OK honestly coming from English or anglaise, as we say here in Frants. The ABCs aren't that big of a leap. However the counting is another thing altogether.
The first ten numbers or eleven if you count zero (which they do) are straight forward. Then the teens are reminiscent of Spanish and then it is back to the familiar system of counting until the magic number of 70. That is where the "wheels come off the bus". There is no word for 70 so you say 60 + 11 for 71 etc until you get to 80 where it goes to 4x20 which is 80 then 4x20+1, etc. It doesn't stop there. At 90 you say 4x20+11 which is 91 and use that until you get to 100.
However in other Francophone countries they have succumbed to numbering that resembles anglaise so if you go to Montreal or Belgium or Switzerland you have to learn the other numbers for 70 through 99!
Even though I am learning the numbers it is still really hard for me to hear them. People say them fast just like in the US then look at me and my attempt to count in my head (and, I will admit, sometimes on my fingers) and say the numbers in English.
It has been two days and a week of French lessons and I was starting to despair but this weekend on our bike ride we stopped for directions and afterwords I realized that I basically understood what he had said ! None of the subtleties but I got that the road was close ahead because they were doing work on it. Whether he was able to slip in, you, "DoDo Head" I will never know ;-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment