Re: Optimum number of symbols, though mostly talking about french now

En réponse à Kendra <kendra@...>:

>
> True, true. English speakers can still refer to ships as she after
> all,
> which always amused me.
> Grammatical gender itself doesn't bug me, it adds variety. French
> gender
> doesn't seem to be COMPLETLEY arbitrary or unintelligible or anything.
> Personally, I just don't understand why verbs need to agree in
> gender...
> that's just an odd concept to me.
Verbs agreeing in gender? Sorry but that's not the case. What you're talking
about is past participles. Well, they are *adjectives*. A form "être+past
participle", whether it has passive sense or not, is identical in form
as "être+ adjective", and past participles are adjectives. So if the adjective
agrees in gender and number with the subject in this case, it's only normal
that the past participle does the same. Morphologically, there is no difference.

The only complication comes with past participles used with the verb "avoir".
The agree in gender and number with the *object*, if this one appears in
*front* of the verb (most often as a relative pronoun). It sounds a bit
strange, doesn't it? Well, a way to remember that might be to consider that
when the object is in front of the verb, we nearly have a passive construction,
and the agreement is triggered. It's not a good way to explain the phenomenon,
but a good way to remember it (as long as it doesn't make you make mistakes
with the verb itself :)) ).

> Though I guess it makes sense if I stop to think that we conjugate
> verbs
> differently for different amounts of people in English, andsomeone said
> this
> counts as a grammatical gender.
But we don't. As I said, agreement appears only because past participles are
*adjectives*. They are treated as such and should not be considered as
conjugated forms of the verb but as adjectives derived from verbs.

> I was mostly mad, though, because our teacher tested us on passé
> compose
> using etre (I don't know the e with circumflex code offhand :) and
> only
> taught us the gender bit, not the agreeing in number part. So the
> entire
> class failed miseably. Go us!
I find this way of teaching quite strange. Why didn't he simply say that past
participles were adjectives? It would have explained the full behaviour of past
participles, except the bit about agreement with a preceeding object. And it
would make things a bit more understandable...

> On another note, though, pairs like acteur/actrice and so on make me
> nervous
> because I hate making THAT kind of gender distinctions in any
> language.
>
Well, you would have a hard time with our feminists then. They are on a crusade
for the feminisation of ALL nouns of professions. They argue that if a noun of
profession doesn't make the gender distinction, it implies that the profession
is reserved to just one sex, which is sexist. Thus they want feminine forms to
be adopted for all nouns of profession (even those who at first didn't have
one, like "maire" or "ministre". So we've seen things like "la mairesse"
and "la ministre" appear). Not everybody agrees with their view, but I think
they have a point. Another possibility would be to just scrap all gender
distinctions in French, but gender is too far rooted in the French grammar to
make that possible. So basically, those gender distinctions are supported and
even proposed by our feminists :)) .

>
> All right, that's true. I can still say French spelling is a disaster,
> though, because pronouncing it is so confusing. ;)
That's not true. I find the French spelling difficult because when you hear a
word you cannot know for sure its spelling from its pronunciation, but on the
other way round, the spelling points out to the correct pronunciation more than
98% of the time. What you find confusing is that it uses other rules than the
English spelling, that's all.

> What I've been wondering, though, is what the HECK is that 'oe'
> character?
> Does it have a specific pronunciation, or does it just show up in eggs
> and
> sisters to mock me, never offering an explanation?
What? You were not told the pronunciation of 'oe'? Your teacher is incompetent
or what?! 'oe' and 'eu' are basically pronounced the same way, except in Greek
loanwords where 'oe' can (but doesn't need to) be pronounced like 'é'.
Personally, I *always* pronounced my 'oe's like 'eu's, so you can play safe and
do it like that :)) .

I'm under the impression that the difficulties you come through in learning
French come more from a wrong teaching approach than from inherent difficulties
of the French language...

> I wish my teacher corrected pronunciaton. There're people in my class
> STILL
> saying "ill est trace bow," and it makes it hard for me to have any
> clue.
>
I'm under the impression that it's one of the consequences of the view of
Americans towards foreign languages: "they will speak English to us anyway, so
why bother learning their languages?" At least I thought teachers would fight
this point of view, but I see it's not the case :(( .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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