That was the caption on a music show I passed while flipping channels. Just the thing for the title of yet another post on random facts about the French language.
Normalement can mean 'normally,' but often it means 'If everything goes according to plan.' It took me a while to figure that out, even though it has a lot to do with my research.
My box of Monoprix biscottes says on the side "Craint la chaleur et l'humidité," that is, "Fears heat and humidity." Makes you wonder what other psychological states they are capable of. Not sure I want to eat any more of them.
French people are so used to reading "i" in English as [ai] ("eye") that sometimes you hear prison (as in Prison Break) pronounced with [ai]. I heard retriever pronounced with [ai], too, in a commercial. This kind of phenomenon is called "hypercorrection," because the speakers try to correct what they would ordinarily say to what they think is right, even in situations where it's wrong.
I saved the best one for last. The other night I said to JD, after a particularly felicitous utterance in French, "Wow, that was the first time I just did the gender agreement on the noun and the adjective without even thinking about it and got it right." JD replied in astonishment: "You mean you have to think about the gender EVERY TIME??"
Friday, February 23, 2007
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2 comments:
And that last one is exactly why I was such a terrible French student.
Isn't it awful? That's what we get for growing up speaking English. Now let's all learn German and deal with 3 of them. :)
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