Questions tagged [french]
Romance language, official in 29 states, including France, Belgium and Côte d'Ivoire. For non-linguistic questions about the French language, visit our sister site French Language Stack Exchange.
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Meaning of the root "ject"
What does the root "ject" mean? It occurs in words such as "subject", "object", "project", "injection", "surjection", "bijection". As far as I know these words came to English from French and, in turn,...
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Why has Paris French mostly lost the distinction between /e/ and /ɛ/?
Why has Paris French mostly lost the distinction between /e/ and /ɛ/? As in, the difference between 'Je le ferai' and 'Je le ferais', 'poignée' and 'poignet', or more simply between the é sound and ...
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List of French minimal pairs
I recently asked a general question about minimal pairs (i.e. words that differ by one phoneme) and got a link to a website that provides a comprehensive list of English minimal pairs.
Is there a ...
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Why do Spanish and other Romance Languages use the preposition "a" for culinary styles?
I've looked in the Real Academia Española dictionary and I can't find any information regarding why Spanish uses the preposition a for cooking styles, and I've noticed French and Italian do it too. I ...
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German help regarding the origin of a last name [closed]
We are trying to find the origin of our family name. Ending with "AU" I thought it might be maybe of german decent. Our last name is "Arsenau". Any word in german that sounds like "arsen" ?
That last ...
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Language transfer for second language learners (French-English)
How does language transfer occur from French to English within native french speakers' mind? Can we observe this phenomenon ?
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Universals and emphatic pronouns
In (spoken) English, the object pronouns "me/you/her/him/us/them" are, in some sense, the "unmarked" pronouns. (I only claim native knowledge of English as it is spoken in parts of the US). By this I ...
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What is the postfix that makes "figurine" diminutive of "figure"?
"figurine" means "little figure".
From etymonline:
figurine (n.) [Look up figurine at Dictionary.com]
1854, from French figurine (16c.), from Italian figurina, diminutive of figura, from ...
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What part of speech is the French "à la mode"?
What is "à la mode" in French? I am thinking it must be an adjective but wondering how this might be represented in an arbre syntagmatique.
I am new to linguistics and just trying to get a solid ...
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What is the etymological relationship between French "feu", Lao "ເຝີ" (feu), and Vietnamese "phở"?
In both Lao cuisine and Vietnamese cuisine there exists a noodle dish with a similar name. Lao ເຝີ (feu) and Vietnamese phở.
Each Wikipedia article discusses the possibility of the dish/word being ...
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Why did England not maintain French as a spoken language?
In many countries around the world, especially in Africa, the people natively speak both an indigenous language and French due to French colonization.
The Norman conquest of England left us with many,...
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What are the differences between the French and English [i] and how does it affect the perception?
I'm rephrasing my question after (very helpful) comments to my initial version:
What are the differences between the [i] produced by French speakers (in French) and English speakers (in English)?
...
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How are these rolled "r"s pronounced?
I recently came upon a viral/funny Quebecois video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InMJopurNTE
In it, the guy is pronouncing his "r"s (e.g. in gros, bras) very oddly. I can't reproduce this sound, ...
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Similarity between Salut in French and Salaam in Arabic
I noticed a similarity between the word Salut in French and the word سلام in Arabic which is pronounced Salaam and they both mean "safety and well-being" and are both used as a general greeting to ...
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Why don't the French pronounce consonants at the ends of words?
I am curious what could have caused the shift in pronunciation. I presume it must have occurred after the spelling of words was standardized. According to the History of French wikipedia article, this ...
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How does the sound change from L. "benedictionem" to O.Fr. "beneiçon" happen?
benison
c.1300, "blessing, beatitude," from O.Fr. beneiçon "blessing, benediction," from L. benedictionem (see benediction).
Similarly, the word malison comes in the exact way described above.
In ...
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Are there ways to infer the ending of the French past participle? [closed]
The French past participle (participe passé) is easily inferable with regard to first and second group verbs:
manger -> mangé
finir -> fini
I would like to know if there is any way to infer the ...
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What is the present tense expressing future?
Perhaps this question has been asked before, I may have looked for the wrong terms then because I haven't found the answer.
I would like to know more about the usage of the present tense in sentences ...
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Plural "you" in different language families connoting respect
I recently found out that French has two different words for "you."
From here:
Tu is the familiar "you," which demonstrates a certain closeness and informality. ... Vous is the formal "you." It is ...
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Why do some languages not have the "th" sound?
Why some languages don't have the "th" sound? (voiced and voiceless dental fricatives)
They say languages such as French, Turkish etc don't have the "th" sound as in "thin" and "then".
I sometimes ...
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When and how did French become a non-null-subject language?
First of all, what does "null-subject" mean? Taken from the Wikipedia page for "Null-subject languages":
[…] a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an ...
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How can adjective-noun order in French be explained by parameter theory?
I just finished reading The Atoms of Language. The gist is that languages have parameters, one of which will tell you which side of a phrase to add a new word.
But in some languages, like French and ...
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French conjugation, spoken vs written
French verbs are conjugated depending on the subject's person and number (ex. je parle, tu parles, il parle, etc.) However in spoken language most of these sound the same anyway because the end part ...
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