The Worst to Know

Let us just start by the bad news ... There is no one-to-one equivalence. You can not take an english sentence, translate each word one by one and make it a french sentence. Even the worst automatic translator does better and still does bad.

Think of the very simple sentence 'I am 37'. We say in french "j'ai 37 ans" which would translate to I have 37 years and not I am. There are thousands of examples of this kind.

We do not pronounce the letters same as in English. There is just a very short list of consonants that we say the same way in English and French (b,c,d,f,k,l,m,n,p,q,s,t,v,x,z). All the rest of them are pronounced in another way. Sometimes really different. French r's and u's are utterly impossible to say for an english speaker.

In French, every name is or male or female, we do not have neutral gender for things. In English, we use the pronoun 'she' for boats but most of the things which are not people are designed by a neutral 'it' even if we know they are male or female (for pets for instance). In French, no 'it'. Absolutely every word is male or female and there is no logic behind it. A table is female, a chair too, but an armchair is male. And of course, there are words in French that are both and have a completely different meaning depending on their gender. The french word 'livre' is 'book' when it is male but 'pound' (measure or currency) when it is female.

Still reading ? Don't worry, there a good counterpart to all this.

Same as french people speak English with an awful and strong accent, French know that English speak French in a curious and delightful way. A large majority of french people perfectly understands the english accent when talking French. Those who don't are not really interesting people, don't bother.

About the gender, the good thing is you are not trying to learn German or Russian or you would to face three genders instead of two. And same we like the english accent, French are fond of all these little mistakes that English make about the gender.

And there are very difficult quizz games on the french TV, about the gender of rare words. So don't worry, even French don't know !