French Basics

I suppose my relatives all speak a good degree of English because they are aware that we lazy Americans don't all speak French, or horrible French xD At least I went to school there...

Shall I add some random words for you, Noor, ma chérie (my dear)?

oui s'il vous plait ma puce!!

Ok, lol...

LOL= EDR (écroule de rire)
the preposition à has a downward accent, the "accent grave", not upward (aigut? Égu? Faz hiw do you spell it? )... Don't get them mixed up anyhow. They have slight differences in pronunciation; I can't explain but I'll show you on LM

cocotte = chicken, but in a diminutive way... "ma cocotte" is often used by family to denote affection.

Une poule mouillée = a wet chicken... Yes, this is the way to say a scaredy-cat in French

C'est le fin des haricots! = it's the end of the green beans! ..another odd idiom meaning "it's the last straw!"

Hahahahah! Now that's random! Poor her, she's just starting to learn and we're already stuffing her with these complicated expressions! Haha..
Anyway, we tend to use "MDR" (mort de rire) more than "EDR" (never heard of it, but it maybe exists ) Alors PTDR, XPTDR,...

LOL = mdr I know ya Anna, algerians use it

Poisson de avril = april fools?

Bonjour!! I just spent the morning writing all this up Four pages, wooooh thanks! and my hand kills haha.

Okay, some questions s'il vous plait!

1. Sometimes you did é(e) like in désolé(e), what does that mean?

2. Okay, so you have two accented a's, one á and the other the other way round? When spelling something Faz do you do it by pronounciation, or is it just something you learn?

3. How do I pronounce z in french? Like venez - vous? vene vou? or venez vou? or venez vous? haha

Dragonie -> we say chicken too in english for scaredy cat, so I suppose wet chicken isnt too off ma cocotte!!

Merci beaucoup! Also, I'm off to install the french keyboard, (you know its serious when I've installed the keyboard I know have english (U.K), Arabic (Lebanon), Spanish (Mexico) I still cant find the accents on that one dragoniee and French (France), so can you tell me which letters are the
á and é and funky c etc? Gracias!! Oh pardon I meant Merci

Je t'aime!!! J'adore!!
Oh another question, whats the difference?

1. Désolé = Sorry (when you are a boy)
Désolée = Sorry (when you are a girl)

2. We have two accented a's, they're: à and â
I give you the correct spelling everytime I write something. But the pronounciation is quite different from the spelling in french, so you also have the pronounciation underneath since you asked me.

3. You pronounce z like in english, EXCEPT when it's at the end of a word (most often, 2nd person plural verb forms).
Example: Venez-vous should be pronounced Veney-voo.

4. Here are all the accented letters and their pronouciations:
é = ey
è = ey (slightly different)
ê = eh
à = aa
â = aah
î = i
ô = owh
ç = s
In fact it isn't really a matter of pronounciation, it's just spelling.

5. J'adore = I adore
J'aime = I love
J'aime bien = I like
Je t'adore = I adore you
Je t'aime = I love you
Je t'aime bien = I like you

Another few words:

Une chose - a thing
Un objet - an object
Un truc - a slang word for thing commonly used.

I dont want to sound like a broken record, but I really do appreciate this 7obi's! Thank you so much, dont think I'm taking it for granted, I really do appreciate your effort ma puce!

Another question -> how do I pluralise in french? puces?

Originally Posted by VivaPalestina

Another question -> how do I pluralise in french? puces?

Exactly! Same as english.

What about apostrophes? Do you have them?

Also, when do I add the extra e for females? For nouns, like petite, grosse, mince?

And when you have a word before un/une you pronounce the last letter right? Like je suis un homme? But then tu es un poisson rouge, you dont pronounce the s do you? and est you dont pronounce the s either if it comes before a une right? How come? Is there an easy rule for me to learn?

Merci!

Yes, we have apostrophes. We use them before vowels only.
Le français. (french)
L'espagnol. (spanish)

You add the extra e for females, for adjectives mainly.
Petit, petite. (small)
Gros, grosse. (fat)
Grand, grande. (tall)
Mince (slim) is an exception, it's mince for a boy or a girl.

You never pronounce the s in es and est, wherever it is.
Es = ey
Est = ey

As for "je suis", "nous sommes" and "vous êtes", you pronounce the last s when the word that's after starts with a vowel.
Je suis émue. (I'm moved) => YOU PRONOUNCE S.
Je suis mince. (I'm slim) => YOU DON'T PRONOUNCE S.
And you have to pronounce it like z.

Merci beacoup! That makes things much easier to understand ma belle!

azertyuiop^^$
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Hey your alphabet is all wrong its QWERTY keyboard, wth is azerty??

So I found the u, the e, the other e, the funky c, and the a with a hat...

Doesnt that leave the two a's?

Dunno, our keyboard is AZERTY, that's just the way it is!

Originally Posted by VivaPalestina

Doesnt that leave the two a's?

What do you mean by that?

Its so different to us I can type so quickly without looking at the keyboard using the english one, but the french one haha.

Um, didnt you say you have an á and the other a with the dash the other way (like the e?)

Also, I forgot, for quel age as tu, is it correct? Because you wrote tu as quel age

Well I guess I too wouldn't feel at ease on a foreign keyboard.

Here are the two A's we have: â and à
Which one can't you do?

You can say: "Quel âge as-tu?" or "Tu as quel âge?", it doesn't matter. Except the first form is slightly more formal.

è
ç
à
ù

erm, wheres the one with a hat?

é = 2
è = 7
ç = 9
à = 0
ù = '

Only ones I could find: Oh zqoz I zrote thqt using the french keyboqrd; not too bqd

You have to use two keys one after the other to make this one: â