A while back I was getting on line 13, affectionately known as "la bétaillère" ('the cattle car'), and ran into LN and HO from my lab. As we got on, LN tripped over something, and said, "J'ai pas vu un sac" ('I didn't see a bag'). Since the traditional rule in French is usually that you would say instead "Je n'ai pas vu de sacs" ('I didn't see any bags'), LN laughed and commented that the reason she said that was that "un sac" was a specific indefinite with wide scope over the negation -- that is, there was a particular bag she didn't see.
The amusing thing was that the French guy we were standing nearly on top of joined in the discussion. I'm pretty sure he didn't know he was talking to three linguists, all he knew was that he was talking to three foreigners in desperate need of grammatical rescue from the wilds of French. I just love it, though, that he jumped in.
I'm not sure they still teach grammar here... in fact, I rather think they don't, or not as much as they used to, according to a friend of JD's who is a teacher. I remember when I began my French class in middle school, my first foreign language, and the grammar lessons made me happy... they helped me understand what was going on in English, too.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
You wrote: "I remember when I began my French class in middle school, my first foreign language, and the grammar lessons made me happy... they helped me understand what was going on in English, too."
I'm totally the same way. We were proto-linguists even then. :) And, in my English classes even into high school we still had the occasional grammar unit, and I was about the only one in the class who *preferred* that to the literature stuff! :) ("Sure, I'll be happy to diagram that sentence, Ms. Smith!")
Post a Comment