Language….

[Widge]

If you do misgender a word in French, what's the worst that can happen then ?

Some can be obvious, for instance bread is masculin so le, otherwise it would be a rabbit

 

[Graydo]

I love it when she asks for some peanuts….. it sounds just like “ penis ”….

Ha ha,
could be embarrassing on the plane.

Graydo

 

[Graydo]

They say portugese is the hardest language to learn, my old French teacher said masculine or feminine was decided not by the object in question but by the person talking about it.
I dont speak Portugese.

Graydo

 

[meanders]

I'm obviously bi-lingual, English and rubbish.

In which case I am trilingual. Fluent in English, Double Dutch and Foul.

 

[Barriesimpson]

Apparently coc au van isn't sex in a camper

Who knew

But it can become that if the preparation of the dish was perfect and the wine exquisite.....

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[yodeli]

I was flummoxed as to the French for ‘you’ - ‘vous’and ‘tu’. I asked yodeli Frankie what the difference was. She said one was used when you had got to know someone well enough to be familiar.

My next question was - when do you know when the changeover occurs?

I think I remember Frankie saying that she had never felt able to call her mother in law by the informal ‘you’.

Now for me, that poses a problem. I am a mother in law (not really -Covid robbed us of the wedding), but if our Catie referred to me as ‘vous’ instead of ‘tu’ every time we met, I would feel hurt. Also if I referred to her as ‘tu’, would she feel affronted, being that she referred to me as ‘vous’.

It’s all so complicated - I think that’s why the preferred global language is English

Just in passing - who gets to decide if ‘new’ words are feminine or masculine?

‘Internet’ and ‘wifi’ are masculine - who decided that to be the case?

It’s all too complicated for me - but as long as we holiday in Beni we’ll be fine.

When we went to Corfu, I really tried to speak as much Greek as I could, only to be told by Tomas, the taverna owner ‘why you speak Greek - no need here - we all speak English’

Will say more on the mater in a future post. A tad busy right now!

 

[ChrisL]

Will say more on the mater in a future post. A tad busy right now!

Can you also explain why the difference in the verb following vous and tu, eg. Vous mangez, tu manges if you have the time please