Oú Est La Plume de Ma Tante?*
A long, long, time ago I learned French at school. No, Dear Reader, not from Moliére himself. I am please to report that I can still, sort of, get by when reading. French 'as she is spoke' is another matter. It depends a lot on how fast the speaker speaks, and their accent.
When I was learning Madame, or Mademoiselle, would tell us how much value the French put on Getting It Right - genders, participles, getting everything to 'agree', accents. So French 'as she is written-in-blogs' came as a bit of a surprise to me - the relaxed attitude the writers took to their language, as well as the fact that I actually understood most of it!
Writing of accents, it would appear that the guardians of the French language, the Académie Français, have decided to revise the language. Or at least revise French 'as she is written', these changes first approved by the Académie in 1990. Out goes the circumflex accent (^) and a number of word spellings have been changed. Some words from Franglais, the French/English mash-up nos professeurs told us was so denigrated by French speakers, have been formally adopted into the language (the actual French language, not Franglais). Hence now le week-end is, as le weekend, an 'accepted' and 'acceptable' word - even though I suspect there has been a proper French term in existence all along.
Apparently many French people have been up in arms about these changes. Hmmm, maybe these were the French people Mme et Mdle told us about? You get them in every language. You may have gathered, Dear Reader, that I am a bit of such an one for the English language!
Whatever. Everyone is going to end up speaking English (or American) anyway. *Runs away and hides*
Avez-vous un beau jour maintenant!
*An exercise often adopted to teach French prepositions, eg: La plume de ma tante est sur la table.
When I was learning Madame, or Mademoiselle, would tell us how much value the French put on Getting It Right - genders, participles, getting everything to 'agree', accents. So French 'as she is written-in-blogs' came as a bit of a surprise to me - the relaxed attitude the writers took to their language, as well as the fact that I actually understood most of it!
Writing of accents, it would appear that the guardians of the French language, the Académie Français, have decided to revise the language. Or at least revise French 'as she is written', these changes first approved by the Académie in 1990. Out goes the circumflex accent (^) and a number of word spellings have been changed. Some words from Franglais, the French/English mash-up nos professeurs told us was so denigrated by French speakers, have been formally adopted into the language (the actual French language, not Franglais). Hence now le week-end is, as le weekend, an 'accepted' and 'acceptable' word - even though I suspect there has been a proper French term in existence all along.
Apparently many French people have been up in arms about these changes. Hmmm, maybe these were the French people Mme et Mdle told us about? You get them in every language. You may have gathered, Dear Reader, that I am a bit of such an one for the English language!
Whatever. Everyone is going to end up speaking English (or American) anyway. *Runs away and hides*
Avez-vous un beau jour maintenant!
*An exercise often adopted to teach French prepositions, eg: La plume de ma tante est sur la table.