Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Weaving French into English

This is an extract from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:

Lestrade laughed. “I am afraid that I am still a sceptic,” he said. “Theories are all very well but we have to deal with a hard-headed British jury.”
Nous verrons,” answered Holmes calmly. “You work your own method, and I shall work mine. …”


And this is from Pride and Prejudice:

“Yes; these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that they both like Vingt-un better than Commerce; but with respect to any other leading characteristics, I do not imagine that much has been unfolded.”

I am quite struck by the usage of French words in these classics. To quote in French is one thing (as shown in my previous post), but to weave French words in normal conversation as if it belongs is quite another. It is just like when we speak in India at present. English words come and go as we speak in Hindi or any other regional language. We know that the person we are talking to will understand.

Evidently, French was a world language once upon a time, just as English is. What happened? How did French go out of style? It should be interesting to trace the history of the decline of French as the world language.

By the way, vingt-un used by Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice is not exactly correct. I should be vignt-et-un (twenty and one), but you could drop the "et" while talking, I suppose.

Pronunciations:
Nous verrons [hear] = (We will see)
Vingt-et-un [hear] = (Twenty-one)

Monday, March 19, 2012

Sherlock Holmes Speaks French

No, I did not get that wrong. It is definitely Sherlock Holmes and not Poirot that I wish to refer to.

Towards the end of Adventure II - The Red-Headed League, Sherlock spews French: L'homme c'est rien - l'oeuvre c'est tout. ( = The man is nothing – it his (the collection of) work is all (that matters)).

I shouldn’t be surprised though. There was a time when every Englishman considered himself uneducated if he could not speak fluent French.

And here are the pronunciations:
L'homme [hear], c'est [hear], rien [hear], l'oeuvre [hear], tout [hear]

Monday, March 12, 2012

ça m'est égal

You want to sound cool. But you still do not know the hip ‘Street French’. Hmmm… try this: ça m'est égal [hear]. This is perhaps, the most refined way to sound cool. It could mean “It’s all the same to me”, or “I don’t care either way”, or “I don’t give a damn” depending on how you shrug your shoulders.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Quant à Vous

Tintin has just climbed up the ship Pachacamac. One of the crew hears something and calls out. As Tintin ducks into an alley, another door opens. Without any hesitation Tintin leaps into the nearest cabin. Fortunately, the crew think it is a cat (or so Tintin thinks). As he turns to leave, Tintin discovers that he has accidently entered the cabin where Professor Calculus is in a drug-induced sleep. As he tries to arouse the professor, Chiquito, the Indian comes in with a revolver in his hands. He explains why Professor Calculus is designated to die. And then he threateningly says, « Quant à vous, je n’ai pas décidé … » (How a South American Spanish-speaking Indian speaks fluent French, I will never know. I wish I could speak as fluently.)

Fortunately, I recently purchased the Kindle version of French Key Words and Expressions by Saul H. Rosenthal. That helped me understand what « quant à [hear] vous [hear] » is. Turns out that this is a fairly common expression among the French and means “About you” or “as for you”.

So, « Quant à vous, je n’ai pas [hear] décidé [hear] » means “As for you, I have not yet decided …”.
I wish I had written the book that Rosenthal has written.

And yes, you got that right! The scene is from Tintin and the Prisoners of Sun or, as per the French version, Le Temple [hear] Du [hear] Soleil [hear] (The temple of the Sun)

Thursday, March 8, 2012

French Beans

Most French course books that I referred to so far explained how definite article behaves in front of vowels or words that sound like vowel (such as ‘y’ and ‘non-aspirated h’), and then proceeded to give examples of 'non-aspirated h words', such as, l’homme [hear] (the man), l'hôtel [hear] (the hotel), l'hiver [hear] (the winter).

But without exception these courses never ever follow this up with examples of ‘aspirated h’ (meaning those French words where ‘h’ is pronounced). I therefore assumed that these words were rare and not important. It was only when I looked up French Text Book for children that I got an example … French Beans. The ‘h’ is pronounced and so it is not l’haricot vert, but le haricot vert [hear]. Not that French Beans are important, but it is nice to have at least one example of aspirated ‘h’.

But here's what I find funny. When you hear the French speak haricot vert, you will still not hear the 'h'. So much for aspirated and non-aspirated (or unaspirated) sounds of 'h'. You will only hear the difference in the plural - les haricots verts. The 's' of 'les' does not get pronounced in front of non-vowel sounding words. And since the 'h' of haricot is supposed to be pronounced, the pronunciation goes 'lay-arico-ver'. Contrast this with les hôtel, which goes 'lay-zotel'.

About.com has the big list of French words that begins with 'aspirated h'.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Hammer Away!

I have been on the lookout, and I think I have finally got it. Henceforth, I shall claim that batterie [hear] is my favourite faux ami.

If you go to a French shop and ask for batterie, you will definitely be given a battery (cell), but I have a feeling batterie = battery in English is more of an afterthought. Originally, it must have been derived from battre which in French means ‘to beat’, and seems to be related to battery, as in ‘assault and battery’.

So, what does batterie mean? Well, it is also the French word for Percussion Drums. See any video clip of a rock concert, witness the battering these drums undergo, and you will totally agree that the French word, batterie, is a perfect fit.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Occasional Boost to your Ego

Independent Language Learners need a boost to their egos once in a while. It is necessary to feel that you have come a long way since you first started learning the language of your choice. Since most of us learn a language from books or courses aimed at adult learners (it is claimed that adults learn differently from children; I do not know how much truth is there in this), here’s what you need to do after, say, a year of learning.

Pick up a French text book recommended for, say, grade 5. If you breeze through it in style, you know you have accomplished a lot. It is with this intension that I attacked Encore Tricolore 1 (nouvelle édition) with vigour. So, far it has been a great ego trip. I think I will manage to finish the 10 chapters in two days (today is my second day), and get on to book 2 (there are 5 in total) of the series. In the process I picked up a few words that I otherwise wouldn’t have.

Examples:
Un cartable [hear] – schoolbag
Une trousse [hear] – pencil case
Un dépliant [hear] – leaflet

I do not have any reference point to evaluate how good the text books of the Encore Tricolore series are. But the contents are very well laid out and the text books are very colourful. There are plenty of exercises too. And at least one school in Bangalore uses it as their course book. However, as far as the boost your ego needs to ensure you stay the course, any good French text book should suffice.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Three Letter Words

One would expect that after having studied French for an year or so, I would at least know all the commonly used one-lettered, two-lettered and three-lettered French words. But no! Every once in a while I encounter a small word that has escaped my attention before.

Tas [hear] is one such word.

The following extract is from first chapter of Le Petit Prince:

J’ai ainsi eu, au cours de ma vie, des tas de contacts avec des tas de gens sérieux.

The above sentence is not as difficult as it appears to be at first glance. ‘Eu [hear] is the participle of ‘avoir[hear] (to be), ‘ainsi [hear] means ‘so’ or ‘therefore’, ‘vie[hear] means ‘life’, 'avec' [hear] mean with, ‘gens [hear] means ‘people’ and 'sérieux' [hear] is exactly what it sounds like - serious. Therefore, a word to word translation comes out to be:

I have therefore had, in the course of my life, lots of contact with lots of serious people.

Tas = lots.

Some more details on tas is available here.

I am glad I am reading books. I have noticed that French Teaching Courses tend to focus on similar topics and, therefore, on limited number of words. It’s only when you start looking beyond these courses that you learn more. Reading books, watching French movies, reading French newspapers is a great way to do that.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Le Petit Prince

If you are even a little bit serious about learning French, then you MUST buy and read Le Petit Prince [hear]. If you are an avid reader you would already have read this book in the translated version (The Little Prince. Have you read it?)

Wikipedia informs me that this has been translated into more than 250 languages. I didn’t even know there were 250+ languages!

I have just received the book (via Flipkart, and I would recommend Flipkart to all book lovers in India; their service is brilliant) and will be posting more about it soon. However, till then here’s something you might want to ponder: Do flyers make great authors? Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a flyer as is Richard Bach who stunned the world with Jonathan Livingston Seagull (though I like ‘Illusions’ better).