Saturday, January 15, 2011

Learnin'

Why French is fun.

Is this your daughter?
xxxxIs-this what it-is your daughter?xxxxEst-ce que c'est votre fille?
When was she born?xxxxWhen is-this who'she is born?xxxxxQuand est-ce qu'elle est neé?

As distinct from English, which is, of course, relentlessly rational.

4 comments:

genderist said...

Ou est-ce que la piscene?

In the country high school where I took french we were all amused that swimming pool was pronounced pee-seen. We've had lots of pee seen at our house this weekend!

Cerulean Bill said...

Where, indeed.

Roughly equivilent to when my Catholic all-boys class learned, while reading Caesar's Gallic Commentaries in Latin 2, that the Latin word for a small piece of kindling wood was translated by our dictionary as "a faggot".

Curiously, none of the Latin dictionaries I just looked at seem to carry that word now.

I think I'll keep silent on the really tacky, not to mention, libelous and legally actionable, observation that occurs to me.

laprofesseur said...

you are translating
"est-ce que" incorrectly.

it is literally "is it that"

so it becomes,
"is it (true) that this is your daughter"

"when is it that she is (was) born."

Cerulean Bill said...

You are clearly correct. Thank you!