- un bacille - germ, bacillus
- un billion - trillion
- capillaire - capillary
- un codicille - codicil
- distiller - to distill
- Lille - town in France
- lilliputien - Liliputian
- mille - thousand (un millénium, millier, etc.)
- un mille - mile (le millage)
- milli- (prefix)
- un milliard - billion (un milliardaire, le milliardième, etc.)
- un million- million (un millionaire, le millionième, etc.)
- osciller - to oscillate, swing
- un/e pupille* - ward of the state
- une pupille* - pupil
- tranquille - calm, tranquil
- une ville - town (une villa, un village, etc.)
Avez-vous une question?
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Post your questions in this discussion, s'il vous plaît.
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regarding pronunciatio of words ending in lle
some e.g.vieille are ponounced with like "yehy", while others like ville or nouvelle are pronounced as "lle". Is there a rule or you just learn as you go?
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Dear PUMMU,Sorry for the delay! Regarding your question, there is no hard rule (and this is confirmed by French teachers in France).Typically, the sound of such words will be like a 'Y'.Look at this link for some reported exceptions:Sev.
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I think, and I could be wrong, that if the ending is:vowel + ielle, then there's a y sound: vieille, grenouille, paille...(The vowel before it makes the y a semi-vowel, or glide.)But if the ending is:consonant + ielle, the i is pronounced as ee, not y: Gabrielle (can't think of any others).Since spelling doesn't always perfectly match phonology, there are probably counterexamples, but that should cover most instances.
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Thank you Christopher for these remarks.However, some words ending in 'ille' do not have the y a semi-vowel, or glide - to use your words.Here are some know examples (the list is not exhaustive):
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On several occasions I was asked the difference between "c'est" and "il est", and when to use them.Here is a useful link regarding this matter:Sev.
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Petite question, toujours au sujet de St. Martin. Il y a des restaurants là-bas qui s’appellent les lolos. Je n’avais aucune idée d’où vient ce mot, mais on m’a expliqué qu’il
vient du mot local, comme un restaurant local, de l’île. Je n’avais jamais
entendu cette expression. Est-ce que ça se dit en France, ou ailleurs? -
Indeed Chris, with so many restaurants competing for the attention of tourists, often with renowned French chefs, some have opted to serve food in the most simplest settings but near the water.Lolos have become synonymous with cheap, local food. The name seems to be 'indigenous' to the Caribbean, especially St Martin, and the term does not seem to be heard in France.Some of these Lolos have garnered long-standing reputations for their culinary experiences. One of them is Hilma’s Windsor Castle.
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Something that comes up often with my students is: can I say: "Peux-je..." (Can I)? Indeed, logically, one would expect this to be correct, since a question is often formulated with an inversion of the subject and the verb.
However, in French, we have kept the old form of the verb 'pouvoir' for that specific interrogative case, which is: "Puis-je...".But "puis-je" remains a little too formal for many French people, which in many situations will rather use: "Est-ce que je peux" which avoids the inversion subject-verb and sounds more casual. -
How do you say in french:"We are from the university" or "we are from ABC flowers""Nous sommes de ******" is this correct?
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Bonjour Volant. Though it would be better for me to have the context to give you a possible answer, you would translate:"We are from the University of Paris" -> "Nous sommes de l'université de Paris"As for "we are from ABC flowers", I'm afraid I don't understand the meaning. Could you re-phrase perhaps.
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Is it the name of a company?
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Hello Sev!How many vowel sounds are in French? I am soon going to take my first eTutor session but I am not ready yet.
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Bonjour Anna!I look forward to guide you through your first session.The answer to your question:
17 vowels: 13 oral and 4 nasals (although the distinction between -un
and -ain is becoming flattened in current French.)
There's a good wiki article on it with both IPA and examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_phonology
(Of course there's a different number of letters that represent
vowels, but that's not quite the same thing as the phonemic inventory
of vowels in French - think of the different pronunciations of a in
maman, for example.) -
I love a bit of linguistic terminology! Thanks, Sev. For people unfamiliar with some of the terms, an oral vowel is one that's produced with the air passing entirely through the mouth. Say "ma" while holding your nose.A nasal vowel is one that's produced with the air partly flowing through the nasal cavity. We have these in English, too. Say "man' while holding your nose, and you'll find that you get stuck at the end, because the air needs to pass through the nose for the nasal vowel, not to mention the nasal consonant n.In French, like in English, nasal vowels are marked in spelling with an -n or -m. So in a word like maman, the vowel in the first syllable is oral: ma. But the vowel in the second syllable is nasal: man. (Of course not pronounced like 'man' in English.)A phonemic inventory is basically the inventory of sounds in a language. The difference between phonology and phonetics is a bit more complicated. A sort-of watered down explanation that a phonology professor of mine gave me is "phonology is in the head, phonetics is in the mouth."Here's the idea. A word (and even that is a complicated notion in linguistics!) has an abstract, underlying representation in your 'head' (or at least the part of it that's associated with language, which a linguist would call a grammar.) A good example, where spelling actually helps, is the word latter in English. In it's phonemic representation, there's a /t/ sound in it. We know this, probably, because it comes from the word late.But that's in our heads. When we pronounce it, in our mouths, it comes out with a flapped consonant, sounding exactly the same as ladder, except for vowel length, which is another phonological issue related to the difference between t and d. Another story! Note, though, that this flapping rule (a /t/ between vowels comes out as a flap) isn't found in all varieties of English. Think of 'standard' British English - no flap there, just the t.Speaking of late, another difference between the phonological representation and the phonetic realization is that, for many speakers of English, the final t comes out as a glottal stop, that little catch in your mouth that doesn't sound at all like the t in tea. This is another example of a rule where the underlying phonological representation is changed: final t is turned into a glottal stop.You don't need to know any of this, of course, to learn French, or any other language. But just in case you were curious, there you go.
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Merci Chris pour tous ces détails; quelles superbes connaissances linguistiques!
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Bonjour Sev.I'm working on the subjunctive, and it seems to me that the nous and vous forms of the present subjunctive are the same as the past imperfect. C'est correct ? Par example :nous parlions (we spoke)J'espere que nous parlions (I hope that we speak - or - I hope that we will speak).Merci!Best, Ravi
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I'll let Sev give you a better answer if he thinks this isn't enough, but basically, yes that's right with most verbs, at least.Some common verbs have irregular subjunctives, like être, avoir, and vouloir, so the forms are different between the subjunctive and the imperfect:
que nous soyons (subj) / nous étions (imp)
que nous ayons (subj) / nous avions (imp)
que nous veuillons (subj) / nous voulions (imp)C'est vrai, Sev?[UPDATE: See below. It's que nous voulions!] -
Merci Christopher
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De rien. But I'm no native speaker, so we should see what Sev has to say.Plus, I think I screwed up vouloir. It's que je veuille, que tu veuilles, qu'il veuille, but que nous voulions, so that's the same as the imperfect.
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Merci Sev. Also, regarding numbers: why is 31 trente et un and 71 soixante et onze when 57 is cinquante-sept. Is the word "et" used when second number begins with a vowel, and otherwise it is hyphenated? Merci!Best, Ravi
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Pas de quoi, Ravi.Check here for the complete picture. As to why it is so, this would require an in-depth search into French language history...According to Wiktionary (French):"Use of 'et':The conjunction 'et' is used exclusively in the name of a ten, twenty, thirty, etc.., (except eighty) and the one or eleven that immediately follows: forty-one, sixty--eleven.Use of the hyphen:Before the 1990 French spelling reform, any two-word number less than 100 that doesn't use the word et had hyphens between the components. After the reform, any two-or-more-word number takes hyphens between the components. This is used to distinguish, for example, soixante-et-un tiers (61/3) from soixante et un-tiers (60⅓)."Here is a more detailed section about French numbers, but in French!
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Thanks Sev...the first link doesn't seem to work though.
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Merci Ravi. Le lien marche maintenant :) (the link works now)
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A recent question:il arrive vs ça arrive:- il arrive que requires the subjunctive
Example: Il arrive que je sois en retard. (it happens that I am late.)- ça arriveExample: Tu es en retard. ça arrive souvent.(you are late. This happens a lot.)Also: avoir lieu (to take place).Example: le spectacle/il a lieu chaque vendredi (the show takes place each Friday) -
In my last tutoring session I asked about some unexplained aspirated sounds that happen occasionally at the end of some words. My example at the time had to do with an audiobook I was listening to that ended the word "oui" with something that sounded like the German ch in "ich". But now I have just come across an example from a Living Language conversation. In Intermediate French, Lesson 8, Conversation 2, the opening words are "Bonjour, Claudine. Bienvenue" and the word Bienvenue ends with a very clear "extra" sound. In another part of the lessons, the same word is said without the extra sounds.
Are these the types of extra sounds that can be heard just about anywhere in a conversation, or are they more like "optional" parts of those particular words?
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Cool question. I hear what you mean, and I remember hearing a lot of that when I lived in France. (There's a way that people say oui that's almost like an inhaled hiss. I *think* it's mostly female speakers, and in certain situations like in shops, but I could be wrong about all that. Sev??)This aspiration isn't the same thing, though. It could have similar sociolinguistic constraints (a certain class, age, gender of speaker...) or it might even be regional. But I think it probably has at least something to do with the rounded, tense vowel at the end of bienvenue. The lips are already in such a tightly rounded position that any excess air escaping is going to be very noticeable.I'm fairly confident about the phonetic stuff at the end. The rest is speculation that I'm sure Sev can clear up!
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Thank you for posting your question, Bompa. I remember you mentioning it in the eTutoring session.I just listened to the audio in question: first of all, it is not a sound that should be there, in theory.I think Chris is right about the lips being tight to form the 'u' sound, and the fact that it is at the end of a word that is used to welcome people. So to emphasize (or express) his emotion at the moment, the speaker would sort of 'trail off' with this extra sound.Again, Chris is right with 'oui': You would definitely hear it a lot, especially when exaggerating the answer.If I come across some videos with examples, I will post them!
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Thank you both, Christopher and Sev. Those are just the kinds of answers I was looking for. Merci beaucoup.
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I wanted to add that people in France have noticed the phenomenon, which has apparently become more significant in the last twenty years or so. It seems true in particular with girls, especially with vendors, which tend to lengthen the last vowel, with a sort of 'chuintement' (hissing). It may even be a class issue, perhaps done as an expression of politeness, not to be too affirmative.Also noticed among students (teens especially) is a tendency to add an "e"(uh) on the last word of the sentence; for example: "Arrête eee!"(Stop (bothering me)!) or "Mais laisse-moi eee!" ([Won't you] leave me!), even though in the last case there is no vowel!
