This is a wee collection of thoughts and comments about French that have been at the back of my mind for a while that I wanted to set down ‘on paper’ as it were.
The most obvious difference between English and French is that there are about 7 times more words in the former than in the latter (500,000 vs 70,000). English is a mongrel blend of German, Dutch, Danish, Norse, and French, with some Latin, Greek, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, and Spanish influences in there for good measure. The French language is essentially derived from Latin, although there are flavours of Gaulish and Norse in there too. France is also rather unique in having an arcane body known as the Academie Française whose purpose is to preserve the purity of their language and all its foibles. English, being the de-facto international language, is far less worried about becoming diluted and assimilates new words easily.
This means that there are usually many more ways to express something in English than in French. For a given concept, we often have the choice between the direct, snappy Germanic or Scandinavian word (eg, “tired”) or the longer, more poetic French version (“fatigued”). This is why English crosswords are a lot harder than French ones. In French, if someone says to you “tu es gênant”, without context, you have no idea if you are: bothering them, embarrassing them, annoying them, or are just physically in their way. Not to mention that “un baiser” is a kiss but as a verb, “baiser” means something altogether more intimate.
The French solution to having a dearth of nouns is to use combinations. The word for potato is “pomme-de-terre” which literally means “apple of the ground”, and the word for bat is “chauve-souris” or “bald mouse“. (Just why they’re called that is anyone’s guess). This lack of nouns is most evident with their numbering system, which is just bonkers. 70 is “soixante-dix”, or “sixty-ten”, 80 is “quatre-vingts”, or “four-twenties” and 99 is “quatre-vingts dix-neuf”, or “four-twenties ten-nine”. This is clearly a farce. I once jokingly suggested names for the missing nouns – “septante” for 70, “octante” for 80, “nonante” for 90 – and was later amazed to learn that not only do those very words already officially exist, but that the French are unique in the francophone world for being the only ones not to use them. Ask a Swiss or a Belgian and he’ll tell you 70 is septante*. No-one’s quite sure why the French are different**, but it supposedly originated from an ancient weighing system that was based on units of 20. Sounds just like the sort of daft thing the Academie Française would keep going.
Having fewer words to choose from inevitably leads to there being many homonyms in French. For example, one could say “je vais voler”. Without context you’re either stating you are going to steal or to fly. Similarly, as a man, one can say “je suis une femme” and not be lying: “je suis” means both “I am” and “I am following”. One can also order a ‘lawyer salad’ without being a cannibal: the word for “lawyer” is the same as for “avocado”: “avocat”. The words “earlier” and “later” in French are identical (and in fact, just like with “potato”, it’s not one word, it’s a phrase: “tout à l’heure”, or literally, “all at the time”). Without the rest of the sentence, you’ve no idea whether the past or future is being referenced. Or take the word “loulou” which, implausibly, can mean either “thug”, or “sweetie”. It’s the same with homophones. In written French, the spelling is at least there to differentiate between things like “ver”, “vers”, “vert” and “verre” (all pronounced the same but mean “worm”, “towards”, “green” and “glass” respectively). But when it comes to speaking, context is everything.
In French, if there’s one subject that tends to benefit from a rich vocabulary, its food. There is a major exception to this though: “pâte”. This versatile word can be “pasta”, “pastry”, “batter”, “cake mix”, or pretty much any sort of paste. Remember to always read the recipe carefully or you could end up making some very odd dishes. One of my favourite examples of a word having multiple uses is “devoir”. Among its many translations, it means “have to”, “obliged to”, “must”, “need” and “duty”. But pluralise it and it becomes “les devoirs”, or “homework”. Another great one is the word “tache”. This covers a range of English words: “smudge”, “spot”, “mark”, “blemish”, “stain”… but it also means “task” or “chore”, which fits well with the theme.
Despite English being a richer language, it is in many ways far simpler. We ditched the formal/informal you/thou distinction around 200 years ago, and scrapped noun genders 300 years before that. Both of these concepts are integral to French, much to the exasperation of those trying to learn it. It wouldn’t be so bad, in the case of noun genders, if there were rules one could learn – ‘all fruits are feminine’, say. Sadly, just as you think you’ve found one, you find exceptions that ruin it. Take methods of transport: “train”, “bateau”, “avion” are all masculine, but man’s principal vehicle, the car (“voiture”) is feminine. Things get far weirder when it comes to anatomy. The female reproductive organ in French is a masculine word. The proper word for the male organ is masculine too, but every other name for it (and, as with every language on Earth, there are many) is feminine. What that is about I cannot fathom.
Weirder still, there are words that have different meanings when you change their gender. For example, “un poêle” is a stove, but “une poêle” is a frying pan. Or take “livre”. In the masculine, it’s a book, but feminise it and you’re referencing the pound sterling. And be careful with “chèvre” as depending on your choice of “le” or “la”, you’re either talking about a goat, or about cheese. The same confusion can arise with a simple change of accent – take the verb “pêcher” – to fish. Swap the accent circonflexe for an aigu and you get “pécher”, which means to sin. For added confusion, they are pronounced identically either way.
An even more bizarre case is love – “amour”. This is a masculine word… until pluralised, when it becomes feminine. There can be no earthly practical reason for this. The Academie Française just like to make things complicated. They are also to blame for irritating words like “oreille” and “adresse” which they insist are feminine, but because they start with a vowel, they take the masculine possessive. It’s hard to say “ma oreille” and “ma adresse”, so you say “mon oreille” and “mon adresse”, as if they were masculine words. Why they don’t just call them masculine words is anyone’s guess.
* To the French, the Belgians are the butt of all jokes (much like the Irish are for the English). They’re regarded as being a bit simple, so a Frenchman might say that there’s no guarantee a Belgian would answer this correctly…
** Barring the obvious fact that the French always have to be different – read up on the history of GMT for a classic example of this.