A Week in France - part 1

I think the best way to teach and learn French is by story-telling. So here goes an effort. Let me know if you like it.
***
You have been corresponding with this French girl for over a year. She writes and speaks excellent English and of course French. You are on your way to meet her for the first time. You are flying to Paris. You land and there she is waiting for you ...

You: "Bonjour!"
She: "Bonjour!"

You: "Comment allez vous? How are you?" (Pronounced: kommoN tallay voo)
She: "I think we have known each other for some time now." She says smiling.

Wow! Ok ... rewind

You: "Ça va?" (Suh vah)
She: "Ça va bien, merci! Et toi? Fine Thank you. And you?" (Suh vah bee-aN, mayor-si! Ay tuwah)

There! That was not difficult. Was it?
***
'Vous' and 'tu' are forms of 'you'. Use 'Vous' when you address elders and strangers. Use 'tu’ when you address friends and family. Here the variation of 'tu' used is 'toi', meaning 'to you'.
'Comment' is 'how'.
'allez' is a verb form (conjugation) of 'aller' meaning 'to go' – we will deal with this a bit more later on - so, what you asked was actually 'How goes it (to) you?' or 'How is it going?’
When, on her encouragement, you switched to the casual form Ça va? you are still saying the same thing: Ça means ‘that’, and ‘va’ is another verb form of ‘aller’ meaning to go: (How) is it going? The response to Ça va? is Ça va. This sounds a little bit strange till you realize that when some says ‘hello’ you respond with a ‘hello’.

The story will continue …

Weaving French into English

This is an extract from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes:

Lestrade laughed. “I am afraid that I am still a sceptic,” he said. “Theories are all very well but we have to deal with a hard-headed British jury.”
“Nous verrons,” answered Holmes calmly. “You work your own method, and I shall work mine. …”

And this is from Pride and Prejudice:

“Yes; these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that they both like Vingt-un better than Commerce; but with respect to any other leading characteristics, I do not imagine that much has been unfolded.”

I am quite struck by the usage of French words in these classics. To quote in French is one thing (as shown in my previous post), but to weave French words in normal conversation as if it belongs is quite another. It is just like when we speak in India at present. English words come and go as we speak in Hindi or any other regional language. We know that the person we are talking to will understand.

Evidently, French was a world language once upon a time, just as English is. What happened? How did French go out of style? It should be interesting to trace the history of the decline of French as the world language.

By the way, vingt-un used by Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice is not exactly correct. I should be vignt-et-un (twenty and one), but you could drop the "et" while talking, I suppose.

Pronunciations:
Nous verrons [hear] = (We will see)
Vingt-et-un [hear] = (Twenty-one)

Sherlock Holmes Speaks French

No, I did not get that wrong. It is definitely Sherlock Holmes and not Poirot that I wish to refer to.

Towards the end of Adventure II - The Red-Headed League, Sherlock spews French: L'homme c'est rien - l'oeuvre c'est tout. ( = The man is nothing – it his (the collection of) work is all (that matters)).

I shouldn’t be surprised though. There was a time when every Englishman considered himself uneducated if he could not speak fluent French.

And here are the pronunciations:
L'homme [hear], c'est [hear], rien [hear], l'oeuvre [hear], tout [hear]