Re: Rant on partial understandings (was: Spoken French, coins)

En réponse à John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

>
> Yes, of course, a typo on my part.  If I can't get the gender
> of "age" right, you expect me to get final silent letters right?
>
He he, especially since that "silent letter" completely changes the sound of
the word :))) . "Roue" is pronounced /Ru/ and simply means "wheel". The 't'
in "rouet" shows that the 'e' is pronounced /e/. I simply love the French
orthography :))) .

>
> In short, without knowing any French at all, I understand all
> the 10-euro words on this poster, and only one tiny, tiny detail
> escapes me:
>
>         Does it mean "since 1 January 1939" or "before
>         1 January 1939"?
>
> Which of course is a point that is obvious to any French
> three-year-old, who does not know the big words at all!
>
Well, I'm not that sure that a three-year-old boy would understand it
immediately, knowing that this use of the preposition 'à' (you probably
recognized it's form 'au', simply the contraction of 'à' with the masculine
singular definite article 'le' :)) ) is rather rare and restricted to written
language (or spoken language of speeches, which is usually quite the same,
since speeches are usually written down :)) ). "Au 1er janvier 1939"
means "until the 1st January 1939", but is restricted to past dates
(where 'until' doesn't sound right to me, but I'm not sure. Maybe your use
of 'before' is correct, I didn't know it could be used like that), or at least
gives a feeling of looking back in time (so you could use it for a future date,
if you take a point of view after this future date). In fact, it's one of the
French constructions I would have difficulties to translate in English, whether
because my knowledge is not enough or because there is no strict equivalent).

> So:
> are you trying to sell me one horse or are you trying to sell me two
> horses? If you get enough situations like that there is a strong drive
> towards simplifying the language.
>
I guess that's how pidgins appear. The tendency to drop those little words and
keep only meaningful lexical items is one of the keystones of pidgins.

>
> ("I know one of these is my right and one is my left.  Left?
> Right?  Right?  Left?")
>
Never had a problem with that. But I know people who can't remember which is
their left and which is their right (my mother and my friend for instance. "Can
you give me that bottle on your left? No, your other left." :))

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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