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

[skogkatt]

Excellent! Though I'd say your cats were called, not named. Named in French usually refers more formally to the last name.

Ils s'appellent Fred et George.

[annathepiper]

This has been pointed out to me elsewhere, yeah! Thanks for the clarification of usage! :)