This is another non-work related entry of thoughts and comments about the French language that I’ve observed since moving out here several years ago.

The most obvious difference between English and French is that there are about 7 times more words in the former than in the latter (500,000 vs 70,000). English is a mongrel blend of German, Dutch, Danish, Norse, and French, with some Latin, Greek, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, and Spanish influences in there for good measure. The French language is essentially derived from Latin, although there are flavours of Gaulish and Norse in there too.

This means that there are usually many more ways to express something in English than in French. For a given concept, we often have the choice between the direct, snappy Germanic or Scandinavian word (eg, “tired”) or the longer, more poetic French version (“fatigued”). This is why English crosswords are a lot harder than French ones.

In French, if someone says to you “tu es gênant”, without context, you have no idea if you are: bothering them, embarrassing them, annoying them, or are just physically in their way.

The French solution to having a dearth of nouns is to use combinations. The word for potato is “pomme-de-terre” which literally means “apple of the ground”, and the word for bat is, for reasons unknown, “chauve-souris” or “bald mouse”. (Something I rambled on about in a previous post).

This lack of nouns is most evident with their numbering system, which is just bonkers. 70 is “soixante-dix”, or “sixty-ten”, 80 is “quatre-vingts”, or “four-twenties” and 99 is “quatre-vingts dix-neuf”, or “four-twenties ten-nine”. This is clearly a farce. I once jokingly suggested names for the missing nouns – “septante” for 70, “octante” for 80, “nonante” for 90 – and was amazed to learn that not only do those very words already officially exist, but that the French are unique in the francophone world for being the only ones not to use them. Ask a Swiss or a Belgian and he’ll tell you 70 is septante^★. No-one’s quite sure why the French are different^★★, but it supposedly originated from an ancient weighing system that was based on units of 20.

Having fewer words to choose from inevitably leads to there being many homonyms in French. For example, one could say “je vais voler”. Without context you’re either stating you are going to steal or to fly. Similarly, as a man, one can say “je suis une femme” and not be lying: “je suis” means both “I am” and “I am following”. One can also order a ‘lawyer salad’ without being a cannibal: the word for “lawyer” is the same as for “avocado”: “avocat”.

The words “earlier” and “later” in French are identical (and in fact, just like with “potato”, it’s not one word, it’s a phrase: “tout à l’heure”, or literally, “all at the time”). Without the rest of the sentence, you’ve no idea whether the past or future is being referenced. Or take the word “loulou” which, implausibly, can mean either “thug”, or “sweetie”.

It’s the same with homophones. In written French, the spelling is at least there to differentiate between things like “ver”, “vers”, “vert” and “verre” (all pronounced the same but mean “worm”, “towards”, “green” and “glass” respectively). But when it comes to speaking, context is everything.

★ To the French, the Belgians are the butt of all jokes (much like the Irish are for the English). They’re regarded as being a bit simple, so a Frenchman might say that there’s no guarantee a Belgian would answer this correctly…

★★ Barring the obvious fact that the French always have to be different – read up on the history of GMT for a classic example of this.