I am starting to love French, and I am a bit alarmed

I mean, I always loved France, and the French are wonderful, but French...

Spanish is pretty well Latin.
Italin is beautiful.
English is useful.
Welsh is glorious.
German is unthinkable.

French is Latin overlaid with German in a most unhelpful way. All those vowels ! How could anyone think a language beautiful that contains from 3 to 6 nasal vowels depending on where you live, and the sound eux, them. It sounds like the noise you make when you see a molten slug in your lettuce.

but you do get to say some wonderful things.

My all time favourite was when a student (we'll call him Sam) got a letter whose certainty he doubted. As one man we said Si Sam, ça c'est sûr ! - see sam sa sé sûr... Then yesterday reflecting on the RCF broadcast C'est comme ça qu'on sème - sé com sa coñ sem.

"Yes, Sam, that's certain", and "That's how one sows"

Comments

Anonymous said…
The description for the line in between English and German should really be 'obsolescent'!

(Now you should get some replies to your posting).
11:12 pm
Alan said…
Correction - there's a guy in the church who is a real Bordelais and he doesn't do any nasal vowels at all. For example, he says the word "souffrance" as soofrans, with the france bit sounding just like a good mancunian would say it, nice and short and a bit hard...

I think his accent is very good on the ear, but it would NEVER do for a Brit to talk like that !
11:17 pm
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