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On 7/2/06 21:06, in article

, “Emery
Davis” wrote:

Perhaps they were speaking Thai. However, they ended up going to a similar
establishment in London, when the family moved back, and doing the
International Baccalauréat.
—
Sacha

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Emery Davis wrote:

Starzky et Ootch — so after

several weeks I was equipped to commit a hold-up:
“Haut les mains!” Or to do police work, I suppose. 🙂

:o)

When I first discovered the true names of the american/english films I

watch as a kid, it amused me how silly the translations where. For

examples, ‘Charlie’s Angels’ being ‘Drole De Dames’ and ‘The Avengers’

being ‘Chapeau Melon et Bottes de Cuir’. You’d think they’d have found

something snappier!

On the subject of silly mistakes made in a second language,
(snip)

My husband at an early stage of his French progress, not only found

kissing my uncle a very difficult thing to do but came up once by

saying ‘laissez moi vous introduire …’ for saying ‘let me introduce

you’. Many followed, but like jokes, I forget.

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Nick Maclaren wrote:

[…]

As I said, French is very hard for many/most Germanic speakers,
because it depends on acoustic features that are essentially
unused in those languages.

You may not know that the recognition of basic ‘objects’ (i.e.

shape, pattern and colour for sight, and sounds as in vowels,
consonants, animal noises etc.) is largely genetic and developed
before birth for sight (and is common to almost all humans), but
is learnt after birth for sounds (and is NOT common to all people).
But it is so.

In particular, if you have not learnt to hear certain sounds by

the age of 5 or so, you probably never will – even if you have
an early hearing problem that is later corrected.

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Many people have a better talent for

mimicry _and_ picking out sounds than they necessarily recognise. I’d

never discourage an adult learner on those grounds. Among commoner

European languages, I absolutely agree that French is the toughie. But

it can be done. French vowels are a bloody sight easier than Polish

consonants!

I started French only medium-early, at nine, under a retired colonel

whose Hindi-Urdu was pretty shit-hot as far as we could judge, but whose

Latin accent was totally un-Romance, and whose French accent fell a long

way short, as I later discovered when I moved on to better-qualified

teachers at thirteen. But when I gained fluency as a young man,

non-French people thought I was French, and the French couldn’t quite

place me, usually plumping for Belgian: that’s a perfectly achievable

and honorable target.

—

Mike.

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In article ,

Mike Lyle wrote:

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Many people have a better talent for

mimicry _and_ picking out sounds than they necessarily recognise. I’d
never discourage an adult learner on those grounds. Among commoner
European languages, I absolutely agree that French is the toughie. But
it can be done. French vowels are a bloody sight easier than Polish
consonants!

I know a lot of people who find the converse is true – the difficulty

of Polish consonants is usually overstated.

I started French only medium-early, at nine, under a retired colonel
whose Hindi-Urdu was pretty shit-hot as far as we could judge, but whose
Latin accent was totally un-Romance, and whose French accent fell a long
way short, as I later discovered when I moved on to better-qualified
teachers at thirteen. But when I gained fluency as a young man,
non-French people thought I was French, and the French couldn’t quite
place me, usually plumping for Belgian: that’s a perfectly achievable
and honorable target.
It’s not achievable for a higher proportion of the population than

you realise – and is certainly not for me.

The only time that I have ever been taken for a French speaker was

by an old Breton woman – and that was a long time ago. Neither of

us was at all happy in our only common language 🙂

Regards,

Nick Maclaren.

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The message

from “Mike Lyle” contains these words:

I started French only medium-early, at nine, under a retired colonel
whose Hindi-Urdu was pretty shit-hot as far as we could judge, but whose
Latin accent was totally un-Romance, and whose French accent fell a long
way short, as I later discovered when I moved on to better-qualified
teachers at thirteen.
LOL. We had a French teacher who, even beginners couldn’t help

noticing, spoke French with a very heavy Welsh accent.

Janet

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Nick Maclaren wrote:

I know a lot of people who find the converse is true – the difficulty
of Polish consonants is usually overstated.

I started French only medium-early, at nine, under a retired colonel
whose Hindi-Urdu was pretty shit-hot as far as we could judge, but whose
Latin accent was totally un-Romance, and whose French accent fell a long
way short, as I later discovered when I moved on to better-qualified
teachers at thirteen. But when I gained fluency as a young man,
non-French people thought I was French, and the French couldn’t quite
place me, usually plumping for Belgian: that’s a perfectly achievable
and honorable target.

What is interesting is that I can repeat Chinese words perfectly well

because the French sounds already have ‘en’, ‘on’, ‘ai’, ‘eu’ and I

sometime wonder if I could learn it. The idea of a new alphabet,

culture etc. is attracting. However, I cannot do German.

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The message . com

from “La Puce” contains these words:

Je suis que Je suis, mai Je ne suis pas que Je suis.
Je suis CE que je suis, mais je ne suis pas CE que je NE suis pas. If
that’s what you want to say :o))
Not as I was taught it as I remember (though it was dredged-up from

around 1954) – the donkey-driver’s tag-line.

(I am what I am, but I’m not what I follow)

—

Rusty

Direct reply to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co period uk

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The message . com

from “La Puce” contains these words:

/coup de ciseaux/

I was so surprised to learn last Friday at the parents evening, that my
son’s French GCSE oral is basically French sentences thrown at him and
he only has to say *in English* what it means. He, like his father, his
dyslexic, and cannot write to save his life, but mumbles behind his
long hair some French ‘deep-end approach a la Rusty’ I’d imagine, and
get away with it anywhere in France with the other teens he encounters.
My other son is different. He is very like me, wants to know it all,
well, the way it should be, properly, entirely, clearly, in your face
and right now. Good lad :o)
I had to hold a conversation with one of the examiners (IIRC there were

three of them) and describe a picture in words.

J’ai forgottenai most de it maintenant innit.
Mind you, if my memory is at all elastic, it’ll come back on the rebound.

Never mind. If we happen to descend to Jenny’s house one of these days,
I’ll hold your hand across the channel, don’t worry.
Ah – booze-cruise with an ulterior motive?

—

Rusty

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The message

from Emery Davis contains these words:

I’m not sure which lycée
Lyc (Capital A-dieresis/copyright) e

Surely you mean Lycée?

—

Rusty

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The message

from Sacha contains these words:

Ray said he had someone working for him who was from Suffolk and he used to
say of the Norfolkians “‘e’s so thick ‘e doan know its rainin’ ’til ‘e sees
it splashin’ on the duckpond” 😉
Yiss, they dun’t call it Silly Suffolk for nuthin’.

—

Rusty

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The message .com

from “La Puce” contains these words:

Nick Maclaren wrote:

I know a lot of people who find the converse is true – the difficulty
of Polish consonants is usually overstated.

I started French only medium-early, at nine, under a retired colonel
whose Hindi-Urdu was pretty shit-hot as far as we could judge, but whose
Latin accent was totally un-Romance, and whose French accent fell a long
way short, as I later discovered when I moved on to better-qualified
teachers at thirteen. But when I gained fluency as a young man,
non-French people thought I was French, and the French couldn’t quite
place me, usually plumping for Belgian: that’s a perfectly achievable
and honorable target.
What is interesting is that I can repeat Chinese words perfectly well
because the French sounds already have ‘en’, ‘on’, ‘ai’, ‘eu’ and I
sometime wonder if I could learn it. The idea of a new alphabet,
culture etc. is attracting. However, I cannot do German.
I spent a whole mealtime once trying to pronounce ‘iolaire’ to the

satisfaction of my host.

A Gaelic word, it means ‘eagle’, and is pronounced something like ‘eeel-ugth’.

—

Rusty

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In message , Rusty Hinge

2 writes

A Gaelic word, it means ‘eagle’, and is pronounced something like

‘eeel-ugth’.

I’ve never been quite certain whether Gaelic orthography is even more

baroque that English, or whether it’s just different.

—

Stewart Robert Hinsley

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The message

from Stewart Robert Hinsley contains these words:

In message , Rusty Hinge
2 writes

A Gaelic word, it means ‘eagle’, and is pronounced something like

‘eeel-ugth’.

I’ve never been quite certain whether Gaelic orthography is even more
baroque that English, or whether it’s just different.

It’s certainly ‘different’.

Aspirated letters at the beginning of a word tend to take a ‘V’ sound –

Bh***, Mh*** etc and in the middle or end it usually disappears

completely, as in bithidh – pronounced (more-or-less) as the English

‘be’ and ceilidh – cay-ley.

The rules are really quite rigid within the bounds of local dialect, and

various combinations of letters always (AFAIK) indicate the same sound –

none of this ‘plough, enough, cough, dough’ etc. as in English.

‘C’ is always hard, and there is no H, J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y or Z.

However, as Macalpine says under ‘H’:

H, h, This letter is not acknowledged in our alphabet; but to keep the

Gaelic in character with us, the Highlanders, who are THE BRAVEST and

/most singular/ people in the WHOLE WORLD, (as the Scots Times says,) it

is used, not only in every word, but in almost every syllable expressed

or understood.

HTH

—

Rusty

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In article ,

Rusty Hinge 2 wrote:

The message
from Stewart Robert Hinsley contains these words:
In message , Rusty Hinge
2 writes

A Gaelic word, it means ‘eagle’, and is pronounced something like

‘eeel-ugth’.

I’ve never been quite certain whether Gaelic orthography is even more
baroque that English, or whether it’s just different.

It’s certainly ‘different’.

It’s also (in the case of Scottish Gaelic) a modern invention, and

reflects the views of the inventors as much as anything. There

was no written tradition of consequence before 2-300 years ago.

That was not the case in Ireland, of course.

The rules are really quite rigid within the bounds of local dialect, and
various combinations of letters always (AFAIK) indicate the same sound –
none of this ‘plough, enough, cough, dough’ etc. as in English.
That is generally a sign of an artificial orthography. Natural ones

tend to have more inconsistencies.

One can speculate why English became as bizarre as it is, but the

Victorian dogmatism was only the culmination of a formalisation of

inchoate conventions. It was already half-formalised (and wildly

inconsistent) in Shakespeare’s day.

Regards,

Nick Maclaren.

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Having an old car with an old car radio I can drive around Southern

wallpaper.

Sometimes I can even understand some of it !

Phil Slade.

I googled SussexGardener