h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

While we're waiting for post 280 to come back, please remember that the new rules will still exclude foreign language postings. Now we've been through this in great detail so please don't push them!

And here's another false friend which I heard last night.

Situation: a group of people (by coincidence all women) We meet once a month with the purpose of speaking French to each other. It works really well and at least one native speaker is always there. For most Germans, of course, French is, at best, the second foreign language they have learnt and they are all more familiar with English.

So one of the less proficient ladies confused a word last night and was asking if one of our group, who had just had an operation, was in pain. She confused the English word pain with the French word pain and ended up asking if she had any bread!

Hmm. That anecdote loses a little in the translation.

A question for you, Loup - one of the ladies said "nous avons eu visite" which is the German construction for "having visitors". Doesn't sound right to me when translated like that word for word into Fernch.

How should she have phrased it?

"Nous avions des invités" ? "Des amis qui nous avions rendu visite"?

All rather cumbersome....

i don't think i'm pushing anybody by wanting to use this thread...

and as i said before as long as there is a translation in english following what we say it should not be a problem as it helps non french speaking people to understand what we're talking about...

it just that i keep hearing/reading about the "no demand for french" on h2g2 and i'm thinking how do we know that?!.. while lurking not long ago i noticed another new french researcher... and of course what about all those want to practice their french etc.. etc...

i'm not gonna start a new debate and certainly not in here but at the end of the day we are not breaking any rules... the posts are not strictly speaking moderated... and it's only because the mod on duty at the time might not be fluent in french...

anyway to come back to what this thread is about: she could have said : "nous avons eu une visite" as well or as you said "nous avions des invites"...
i still haven't got a PC yet so i still can't do the accents etc... very frustrating that...hehe...

and the other thing she could have said is: "des amis nous ont rendu visite"... quite a lot of variations really...

loup

Whoops - boobed there. Yes. it was the missing article that made me uncomfortable.

Hi Loup. I didn't mean to make a big issue of the thing about pushing to be allowed to use languages. The re-introduction of re-active moderation is such a big breakthrough that we should now tread carefully, is all I meant. Even peaceful li'l ol' me was getting bolshy at not being allowed to write in German at first, but we have learned to be patient.

So who is this other French researcher then?

And if one is going to talk in French, what is one going to talk about? It's like having a car with nowhere to drive to.

Perhaps we could found a French pub. The Bulettenbude was always a refuge for German speakers and conversations were always going on there.

Alors - qu'est-ce qu'on prend comme nom pour notre boîte?

L'Univers et tout ça? A la planète bleue?

Et... oh... alors...

Et... oh... alors...

bonjour.../good day..

mon systeme m'a laisse tomber hier soir.../my system let me down last night...

deux reponses tardives:/two late replies:

re: "having a car and nowhere to go"... err... more like having a car and not acknowledging it me thinks...

re: a french pub and all?!... not founding anything else at the mo'... kinda busy trying to make h2g2 a digibox friendly environment with the "friends of LeisureDistrict" U201567 ...

but one name: "les galactiques"... should be easy to understand for non french speakers..

spiff: comment ca va?!.../how are you?!...

je m'excuse pour ne pas avoir participe toutes ces semaines.../i apologise for not having participated all these weeks....

a bientot...

loup

salut tout le monde/hi everybody

je crois qu'un pub français serait une très bonne idée/i think a french pub would be a really good idea

^. .^
= ' =

Bof.

Oh, do I have to translate that? Er... well... y'know... *shrug*

Salut tout le monde,

Just advertising The French Connection - A816725. Set up as a hub for all things, well, connected with France!

I could set up an A-page as a bar, or just start a thread hanging off that page, whichever seems better.

The advantage of the A-page would be multiple conversations; whereas a thread would concentrate traffic (a good thing if there isn't much).

Any thoughts for a name? I was thinking of Le Petit Caporal...

or maybe Le Trafalgar,

spiff a deja commence quelque chose autour d'un espace francophone, je crois?!.../spiff has already started something around a french speaking space i think?!...

his french connection page...

quelques verres de et un peu de musique dans cet espace et nous avons un commencement de pub francais.../a few glasses of and some music in this space and we have a beginning of french pub...

[i'm stalling for time here... hehe... waiting for my computer to arrive so that i can put the accents and cedilles...]

[by the way, i dunno what the "shrug" was about in a previous post, but this thread is for people who want to speak french... "bof" is not exactly constructive me thinks...]

a bientot...

loup

oh good... simulposts...

... francis langlois...

loup

Salut, le loup,

comment ca va?

Je ne veux pas rocker le boat, avec le nouveau pilote scheme... so maybe we shouldn't get *too* français just yet.

bonjour francis...

oui, bien sur.../yes, of course...

mais nous pouvons utiliser cette conversation pour tester la demande pour un espace francophone.../but we can use this conversation to test the demand for a french speaking space...

[i heard too many times for my taste that there was not a big demand for french on here... we might not all be french but surely an opportunity for researchers to practice their french would be welcome...]

lot of stuff in french on the BBC website by the way...

so yep. if we carry on this way [some french with translation in english] until the big day it should be alright... it's bound to be a few posts waiting for moderation at times but that's no big deal really...

et je vais bien, merci...

a bientot...

loup

Salut Loup d'A,

I fear that was moi, saying there wasn't much demand.

but that's just what i've found... you're the only actual bona fide Frog that i've come across,

but tant mieux, if you want to parler franglais, je serai toujours up for it!

a+
speef

bonjour le cosmonaute..

naaah... you're not the only one who said it..

et oui, je suis up for it too...

a bientot..

loup

it's ... i'm just linking this conversation to the "friends of LD" space...

in case some LDers might be interested to have a go at some "parler franglais"...

eh, pourquoi pas?!.../eh, why not?!...

a bientot...

loup

"bof" est un expression très français, alors c'est correcte de le dire ici /"bof" is a very french expression, it's fine to say it here
^. .^
= ' =

i know...

twas not the word i was having a moan at... twas the fact that it was not a very constructive comment...

but never mind... it's old news already...

il y a des sujets plus interessants a discuter surement.../there are more interesting subjects to discuss surely...

re: bof as a word... we used to have the expression "the bof generation" when i was a teenager... it was more or less qualifying us as a generation that just doesn't give a toss about/not interested by anything.. i must admit i haven't heard that word for a long time...

a bientot...

loup

Bonjour Loup et al...

I hope this doesn't sound pushy, but this thread *wasn't* started by those who wanted to speak French, rather it is for *Franglais* - which I first came across in Punch magazine - which is, in essence, grammatically horrendous French littered with English, all very , but quite a bit of fun

The above paragraph in Franglais would read:

Je hope que cette ne sound pushy pas, mais cette thread was ne started pas par those qui desiree to parler en Francaise, rather il est pour *Franglais* - que je premiere came across dans le magazine Punch - qui est, dans essence, Francaise grammatically mal , littered avec Anglaise, tout tres , mais quite un peu de fun

sixSepts

or alternatively:
j'espere que ce ne sound pas pushy, mais cette thread n'etait pas started par those qui wanted to parler francais, rather pour franglais - which je premier came across dans un magazine punch - qhich est, en essence, francais grammatiquement horrendous littered avec anglais, tout very , mais quite un bit de fun
(it's flexible )
(ok, mine ended up very similar)
(in fact, je n'ai pas de point en particular de dire)
^. .^
= ' =