And now, a selection of random French sentences

[annathepiper]

After a bit of judicious flinging of phrases through Google Translate, and cross-checking verbs against my shiny new 501 French Verbs book, I can now say the following things about myself:

Je suis une musicienne amateur. Je joue le piccolo, la flûte, et un peu de guitare et bouzouki. Je parle seulement un peu français. J’ai deux chats. Ils sont nommés Fred et George. J’ai lu un nombre ridicule de livres.

I particularly like that last one, since if I understand it correctly, it’s “I’ve read a ridiculous number of books.” Thank you, compound past tense!

Also, it occurred to me that one phrase right out of my beloved “Trois Navires de Ble” from GBS makes grammatical sense to me, too. I.e., the chorus: “sur le bord de l’eau nous irons jouer dans l’île”, or, “at the edge of the water we will play on the island”. A good chunk of that song still doesn’t parse to me, but that line does. It’s responsible for me being able to parse the title of the Le Vent song “Au bord de la fontaine”, and it’s why I could parse the chorus of La Volée’s “Belle, embarquez!”, too, since “sur l’bord de l’eau” is in that. (Note the smooshing of “le bord” into “l’bord”. I am advised by cow that Quebecois French likes to do that kind of thing!)

So this is all fun! I’ve started slapping lyrics onto the various song files in my iTunes collection, so that I can read along with them as I listen on the bus going to and from work. It is helping LOTS for my ability to comprehend these words as words.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

You're so cute :)

(Yes, I have read means 'I have read' sort of like in English but different).

There's passe compose (what that is) and imparfait and they're different depending on WHICH action you were doing WHEN the other action interrupted you. It's kind of cool, check it out!

[annathepiper]

Hee!

That shiny new verb book I just bought has a big ol' section in the beginning about the various interesting tenses, several of which don't actually exist in English. I'm going to have to read that part in detail as opposed to just skimming through it looking for data on specific verbs, clearly!

[alfvaen]

Normally, I think one would say "ils s'appellent Fred et George", or perhaps "je les appellent Fred et George". Or "leurs noms sont Fred et George". Using "nommé" just feels like the wrong way to say what names are. Of course, I could be totally wrong, so feel free to get better info on this.

[annathepiper]

The first of these options was mentioned to me by eeyorerin, yeah! She and cow and maellenkleth are my current advisors on how French works. :)

I was thinking I needed to better analyze the differences between the uses, though! (Any Francophones reading this, please feel free to speak up!)

Thanks for the tip! Much appreciated!