i know that when compared to the US it may as well be a socialist utopia but french politics are awful. france is one of the countries most responsible for imperialism and colonialism. france is one of the most systematically racist countries in europe, and that’s saying something!
Really it’s more that French politicians are properly accountable to the people, who will protest and strike frequently. That’s what makes French politics great, not the leaders but the citizens.
I don't know how much you know about France, and french politics specifically, but as a person born in France I want to tell you that you might have been mislead... From my point of view and with my knowledge, politics here is a shit show, basically the elite mock everyone, France is run by billionaires, happily oppressing the poor.
Ain't we all? But honestly I get so frustrated with seeing what they debate over and how everything is just done for profit and from what the politians can hoard most money from. I know it's joked about a lot but it just seems insane that Babiš can just use all these things for his own companies and profit.
I rather not watch politics at all just from memes and what I hear from others so I might not know everything but still just seems insane they can do these things.
Yeah, that's closer to the truth. Also, state education makes sure that we are at least aware of a certain few parts of our history, from executing our King and subsequently fighting off most of Europe to preserve the republic, to armed resistance when the Nazis occupied and the state capitulated, and finally De Gaul's staunch non-alignment (as far as Western former empires go). Not to mention that the biggest improvement in the collective safety net for our society was obtained thanks to an ostensibly leftist coalition in the 1930s.
So it's very much in our collective consciousness that we can protest, and that it's a pretty normal thing to do, all things considered.
More to your point, I don't know how many people here in France still expect protests to meaningfully obtain anything nowadays.
No, politicians don't give a shit about people striking. And the biggest haters of strikes are the citizens who don't like their life and privileges to be disturbed by people striking for their rights.
Wait until you hear the bastard child of French, germanic and a bunch of other languages. You can have a word like "lead" and you don't even know how to pronounce it!
In the end, it's all subjective but – if you'll hear me out – thogh doesn't alter the current spelling very much while maintaining a linguistic heritage (as the "thogh" spelling was also likewise used, during Middle English); also, the number of words ending in just the "o" vowel is less common, I feel, and will probably look doubly foreign to a native English speaker due to the consonant digraph (though, again, subjective; maybe not).
However, – additionally – saving "oght" for "thought" is giving that letter combination a sound already covered in English by another letter combination: "aught" (e.g. caught, fraught, taught, …thaught…?). If we're keeping "ogh" around, we might as well give it a unique pronunciation association to avoid the overlap that was the original problem with "ough".
Finally, a single "f" for "tough" could work (certainly, there are examples) but we miss out on employing the Germanic linguistic tendency to indicate a short vowel sound with a double consonant, inherited by words such as "ball", "fall", "doll", "call", or "puff" (of course, there's plenty of exceptions ("get", "bet", "mat", etc.) but, so long as we're making changes, firming up an existing rule (and avoiding the brief uncertainty of whether or not the reader is dealing with a prefix) would, arguably, be useful).
Actually, you're right, I didn't even think about it
If I wrote "I love to read, I read an interesting book every day", then the way you say the latter 'read' shifts from my original example, and it depends on context that comes later in the sentence
But the pronunciations are different word by word. French letter combos make the same sound even if they are not each pronounced the American away, which is nice as a French novice.
French does pronounce most of the letters, they just tend to drop the last one. Then there’s our “though” which is often shortened to “tho” with no consequence. English is not creative, either, most of the time the words were actually pronounced in a way that matches and time changed how we spoke them. That and we just kinda lifted the spelling of loan words but said them differently because whichever of our many accents at the time made it otherwise uncomfortable to say.
English needs a major spelling reform, but there's no way to actually implement one. In order to match spelling to pronunciation, you would be to have a well-defined "high English" pronunciation.
But any semblance of uniform pronunciation doesn't even exist within the UK (or even just England), much less across the entire English-speaking world, including places like Canada, Kenya, Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand, India, and many, many more countries.
And even if you somehow manage to create something (this is basically how "high German" was created, after all), good luck getting all the different governments to adopt the reformed spelling.
In French? Yea, it’s there it’s just called, some of the time anyway, an aspirated H. It’s also pretty rare and I’d be willing to bet that that is due to loan words.
(and why the fuck Mike and Nike aren’t pronounced similarly?)
Well "Mike" is a typical appreciation of the name Micheal of Hebrew origin that long predates the English language. "Nike" is Ancient Greek, which also predates the English Language. Nike is the name of the Greek god of victory. So neither one of those is English.
The single syllable "Nike" pronunciation was introducing in the late 1980s or early 1990s with the advertising campaign for "Nike Air" shoes. Sometimes pop culture name shortening sticks. Another example of this would be the brand Porsche has two syllables, but has been shortened by most to a single syllable name.
A better example might be "home" and "some", where only one letter is different, but the pronounciation is completely different. There are many words like these. English doesn't make sense at all.
The Concorde was just loud and cost more money to run, and in 27 years had only one fatal accident wherein a DC-10(American designed) left a piece of debris on the runway which ultimately kicked off the incident. It was a pretty good plane from my understanding.
If we’re calling out specifics, the Airbus is an incredibly successful plane.
I once heard from a friend learning French that the way to say that you are in the process of doing something literally translated to 'I am on the train to [doing the thing]'. Is that correct?
it would seem like that because the words are the same, but in the locution "en train de [verbe]", en train has the 15th century meaning of "in action", "in movement", this predates the invention of the railroad :)
originally, as a noun, "le train" comes from the latin word trahere "to pull". It's then use to describe a convoy of animals. Later its meaning evolved into the "the going motion" (of a horse, a human).
It's currently in that sense in "arrière-train" to designate the back legs of a quadruped. "Aller de bon train" = to walk briskly, or in automotive, the "train avant" and "train arrière" are the front and rear axles.
There are other expressions like "le train-train quotidien", meaning the daily grind.
Fun fact: countries consist of more than one city.
Additional information: there are cultural differences between different regions in the same country, even between different cities and towns in the same region! Imagine that!
But US tourists spend two days each in London, Paris, Prague and Rome, and then they've seen all of Europe. Isn't that how it works? Besides it's not as if they've got extra vacation days anyway.
Reparle de paris encore une seule fois batard et j'enverrai ta tête tellement loin qu'elle aura le temps de faire tout le tour de la dinguerie géologique et culturelle qu'est la France avant de retomber dans le Limousin où ta tête finira ses jours paisiblement entourée de jolies vaches.
have you seen french politics? like actually?
i know that when compared to the US it may as well be a socialist utopia but french politics are awful. france is one of the countries most responsible for imperialism and colonialism. france is one of the most systematically racist countries in europe, and that’s saying something!
Really it’s more that French politicians are properly accountable to the people, who will protest and strike frequently. That’s what makes French politics great, not the leaders but the citizens.
I don't know how much you know about France, and french politics specifically, but as a person born in France I want to tell you that you might have been mislead... From my point of view and with my knowledge, politics here is a shit show, basically the elite mock everyone, France is run by billionaires, happily oppressing the poor.
Ain't we all? But honestly I get so frustrated with seeing what they debate over and how everything is just done for profit and from what the politians can hoard most money from. I know it's joked about a lot but it just seems insane that Babiš can just use all these things for his own companies and profit. I rather not watch politics at all just from memes and what I hear from others so I might not know everything but still just seems insane they can do these things.
Yeah, that's closer to the truth. Also, state education makes sure that we are at least aware of a certain few parts of our history, from executing our King and subsequently fighting off most of Europe to preserve the republic, to armed resistance when the Nazis occupied and the state capitulated, and finally De Gaul's staunch non-alignment (as far as Western former empires go). Not to mention that the biggest improvement in the collective safety net for our society was obtained thanks to an ostensibly leftist coalition in the 1930s.
So it's very much in our collective consciousness that we can protest, and that it's a pretty normal thing to do, all things considered.
More to your point, I don't know how many people here in France still expect protests to meaningfully obtain anything nowadays.
No, politicians don't give a shit about people striking. And the biggest haters of strikes are the citizens who don't like their life and privileges to be disturbed by people striking for their rights.
Wait until you hear the bastard child of French, germanic and a bunch of other languages. You can have a word like "lead" and you don't even know how to pronounce it!
"Thogh thaughts are tuff," in a more blessèd timeline.
tho foghts are tuf
In the end, it's all subjective but – if you'll hear me out –
thoghdoesn't alter the current spelling very much while maintaining a linguistic heritage (as the "thogh" spelling was also likewise used, during Middle English); also, the number of words ending in just the "o" vowel is less common, I feel, and will probably look doubly foreign to a native English speaker due to the consonant digraph (though, again, subjective; maybe not).However, – additionally – saving "oght" for "thought" is giving that letter combination a sound already covered in English by another letter combination: "aught" (e.g. caught, fraught, taught, …thaught…?). If we're keeping "ogh" around, we might as well give it a unique pronunciation association to avoid the overlap that was the original problem with "ough".
Finally, a single "f" for "tough" could work (certainly, there are examples) but we miss out on employing the Germanic linguistic tendency to indicate a short vowel sound with a double consonant, inherited by words such as "ball", "fall", "doll", "call", or "puff" (of course, there's plenty of exceptions ("get", "bet", "mat", etc.) but, so long as we're making changes, firming up an existing rule (and avoiding the brief uncertainty of whether or not the reader is dealing with a prefix) would, arguably, be useful).
"I love to read, I read an interesting book yesterday"
Seriously, who came up with this shit 😭
Imagine you are reading this aloud, you can't know how to pronounce the second "read" until you get to "yesterday". Schrödingers pronunciation.
Actually, you're right, I didn't even think about it
If I wrote "I love to read, I read an interesting book every day", then the way you say the latter 'read' shifts from my original example, and it depends on context that comes later in the sentence
Wack
Clearly, the solution is to make your own writing system for English and then have noone use it so it just looks like weird gibberish to them
"Y lov tu réd, y red an intarestiŋ buk tüdá."
Uh, that is pronounced "lead". You're welcome.
For those illiterates who need a clear example, "lead lead lead." Simple geography.
As a Spanish speaker, I find it so ironic to see this meme in English...
English might be a bit- creative with the spellings of words but at least they pronounce most of the letters, not just half of them
But the pronunciations are different word by word. French letter combos make the same sound even if they are not each pronounced the American away, which is nice as a French novice.
French does pronounce most of the letters, they just tend to drop the last one. Then there’s our “though” which is often shortened to “tho” with no consequence. English is not creative, either, most of the time the words were actually pronounced in a way that matches and time changed how we spoke them. That and we just kinda lifted the spelling of loan words but said them differently because whichever of our many accents at the time made it otherwise uncomfortable to say.
English needs a major spelling reform, but there's no way to actually implement one. In order to match spelling to pronunciation, you would be to have a well-defined "high English" pronunciation.
But any semblance of uniform pronunciation doesn't even exist within the UK (or even just England), much less across the entire English-speaking world, including places like Canada, Kenya, Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand, India, and many, many more countries.
And even if you somehow manage to create something (this is basically how "high German" was created, after all), good luck getting all the different governments to adopt the reformed spelling.
also good luck basically upheaving the entire ESL world by making all the texbooks obsolete. would be pretty wild
The letter 'h' just entered the chat.
In French? Yea, it’s there it’s just called, some of the time anyway, an aspirated H. It’s also pretty rare and I’d be willing to bet that that is due to loan words.
Queue
(and why the fuck Mike and Nike aren't pronounced similarly?)
Well "Mike" is a typical appreciation of the name Micheal of Hebrew origin that long predates the English language. "Nike" is Ancient Greek, which also predates the English Language. Nike is the name of the Greek god of victory. So neither one of those is English.
It's like how you pronounce Hercules and molecules the same way
An Ancient Roman proper name derived from an Ancient Greek proper name Heracles, which is likely where we get our clues for modern pronunciation.
Thats a French word they built from a Latin base. Take it up with them on that one.
But why is pronounced "Nai-ki" and not "Ni-ke"? We here don't give a fuck a say "Nike" like Mike.
The single syllable "Nike" pronunciation was introducing in the late 1980s or early 1990s with the advertising campaign for "Nike Air" shoes. Sometimes pop culture name shortening sticks. Another example of this would be the brand Porsche has two syllables, but has been shortened by most to a single syllable name.
literally a french word
A better example might be "home" and "some", where only one letter is different, but the pronounciation is completely different. There are many words like these. English doesn't make sense at all.
They are…it’s a regional thing
See here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkg5nLOgxII
Mike and Nike are pronounced similarly
Oh. Yeah. Right. Sure. Let's say that.
English is fucked up in large part due to being corrupted by the French cancer. If anything we are one of the most qualified to talk shit about them.
Not pictured: French aircraft design
Like the Concorde?
The Concorde was just loud and cost more money to run, and in 27 years had only one fatal accident wherein a DC-10(American designed) left a piece of debris on the runway which ultimately kicked off the incident. It was a pretty good plane from my understanding.
If we’re calling out specifics, the Airbus is an incredibly successful plane.
I was thinking their inter-war bomber designs, and their early attempts at fighters post WWII
The MD-450 Ouragan was a fairly good plane.
And Dishonored, Rayman, Another World...
Nope, pretty sure French politics should get a crying face (saying this as a French citizen)
I think historical, and the seriousness of it (guillotines, etc)
Pssshh whatever, can't be mad at a language that contains pamplemousse
Cramouille is the best french word
Anticonstititionellement is my favorite.
I prefer Pomplamoose instead - https://youtu.be/kTP246fnKAI
At least the Belgian and Swiss Frenches have slightly less weird numbering. Though in France, you get to say "80." "Leul, blaze it"
We keep the memory alive of a 3000 year old numbering system (apparently some tribes counted in twenties, and that's the only trace left of it).
French toast
French don't know about French toasts.
We know it, it's called pain perdu.
Yup, it's a way to use old bread instead of letting it go to waste.
It use to be a way to not waste stale bread. Nowdays, it's mostly a fancy dish using freshly made brioche.
I once heard from a friend learning French that the way to say that you are in the process of doing something literally translated to 'I am on the train to [doing the thing]'. Is that correct?
it would seem like that because the words are the same, but in the locution "en train de [verbe]", en train has the 15th century meaning of "in action", "in movement", this predates the invention of the railroad :)
Wait, woah, so the term 'train' is from the French word for 'action' or 'motion', essentially? That's kind of a dub.
originally, as a noun, "le train" comes from the latin word trahere "to pull". It's then use to describe a convoy of animals. Later its meaning evolved into the "the going motion" (of a horse, a human).
It's currently in that sense in "arrière-train" to designate the back legs of a quadruped. "Aller de bon train" = to walk briskly, or in automotive, the "train avant" and "train arrière" are the front and rear axles.
There are other expressions like "le train-train quotidien", meaning the daily grind.
edit: additional information to the etymology
I'm well on the way to writing that report, boss
Our company is on the road to developing those features
I'm on the path to forgiving you
I've lost my train of thoughts
That saying actually predates railroad trains, which were called that because a train meant "that which is drawn along"
Native here, yep it is correct and idiomatic. "Je suis en train de [faire la chose]"
As a person learning French, I think it's more closely related to "training" or "entrain."
We did that to stop English from stealing from us. They didn't get the joke, and here we are.
C'est la vie
American culture is practically a turd in a box with a $99 price tag on it.
Abadakor !!!!
Ta yeule estie de raisin
Say 96 in French and then repeat that sentence.
i'm pretty positive spanish takes that cake. omelette du fromage just ain't sexy
https://youtu.be/VNLrCWCv38Y this might change your mind about the French language...it sure showed me where it shines.
Beautiful song, beautifully sung.
Got any more?
They have 2 songs together as far as i'm aware. I just stumbled upon this one last week.
You could say I have to take a shit in French and it would sound smooth as hell. -Eddy Murphy.
J'dois aller chier calisse
According to French scientists, the best thing to wipe ones' ass with is the neck of a well-downed gosling.
https://pluckypubs.blogspot.com/2007/06/rabelais-ultimate-arse-wiper.html
(not actually scientists but a character in 16th century writer Rabelais' book.)
quaso
hon hon hon. tabarnac!!!
French culture my ass.
Paris is an overpriced amusement park where all the employee hate you.
Give me Italy any day.
Fun fact: countries consist of more than one city.
Additional information: there are cultural differences between different regions in the same country, even between different cities and towns in the same region! Imagine that!
But US tourists spend two days each in London, Paris, Prague and Rome, and then they've seen all of Europe. Isn't that how it works? Besides it's not as if they've got extra vacation days anyway.
Well alright, but have you considered that Voltaire is really good?
That guy who made fun of French institutions?
Yeah!
See also: French rap
Not sure if you are poking fun at it but I like Bigflo & Oli dommage
Not at all! I sincerely LOVE French rap! ❤️
And Montmartre, but that's probably most of them (I live close to Montmartre).
Reparle de paris encore une seule fois batard et j'enverrai ta tête tellement loin qu'elle aura le temps de faire tout le tour de la dinguerie géologique et culturelle qu'est la France avant de retomber dans le Limousin où ta tête finira ses jours paisiblement entourée de jolies vaches.
I can make up nonsense words too.
Yeah, if you only do touristy stuff you're gonna have a bad time. It's like saying NYC sucks when you've only visited Time Square.