just reverse some recording in French
Exhibit A: the month of August. It's a fairly substantial word in Latin, with three syllables, four consonants, two simple vowels and a luxury diphthong to crown it all. It's not difficult to see how augustus could turn into agosto or agost or even gustar; one could imagine any number of other changes, such as the G turning into a Dutch-style voiced guttural, or the S dropping out – S drops out a lot. But it's impossible to imagine that by any natural process francophones would have decided to drop everything from the word and turn it into nothing more than an exclamation. Mind you, they did the same with aqua, but there was less to drop. There are dark forces at work here.French is a weird, and I'd be tempted to say, very corrupt language. But — and perhaps even by this very fact — it doesn't look like a deliberate creation. It's obviously the natural product of linguistic (d)evolution.
All you need to do is watch Le gendarme de Saint Tropez.I don't think so... French is too "natural" to us, rooted in us since childhood... Maybe it would work a bit if we went abroad and didn't listen to any French for years, just maybe...
What do you mean?All you need to do is watch Le gendarme de Saint Tropez.
that does actually sound different thoughThere is also le verre vert (the green glass) and les verres verts (the green glasses)
The ghost of Medieval French lives on to torment the English.Exhibit B: the myriad of homophones in the forms of the verb (there are sodding homophones everywhere, but let's just do the verbs now). Il parle. Ils parlent. Il est resté. Elle est restée. This eventually reaches the giddy heights of J'ai envoyé les resultats, je les ai envoyés, J'ai envoyé les lettres, je les ai envoyées. This is beyond unnatural. It exists solely so that French people can enjoy the exquisite pleasure of correcting foreigners, and probably each other.
As I said in another thread, these actually sound slightly different in Belgian French.Il est resté. Elle est restée.
Yes, that is utterly illogical.This eventually reaches the giddy heights of J'ai envoyé les resultats, je les ai envoyés, J'ai envoyé les lettres, je les ai envoyées. This is beyond unnatural.
Sure. Many people get all that wrong. Also, one of the most common mistakes is confusing the past participle and - er infinitives, as they sound the same too.and probably each other.
Presumably this was hashed out during negotiations leading up to the formation of Belgium, when the francophones agreed to stop turning numbers above 69 into mental arithmetic exercises, and the Phlegms agreed to moderate their G, which in Dutch results in the liberal sharing of the contents of your throat with your interlocutor.As I said in another thread, these actually sound slightly different in Belgian French.
No one would say that. We'd say "c'était l'été".Il a été l'été. It was summer.
It was a joke. C'était l'été is more common (and était and été are homophones).No one would say that. We'd say "c'était l'été".
Almost, but not quite: était = /etɛ/; été = /ete/.était and été are homophones