French language lessons. Mods please read it!

[Spiffor]

Et c'est vrai que c'est carrément plus facile pour moi d'écrire en Français et de traduire en Anglais que de faire cet exercice depuis une autre langue étrangère, l'Allemand par exemple.

It's true it's clearly easier for me to write in French and then translate in English than to do the same thing from another language, like, say, German

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Agathon
I'm happy. I've been trying to learn how to read French for one of my requirements and I managed to get most of this without having to resort to a dictionary.

D'un autre côté, le niveau n'est pas trop dur. Même si c'est vrai que j'essaye d'avoir un ton naturel, ce qui implique qu'il y a des expressions idiomatiques pas forcément évidentes

OTOH, It hasn't been too difficult so far... Even if I tried to sound natural, meaning there are some colloquialisms

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by paiktis22
Still if someone would like to take on that task of translating what another one wrote... but I doubt it, or I doubt it will last.

Et je prefère dire tout de suite que ça va pas être moi

I sure won't

[Ben Kenobi]

I don't like having to translate either.

Have you had much experience in French, Agathon?

Does the Greek and Latin help?

Avez-vous plus d'experience en Francais?

Aide-t-il à connaître la grec et latin ?

[Richelieu]

For those of you who are wondering, you can have the french accents on your keyboards by adding french in Control Panel - Language and regional options (or keyboard IIRC, depending on your version of WinXP) You can then switch between French and English layout with Left Shift + Alt. I have to write a lot of emails in both french and english and that's what i use.
It does take some getting used to though.

[Ben Kenobi]

Not helpful unless you are on your own computer, but thanks for the suggestion, Richelieu.

[lord of the mark]

babel = babylon. (actually bavel) KJV translated Bavel as Babylon when refering to the city, but simply transliterated the name of the tower, which is the reference in the language translator.

[Atahualpa]

You can even make shortcuts for all the different keyboards.
I have
Alt-Shift-0 spanish keyboard
Alt-Shift-1 german keyboard
Alt-Shift-2 english keyboard
Alt-Shift-3 russian keyboard
(and now) Alt-Shift-4 french keyboard

But I am lucky since there is an accent key on german keyboard and I just press this and then e for example and get é or shift-accent and e gets è, áàíìóòúù only the cedille I can't write.

I just installed french keyboard:
azertyuiop
qsdfghjklm
wxcvbn

Don't tell me that this is the french keyboard layout!?!?!!!!

[Spiffor]

Eh si. Tu imagines maintenant l'horreur, le cauchemar que c'est pour un français de devoir s'ahbituer aux claviers QWERTZ allemands?

Si tu cherches les accents, le é est sur la touche 2, le è sur le 7, et le à sur le 0. N'appuie pas sur Maj [Umschlag] pour obtenir les caractères spéciaux... Il ne faut appuyer sur Maj seulement quand tu veux écrire un chiffre

Here's me whining about the horror of German keyboards, and explaining how to write é è and à with a virtual French keyboard

[Frozzy]

Je ne suis pas bien en français... J'espère vous aidez moi

(I'm not very good at French. I hope you can help me.)

[Atahualpa]

é è á à ú ù ó ò ô û ê â

Pas de problem avec des clavier allemands. Seulement avec la cedilla j'ai une problem. Je dois changer a french et c'est sûr la neuf.
Mais la system de pressing accent avant de pressing vocal, je l'aime. Pour moi cette lettres no sont pas unique lettres, et avec spanish c'est la même. La lettre que es ü en alleman en español est la lettre de les accents. Quite praktisch

[Spiffor]

C'est vrai que le systême Allemand est meilleur je trouve. Surtout pour ceux qui ont des ordis portables comme moi, et qui doivent appuyer sur Maj à chaque fois qu'ils doivent écrire un nombre

Mais bon, on s'y fait.

In the previous post, Atahualpa explains the German system of typing the accent first before typing the letter is better, in that it's easier to port to other languages. I agree, and whine a bit more

[Frozzy]

Pourquoi-y a il accents? Anglais a un combinaison de lettres, n'accent pas... C'est très difficile. Et pourquoi est très avec un grave, n'aigu pas? C'est prononça "tray", non?

This French is probably extremely sloppy.

(Why are there accents? English has a combination of letters, no accents... it's very difficult. And why is "very" with a grave, not an acute. It's pronounced "tray", non?)

[Ben Kenobi]

Can you hear the difference between

esp(e)re and (e)crire?

espehre, aycrire?

[Frozzy]

I realise that, but esp(uh)re and (ay)crire are graves and acutes respectively, whereas tr(ay) follows the acute pronounciation but is a grave.

Makes no sense to me.