Le chat se prépare pour Halloween

Le chat se prépare pour Halloween// The cat is getting ready for Halloween

Today in class absolutely nothing happened that was in any way related to Halloween. So I decided to remedy that with this little pic. And that's how I found that French not only has reflexive verbs (verbe pronominal ou verbe réfléchi), it also forms them the same way as Spanish (with -se). Well, at least sometimes, for third person singular. I am not sure about the first and second person.

Come to think of that, the "s'" in "peut-il s'inscrire" probably has the same origin.

So, anyway. The Cat is getting ready for Halloween. Lazy creature that he is, he can't be bothered to even cut the eye-holes properly. Now he is busy putting his signature on the back of the pumpkin (une citrouille).

True artist - however half-baked the product might be, you gotta sign it.  (c) Justin Case

le chat est japonais

Le chat est japonais. Le matcha est une boisson japonaise.// The cat is Japanese. Matcha is a japanese drink

Today, we were concentrating of toponym-derived masculine and feminine adjectives. The word "Japanese" will have slightly different endings in "she is Japanese" and "he is Japanese".

"Boisson", "drink" is feminine in French. The sumo wrestler cat is a tomcat, i.e. he takes a masculine adjective.

I still don't know if there is a neuter grammatical gender in French, but I will figure it out eventually.

Well, I figured it was a perfect moment for my favorite character to cast off his beret and baguette and show his true (japanese, dunno feminine or masculine) nature.

In other news, there are no black Koi pen-brushes in the shops. This is partially the reason for casting off the beret - I don't like coloring it is with a fineliner pen.

Un chat parisien peut-il s'inscrire à la bibliothèque de la Sorbonne s'il habite à Paris?

Un chat parisien peut-il s'inscrire à la bibliothèque de la Sorbonne s'il habite à Paris? //  Can a parisian cat join the library of Sorbonne if he lives in Paris?

Today, we had a test of "comprehension of written text". In order to prepare us for it, our teacher asked us to read the membership rules of the library of Sorbonne and choose "true" or "false" for each of seven statements.

First statement was "A student from Las Palmas Uni can join the library" The answer was (mostly*) "false", because those elitist bastards in Sorbonne ask you to be either a french student above certain year, or a professor, or a scientist, etc. Students of LPU didn't fall into any of those categories.

Second statement was: "If you live in a shared flat in Paris, you can come and join the library". Most people answered "false".  And !SUDDENLY! a huge argument ensued. The main arguments for saying "true" were, it seems "why would you deny a poor guy who shares a flat in Paris his membership? Doesn't he have a right to at least come and try, what if he does qualify?" and "but you should consider each question separately".  Set theory? Necessary and Sufficient conditions? Coherency? Never mind all that.

I do hope the idea was to make us read every text very, very carefully. But by the end of the discussion the answer to a simple yes/no question like "Is your name Tutankhamun?" could as well be "A Suffusion of Yellow".

(Very confused) sumo wrestler cat wishes to get a library card. Can he please? He brought a lot of papers, and he even has a baguette to prove his residence. He is wearing a beret, for God's sake. What else can you possibly want of a cat? It doesn't say anywhere cats can't join.

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* - mostly, because there exist a small matter of laissez-passer temporaire (temporary pass) which can be obtained under certain circumstances. But let's not get (even more) confused.

Fuseau horaire

Fuseau horaire // Time zone

Today, much to my chagrin, I have discovered that not only I confuse six and seven when I need to write them down, but I confuse place names in the same manner. Well, maybe not all place names, but still, it was embarrassing.

I came into the classroom a bit late, and the teacher was about to start playing an audio in which two people were talking on a plane. Knowing full well that he will ask us to repeat all the details of the conversation, I listened carefully while pulling my pen and a notebook out of the backpack and started taking notes as soon as I was ready. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds between me hearing “Hong Kong” being mentioned and writing down ... TADA! ... Thailand.

And I was absolutely, one hundred percent sure what I wrote was correct, which made it especially amusing for my classmates and the teacher.

And then came the discussion about time zones and time difference between Paris and Thailand and I discovered that I wildly overestimate it. It is only six hours it seems; I was sure, don’t ask me why, that it was around twelve.

Well, anyhow. Another day, another discovery.

PS: And the Parisian cat (Le chat parisien) looks like he just broke out of a prison.

Pictures related to cats @ Shutterstock.

La femme boit avant le cheval

pour la femme, pour le cheval // for the woman, for the horse

This time, an illustration for another delightfully silly (and horsey) phrase from Duolingo : "La femme boit avant le cheval" - "The woman drinks before the horse".

I don't know who is thinking up these phrases, but I suspect they occasionally get bored and introduce something nonsensical just to amuse themselves. 

Kind of reminds me of an old student joke : "А электрод я взял деревянный, потому что этот диплом все равно никто читать не будет." - "I used a wooden electrode since no-one gonna read this thesis anyway". I don't know how international it is, maybe it is a part of the students' lore everywhere.

mon chat, ma souris, mes animaux

mon chat, ma souris, mes animaux // my cat, my mouse, my animals

To demonstrate the possessive adjectives, I wanted to draw one male and one female cat. Duolingo mentions female cats (chatte) in many lessons. However, when I used google translate to make sure I spell everything correctly, I discovered that it refuses to use the word "chatte" point-blank, insisting on using "chat" (which is a male cat) with qualifiers. Like, for example:"we have a tomcat, female" (huh?).

A little search brought up the answer - "chatte", although formally correct,  has transcended its original (at least I think it is original) meaning and now is firmly associated with female genitalia. I.e. more or less the same story as with "Pussy".

Well, Duolingo has its faults I guess. Good thing I've checked though.

I quickly changed a female cat to a mouse (f).  Now everything is in order and unambiguous, I hope. I don't like how the mouse turned out though.

He works in a lab

Il travaille dans un laboratoire. Il est chimiste // He works in a lab. He is a chemist

We carry on with the professions, as you can plainly see from the pic. We also had a long explanation about possessive adjectives in French. To be honest, I didn’t get what was the problem. It might well be some specific difficulty that Spanish speakers tend to have. Or I might have missed the point completely. I’ll report next week, when the lessons and pictures resume.

The cat doesn’t like it the lab either, though maybe not so much as in the eggplant jungle. Nobody knows why did he get there, but that’s cats for you.

And hooray for me — another week done (another Koi pen brush for me!)

meterse en berenjenales

Today, I'd like to take a breather from French and talk about a funny expression our teacher used. It was in my french class, so it fits here, sort of.

We have only been doing french for a month, so we can't handle any complex concepts. I did have a go at one though; when my teacher finally understood what I was trying to say he said "Te metes en berenjenales". The meaning was immediately apparent from the context - "you are getting yourself into trouble", but I thought the expression he used was funny. Literally it means "you are getting into eggplant patches".  

Explanation, as I later found, is as follows - eggplants' stems have spines, so if you somehow get yourself into an eggplant patch it will be difficult to get out. 

First I couldn't believe that there is such a specialized word as "berenjenal" (eggplant patch), so it made me imagine a sort of jungle of eggplants. Alas, the word does exist, but I still prefer to think of it as an eggplant jungle.


And here you have it. Sumo wrestler cat has gotten himself into an eggplant forest; he doesn't like it at all, I am afraid.

une chanteuse camerounaise

C'est une chanteuse camerounaise. Elle étudie à Paris et elle chante en anglais.// She is a Cameroonian singer. She studies in Paris and she sings in English.

 

Today we were doing the professions. It took our teacher a goodish while to explain the difference between C'est une(un)... and Elle/il est ...  and why the indefinite article is used in the first construction and not in the other.

Interestingly (unless I am mistaken), it would be easier for him if everybody knew Russian. First construction is a direct analog of  "Это одна (или некая) певица" and the second "Она певица".

dans la rue

dans la rue, passant (m), trottoir (m) // in the street, passerby, pavement. поребрик as a bonus track

Today we watched a short video where a young women with a clipboard was stopping passersby to talk to them about their likes and dislikes. Out of three persons she asked two refused to speak to her, and none of those two smiled at any point. Though I know it's just a silly "basic french" video,  I think it sort of contributes to the "arrogant french" stereotype. The stereotype that doesn't agree with the impressions I got during my (alas, very short) visits to France. 

(Sumo wrestler cat would have had much easier experience being an interviewer. After all, nobody can be more arrogant than a cat)

un couple d'éléphants

un couple d'éléphants heureux // a couple of happy elephants

today nothing inspired me during the lesson, so I had to go to Duolingo again.
and here we are - a couple of elephants.

they turned out to be happy elephants :)

Anniversaire

c’est mon anniversaire aujourd’hui // it’s my birthday today

Once I’ve finished drawing a туева хуча (pardon my Russian, it means, er... an awful lot) of candles, and started adding flames I automatically counted them and SUDDENLY! realized that this awful lot was not nearly enough to represent my actual age. Jeez.

Aaanyway... Not sure why the sumo wrestler cat from the previous post crawled into the pic, but here he is.

I promised myself a little prezzie from stationery shop for every week I manage to make as many posts as we had classes. I am looking forward to another Koi pen-brush, they are great.

Pictures related to birthdays, cakes, candles and things @ Shutterstock.

les chats

les chats sont nombreux / cats are numerous

Last Christmas we bought a white matte bauble with an idea to cover it with some sort of imperfectly repeating pattern. I don't think we made it, but "multitude of cats" was one of the possibilities we considered. So as not to let it go to waste - here it is.

Can you spot a sumo wrestler (lutteur de sumo)?

Le cheval a huit ans

Le cheval a huit ans / The horse is eight years old

This time the phrase comes from Duolingo site. I thought it was rather adorable and lends itself well to a little drawing.

Judging by the discussion under the phrase, native English speakers find it difficult to accept that age construction can contain verb “to have” (“avoir” in French, “a” in third person singular) and not the equivalent of “to be”. Fortunately I have already passed though this stage with Spanish. Spaniards also “have” their years, not “are” them, if I may say so.

Come to think of it, the Russian construction “Тебе сколько лет?” — “Мне 50”, implies by the grammatical cases that somebody went and gave the years to the speaker. I.e., the question can be interpreted as “How many years (were given to) you?” and the answer “I (was given) 50”. If so, Russians also “have” their years.

S’il vous plaît

silver plate / s’il vous plaît / please

I always assumed that the use of “silver plate” in Nanny Ogg’s “fake foreign” was Terry Pratchett’s invention. I was quite surprised to find it listed as one of “American fighting words and phrases”. In the same capacity of course — as a way to remember how to say “please”, “s’il vous plaît”, in French. Maybe it is more widely used than I thought.

While we are on the subject, did you know that “Yellow blue vase” sounds like a very polite and formal (and not very well pronounced) “I love you” in Russian? If you didn’t, let it be your daily bit of useless knowledge.

Continuing with free associations: in a Russian folk tale there is an episode where a silver plate (saucer, to be more precise) and an apple were used for divination. This explains the weird writing on the sketch.

I am not sure whether all the above will help me to remember the spelling of s’il vous plaît, but silver plate is now etched in my memory.

Numbers

vingt, dix, quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt dix / twenty, ten, eighty, ninety

I must admit that numbers are not my strongest point in any language. That is, while being perfectly happy operating with figures, I have certain difficulty in writing numbers down as words. That applies to both cardinal and ordinal numbers, and my troubles start already in Russian. I am happy to write 1916 but ask me to write it as words and that will definitely give me a pause (is it “тысяча” or “одна тысяча”, “девятсот” or “девятьсот”?). I will figure it out eventually, of course, but the pause will be there.

English and Spanish numbers both come with their own sets of pauses to bestow on me.

Now, we only just started with numbers, but I must say it already looks like French takes the macaron biscuit. I mean, eighty is “quatre-vingts”, which is “four (by) twenty” and ninety — “quatre vingt dix”, i.e. “four (by) twenty (plus) ten”.

I mean, wha’?

In other news, our French class keeps growing, so much so that I found “my” corner place in the second (and last) row occupied when I entered the class today. So I had to sit in the first row. That, in turn, made further sketching of my classmates’ ears impossible. Maybe I should come earlier tomorrow, sit in my usual spot and glare at anybody who dares to approach.

Food

formule de jour /daily special

We spoke about food today (and many other things). To me, “formule de jour”, “formula of the day” is reminiscent of an alchemy labs with a tangle of glass vessels and crucibles all joined by transparent tubes with green liquid running through them.

While meaning simply “daily special”.

Beautiful language. Bit crazy though.