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Silliest French word I learnt so far

mandryka said:
I realise this is a big ask, but it’s going to bug me a lot if I can’t find the answer, so I wonder if any French speakers feel up to answering this question. I had a conversation about the issue once here with @Steve 57 and @PsB

On the radio this morning - France Culture, so I guess it’s good French.

Le cliché veut que les Français n'aiment pas parler d'argent, que ce serait tabou.

The question, if you haven’t already guessed, is why serait and not soit?
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The explanation is that you have the subjunctive followed by the conditional. Vouloir que does trigger the subjunctive, which is here "aiment" and you missed it because in " aimer " the subj. is the same as the present ind. The bit after the comma is a conditional statement, you are saying that IF you were to do as the French don't like THEN you WOULD be breaking a taboo. Conditional statement.

It's actually the same in English.
I wish that I were (subjunctive) taller, if I were (conditional, here it comes) then I WOULD BE (conditional, ie if X applied them Y would follow) more attractive.
 
Then why the que in que ce serait tabou?
(This is a rabbit hole.)

I just assumed that the second que belonged with the veut.
 
Thinking about it, "que" is fine. You are saying "the French...." up to the comma , and you have spent your subjunctive chip on "aiment", the bit after just says "that this would be ta b oo". Easy.
 
Further illustration, consider "Le cliche veut que les Francais soient francophone, que ce serait normale" .Same structure but now the correct use of the subjunctive is visible.
 
mandryka said:
That is new to me.
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"Ceci" is a conjunction of "ce" and " ici " and means, as you might expect, "this (one) here" . It's a very emphatic way of saying "this" just as you might if comparing two things. "This (or that) is a nice shirt, but *this* one (here) is really something special. You wheel out "ceci" for the second case , where you are really leaning on the emphasis and saying "this precise one". That's why I'd use "ceci" in your original sentence as a way of stressing " Blah blah, veut que, setup, blah blah, and if you did then *THAT* would be...
 
Merci @stevec67 .. as today I learned the exact translation of the famous Magritte painting:

th


I learned French up to age 15, but have forgotten it all since. However, I have been told I have a very natural French accent when I try, thanks to flat-sharing with a French person for years, and copying her accent (okay, “mocking”, maybe...). It’s actually more of a curse than a blessing, as French people assume I can speak good French but am just shy, which leads to an escalation of incomprehension..
 
stevec67 said:
"Ceci" is a conjunction of "ce" and " ici " and means, as you might expect, "this (one) here" . It's a very emphatic way of saying "this" just as you might if comparing two things. "This (or that) is a nice shirt, but *this* one (here) is really something special. You wheel out "ceci" for the second case , where you are really leaning on the emphasis and saying "this precise one". That's why I'd use "ceci" in your original sentence as a way of stressing " Blah blah, veut que, setup, blah blah, and if you did then *THAT* would be...
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I just love pink fish! I joined because I had a couple of questions to resolve about hifi, but I stay because of discussions like this. I can converse ok in French if you don’t mind too many grammatical howlers, but this debate underlines how far from perfect is my French, but also how fascinating are its intricacies. Thank you Mandryka for asking the question and Steve67 for answering it so eloquently.
 
KrisW said:
Merci @stevec67 .. as today I learned the exact translation of the famous Magritte painting:

th


I learned French up to age 15, but have forgotten it all since. However, I have been told I have a very natural French accent when I try, thanks to flat-sharing with a French person for years, and copying her accent (okay, “mocking”, maybe...). It’s actually more of a curse than a blessing, as French people assume I can speak good French but am just shy, which leads to an escalation of incomprehension..
Click to expand...
Il n' y a pas de quoi, Kris.

Accents are funny. When I was living in France and my French was at its best, I had a distinctive English accent that I tried but failed to eradicate. However some people just couldn't hear it, I was on occasion taken for a Belgian and once wrongly accused of being drunk because my words were slurred and I was hesitating over them. My pal pointed out "You do know he's not French, don't you? He is talking to you in his second language" and was greeted with astonishment.
 
mandryka said:
I realise this is a big ask, but it’s going to bug me a lot if I can’t find the answer, so I wonder if any French speakers feel up to answering this question. I had a conversation about the issue once here with @Steve 67 and @PsB

On the radio this morning - France Culture, so I guess it’s good French.

Le cliché veut que les Français n'aiment pas parler d'argent, que ce serait tabou.

The question, if you haven’t already guessed, is why serait and not soit?
Click to expand...
I think these people are using a cliché to introduce an idea, and as they're sophisticated people (they have an open mic on France Culture, after all) they don't want to sound as if they necessarily subscribe to it 100%. So they go all indirect, picking up the cliché with rhetorical tools to keep it at a safe distance. "People who think in clichés say" etc.

As pointed out already, serait is a conditional. The conditional is routinely used to describe a hypothetical situation. It's a standard journalistic device, bringing some needed distance: "allegedly, it is reported that, bla bla bla, but we're not entirely sure as we haven't been able to check yet". In this case, "if you were to go by the cliché, money would be a taboo. But we're a bit more sophisticated than that, aren't we?" If you had soit, it would change the meaning significantly: much more affirmative.

German does something vaguely similar with indirect speech (but using the subjunctive IIRC: Dieter sagte, sie sei faul).
mandryka said:
Then why the que in que ce serait tabou?
(This is a rabbit hole.)

I just assumed that the second que belonged with the veut.
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I think it does, and the idea is just to avoid a clunky repetition of the full "le cliché veut que". Nothing unusual about it, just a simple bit of rhetorical housekeeping (edit: with que doing its job as a relative pronoun).
 
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stevec67 said:
Il n' y a pas de quoi, Kris.

Accents are funny. When I was living in France and my French was at its best, I had a distinctive English accent that I tried but failed to eradicate. However some people just couldn't hear it, I was on occasion taken for a Belgian and once wrongly accused of being drunk because my words were slurred and I was hesitating over them. My pal pointed out "You do know he's not French, don't you? He is talking to you in his second language" and was greeted with astonishment.
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is this you?
 
richardg said:
is this you?
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It's not, but he's sufficiently physically similar to me to be a younger brother. His observations are good too, I did similar things when I was living in France full time. I would regularly come up with the French word first and just chuck it in. I imagine that you must too.
 
stevec67 said:
It's not, but he's sufficiently physically similar to me to be a younger brother. His observations are good too, I did similar things when I was living in France full time. I would regularly come up with the French word first and just chuck it in. I imagine that you must too.
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i've developed a relativley successful habit of guessing what the word might be if i dont know it. Works surprisingly often.
 
richardg said:
i've developed a relativley successful habit of guessing what the word might be if i dont know it. Works surprisingly often.
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It certainly does, it's worked for me for years! If you go to Italy or Spain, just get Stuck in with French and add the odd -o. You want to borrow something in Italian? Not without knowing the word for "borrow" . No chance, unless you know French. Emprunter, you know. So let's try "empruntare" and assume it's an -are group very and regular. Bolt it together. It works. Brilliant. Now it doesn't always, I had invented the Italian word "apprendare" , to learn, simply by butchering the French "apprendre" . Nope. Doesn't exist. It's "imparare" Bugger.
 
stevec67 said:
It certainly does, it's worked for me for years! If you go to Italy or Spain, just get Stuck in with French and add the odd -o. You want to borrow something in Italian? Not without knowing the word for "borrow" . No chance, unless you know French. Emprunter, you know. So let's try "empruntare" and assume it's an -are group very and regular. Bolt it together. It works. Brilliant. Now it doesn't always, I had invented the Italian word "apprendare" , to learn, simply by butchering the French "apprendre" . Nope. Doesn't exist. It's "imparare" Bugger.
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I asked a friend for une explanation recently.....she laughed.
 
Le cliché veut que les Français n’aiment pas parler d’argent, que ce serait tabou. Mais est-ce si vrai que cela ? Y a-t-il vraiment un interdit ? Pouvoir économique, mais aussi facteur déterminant dans nos sociétés et dans nos sphères intimes, quelle place accorder à ce qu’on gagne ?
It is a very long time since I studied French, but an acceptable translation would be: The cliche is that the French do not like talking about money, because that would be taboo.

I think the aiment is present tense and the serait is conditional.

p.s. PsB has said more eloquently.
 
Not silly but I'm stuck with this ad.

My french doesn't quite do it. Google translate doesn't either.

How much is this car going to cost, please?

https://www.dacia.fr/offres/offre-spring.html

My attempt tells me I get the 12500 euro deposit from government eco quangos and then it costs me 99 euros a month for 30,000km over 3 years. If so, I'd expect a queue at the dealer and a lot more of them on the street, and tomorrow I'll be in the queue or the car. So I assume I've missed something?
 
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