Le dimanche 16 Juillet 2006 19:43, Winsor Crosby a écrit :
> I am sure your knowledge of French is better than mine. My comment
> was based on several such assertions made in guide books and phrase
> books, and my experience hearing French conversations while traveling
> over the years.
Take my word for it, you can speak french without accentuating anything,
you'll be understood anyway ; anglo-saxons speakers have many hurdles to
overcome before thinking about that, and to begin with, the correct gender
for articles (le, la) is a sure giveaway for a foreigner.
> Even from what you say an invariable accent on a
> certain syllable does not seem to be part of the word as it is in
> English, German, or Spanish.
That is untrue. To the contrary (and it's scarce in french), there are no
singularity in that rule, while english is highly irregular depending on
where the considered word comes from. To me, it's like having to learn
english twice : once I had to get the basics of the vocabulary, and then,
after some years of practice and travels, when I really began to be "fluent",
I had to go through the dictionary a second time to know where the accent
was. I can't pretend to be bilingual, but funnily, when I meet native english
speakers now, they've got a much harder time guessing where I'm from. I've
heard everything from Australia to Scotland along with Canada and Wales, but
when I say 'french' that comes as a big surprise because unlike others I do
take care to accentuate.
--
Manuel Viet
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