Re: CHAT: An introduction

> En r廧onse ?Mark J. Reed :
>
>
> >I think living, spoken French is the most different
> of any language
> >I've encountered from the written language you
> learn in class.
> >And I don't mean just the  discrepancies between
> orthography and
> >pronunciation, but the actual choice of vocabulary.
>  It seems that
> >the word "nous" exists only in written French, for
> instance; you
> >won't hear it on the street in Paris (unless it's
> coming from a
> >non-native speaker).
>
Maybe that's why, when I decided to watch an episode
of Babylon5 in French a couple of days ago (my vcds
have English or French voices and English, French or
Spanish subtitles) and found the French simply too
hard to follow, turning on the French subtitles didn't
help as I discovered, to my utter amazement, that
*spoken* French has approximately 50% MORE syllables
than the written language.  They were two utterly
different French translations of the dialogue!!

ADam

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