>> I recall that what we refer to as a "gold fish", the French call "le
>> passion rougue" ("the red fish"), and that's about it.
> 
> That's "le poisson rouge". Unless you mean red passion, but then it's
> "*la* passion rouge" :-)

Gah. Well, given that I can't spell English properly yet and I can't 
speak French, the chances of spelling it right are... small? :-}

As I side note, it appears to me that the correct way to read French 
writing is to more or less entirely disregard all consonnents and utter 
a complex sequence of modulated vowels. Which, obviously, is quite hard...

[I remember sitting on the train last year and hearing the anouncer 
telling us what station we're arriving at. The word on the board looks 
like a random assortment of uncommon consonnents. But the word the 
person actually said sounded... like something clearing their throat.]

>> I still have no idea what this word actually means... Any guesses?
>>
> 

> "poured again" or something like that. I don't know much about coffee in
> general, though...

Double-filtered coffee or something perhaps? IDK.

> But yes, the "r" is certainly rougher in French, and
> this is especially notable at the beginning of words.

Apparently...

>> Because, you know what? To speak French, you have to actually speak
>> in a French accent, or nobody knows what you're saying. Which
>> actually makes sense, really...
> 
> I would expect this to be true in many languages indeed. Try Chinese
> some day, it's even worse :-)

I imagine you're right...

>> Similarly, it's not "mer-see". It appears to involve a completely 
>> different set of vowles, more closely approximating "meial-si". Danm,
>> I can't even *type* it, much less say it out loud.
> 
> Perhaps if you say "mayor see" very quick in English it sounds a bit
> like the French "merci" ? Except for the "r"...

Meh. I sound retarded when I speak English, and I know what I'm doing. 
;-) What chance do I have with French? Heh.

>> French words seem to have such a complicated structure. And yet these
>>  kids toss it around as if it's *easy*. Which, when you're a French 
>> person, it probably is.
> 
> As a matter of fact, I get the same feeling when I watch TV and find a
> Polish station :-) I don't think the structure is more complicated, it's
> just the chaining of the sounds that feels unusual.

I have the 7-disk collector's boxed set of Jeff Wayne's War of the 
Worlds. For some reason, the Italian and German versions of the famous 
opening prolog sound utterly hilarious to my ears...

>> You know, it's probably a *good* thing that I don't know how to say
>> "you have a really nice arse" in French. Because that waitress would
>> have probably slapped me for it.
> 
> OK so I won't translate that :-D

OMG, I just had a very silly idea... Google Translate. 0;-)

(From the site that brought us "leave the impact price-increase your 
body"...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message