FRENCH questions, answers, grammar and anything related

Clara5

Project QL Intern
Nov 6, 2003
143
0
0
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Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Ok, so since this seems to be a great idea, and since the best ideas are always the ones that get copied on, I though I'd share my knowledge of French with you guys! Any one of you who remember me from way back might also remember that I'm a francophone, so if any of you got questions that need an answer in french, go right ahead, and I'll be glad to help.

And for those who are taking french lessons, I'll be more than willing to help with anything you can throw at me... I've always been good at that :)


Ok, first up! The main difference that I found there is between french and english, apart from the pronounciation of course, is the fact that, unlike english, french uses gender a lot. Basically, where english has only gender when refering to a person (he/she), most nouns in french have a masculine or feminine gender, and sometimes, the same noun has both a masculine and a feminine version. And what is especially complicated is that the entire sentence has to conjugate according to this gender.

For example, for the sentence "My friends went back home/to their place", depending if these friends are guys or girls, many things will change in the sentence:
- Masculine: Mes amis sont rentrés chez eux.
- Feminine: Mes amies sont rentrées chez elles.

Confused yet? Yeah, I know, it's complicated... But if you really want to learn, you can do it!

So I am hoping you drop in here and enjoy learning! Feel free to ask anything (not offensive, of course :) )

Clara
 
Forgive me in advance. This is not a real french question, but it has to do with the post. How did you put the tilda, on top of the letters. Can it be done on a standard keyboard, or do you have a French keyboard? I only ask because I'm learning German, and it uses umlauts (double circles above a vowel). Thank you.

(And I can't wait for: the MANDARAN CHINESE Questions, Comments, and Grammar; the PIGLATIN Questions, Comments, and Grammar; and the STARTRECK ALIEN LANGUAGES Questions, Comments, and Grammar thread.)

:lol Just joking, of course. You're doing a great service, helping French learners.
 
I can field this one...
You can get them from a normal keyboard by following these instructions.

FOREIGN LANGUAGES CHARACTERS
1)[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Press and hold down the ALT key
2)[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Press & release 0 on the numeric keypad
3)[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Type the code number on the numeric keypad
4)[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]Release ALT

À 192 É 201 Î 206 Ù 217
 194 È 200 Ï 207 Û 219
Ä 196 Ê 202 Ô 212 Ü 220

à 224 é 233 î 238 ù 249
â 226 è 232 ï 239 û 251
ä 228 ê 234 ô 244 ü 252
ë 235 ö 246
Ç 199 ç 231 ß 223
Hope this helps
 
leaper1 said:
I can field this one...
You can get them from a normal keyboard by following these instructions.



FOREIGN LANGUAGES CHARACTERS




<snip>
Hope this helps

Yay!! Thank you! I've found instructions for making accented characters before, but they never seem to work for me. These work!

ohboy said:
(And I can't wait for: the MANDARAN CHINESE Questions, Comments, and Grammar; the PIGLATIN Questions, Comments, and Grammar; and the STARTRECK ALIEN LANGUAGES Questions, Comments, and Grammar thread.)
:lol Just joking, of course.

Well, I could start a SINDARIN ELVISH Questions, Comments, and Grammar thread... except that I don't know the grammar. Someone else will have to do the Klingon thread though. :D

Actually, Chinese could be pretty interesting....
 
P.S. I don't mean to derail your thread, Clara! My French is so rusty that I can't recall--if I were to call you "my friend" (and both of us being female), would it be "mon amie" or something else?
 
leaper1 said:
I can field this one...
You can get them from a normal keyboard by following these instructions.

FOREIGN LANGUAGES CHARACTERS

1)Press and hold down the ALT key
2)Press & release 0 on the numeric keypad
3)Type the code number on the numeric keypad
4)Release ALT

À 192 É 201 Î 206 Ù 217
 194 È 200 Ï 207 Û 219
Ä 196 Ê 202 Ô 212 Ü 220

à 224 é 233 î 238 ù 249
â 226 è 232 ï 239 û 251
ä 228 ê 234 ô 244 ü 252
ë 235 ö 246
Ç 199 ç 231 ß 223
Hope this helps

Thank you very much. Your codes do work. I'm going to have write ä, ë, ü, and ß down.
 
Snish said:
P.S. I don't mean to derail your thread, Clara! My French is so rusty that I can't recall--if I were to call you "my friend" (and both of us being female), would it be "mon amie" or something else?

Hey, you're not deriving the thread! you're exactly in it!

As for your question, yes, "mon amie" is right. However, you have to know, this would be correct whether you were male or female, since you are not referring to yourself. If you said "we are friends", then things could change, since when conjugating a sentence, and there is a mix of male and female, the conjugation is done in the masculine form by default. In this case, since both of us are female, it would be "Nous sommes amies". However, if one or both of us were male, it would become "Nous sommes amis"! Hope you understand and that it helps!!!

Have a nice day!

Clara
 
laurence said:
Shame, shame, shame!
Never understood the reason why but that's it :roflmao:

:roflmao:maybe it's for all the single women to know, "Here be at least one guy." In case they're looking. (look, I learned to put punctuation between my quotes ;) )


alors, je voudrai te remercier pour ce 'thread' Clara.
:)
what did I just say? I was trying to say something like,
So, i would like to thank you for this thread, Clara.
 
Some sindarin would be cool as a thread, and Adunaic, although there isn't too much of that around. And Quenya, and maybe some more Tolkien languages.
Fact is I only know a few words hence I'd find it cool to learn some.

And definitely Klingon. :)

I'm always happy to see I'm not the only geek 8o. Even though this is a really late reply :)