal-sounding war/language stories, in chasing down more information relating to “laisse tomber”, I came across a reference to british troops bringing back to England from the first world war (and keeping for decades as a popular expression) a mispronunciation of ça ne fait rien, which came home as “san fairy Ann” (although I more than half suspect people just make stuff up when they post to the internet, so I can’t vouch for this). San Fairy Anne Edited by Spanky on 04 July 2012 at 6:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5754 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 12 of 119 04 July 2012 at 8:48am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Merci microsnout pour les renseignements. I gather both "laisse faire" and "inquiète-toi pas" are more of Canadian usage? Both Canadian and European aspects are of considerable interest for me, and I am interested in developing a facility with both, so this is very welcome information. I checked french.about.com, whose moderator is an American with I believe a strong bias toward France French, as well as wordreference.com (not sure of its background or orientation), and did not find those expressions, but instead a lot of repeated references to ne t’en fais pas, ne te fais pas de soucis, ne t’inquiète pas, ne t’en inquiète pas, t’inquiète et laisse tomber. My current go-to site, wordreference.com, almost uniformly suggested the phrases indicated above and could not even suggest an English translation for "inquiète-toi pas". However, in one thread, I noted the following exchange between contributors:
Incidently, Google translate (whose moderator is Skynet, with a very strong bias toward enslaving humans gradually by encouraging over-dependence on machines) was of no assistance at all: it translated "laisse faire" as "leaves do" and translated "laisse tomber" as "drops". Edited by Spanky on 04 July 2012 at 8:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5754 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 13 of 119 04 July 2012 at 8:57am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Okay, not related to French, but I need to vent and no one around my location will
listen to me anymore (part of the hazard of working out of a cramped remote research post in the far Arctic is that your human companions quickly learn to despise and then ignore you, and the polar bears feign interest in your excellent conversation just as a prelude to having you over involuntarily for dinner). My issue? I have been seeing, with disturbingly increased frequency, people using an apostrophe to incorrectly indicate pluralisation (ie. “there are seven bear’s outside, and one is wearing the hat Sven used to wear – you remember Sven, right?”) . This was my biggest language-related peeve until just now, when I saw on an internet site something even more egregious: someone using an apostrophe to very mistakenly mark conjugation (ie. “… the government extend’s a promise to give more hats to bears”). I am at my wit’s end over this. I’ll say this for free: for all their many faults, you will never see a bear misuse an apostrophe like this. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5269 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 14 of 119 04 July 2012 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thats right. For the Super Challenge so far I have watched 70 45 min and 120 22 min episodes of Québec TV shows and I have never heard "laisse tomber" but "laisse faire" is used practically every episode. Same with "inquiète-toi pas" which is grammatically incorrect and guaranteed to make French teachers cringe. There is also "Inquiétez-vous pas". In more formal speech (and always in writing) you will hear the grammatically correct forms however. The expression "ne t'en fais pas' in Québec is more often said "fais-toi-z-en pas" which as well as having the same grammatical error also has a 'z' sound (even though there is no 's') which made my friend who is a professor at Alliance Française wince. Watch also for the very common phrase "mets-en" (pronounced 'mézzan') which is a confirmation like "You bet" or "You said it". Edited by microsnout on 04 July 2012 at 4:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5754 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 15 of 119 04 July 2012 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Interesting, thanks microsnout.
I am pretty sure I have heard this often on various radio programmes, and have always up to this point filed it in my "Quadratic Equations" file (where I mentally store things that I cannot figure out and probably never will). It is now removed from the file. Edited by Spanky on 04 July 2012 at 7:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5754 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French | Message 16 of 119 05 July 2012 at 6:21am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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L'affaire du coffret
Episode 2 - Un vol dans le journal. Learned hein, euh et pfft. Edited by Spanky on 05 July 2012 at 6:22am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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