Language Overview: French

Links:

Translations:
0:03: (Water) This language - (Scubadiver) Us
0:14: Don’t worry - This video isn’t replacing a French language overview
2:39: “What the hell is this?” (Elephant) Morphology - (Penguin) Phonology - (Penguephant) Morphophonology
4:34: Quit writing silent letters - They’re useless
4:38: Me, ignoring silent letters - Liaison
4:51: (Trumpeter) Liaison - (Girl) The silent letters that don’t do it
7:03: (Bridge) This video - (Truck) The part about C and G
7:33: Me right now
7:37: You thought we’d finished it
7:58: After French writing
8:33: (Hands) Le/la/les - (Left-side bicep) Pronoun - (Right-side bicep) Article
10:39: (Henry Cavill in front) Us - (Jason Momoa in back) Liaison
11:13: One does not simply go to someone’s house to ransack the fridge
12:31: When people start talking about the tens in French “I think we all know where this is going”
12:53: When they say they make better cheese and chocolate but you remember that they need a calculator just to say ordinary numbers *laughs in Belgian and Swiss*
12:56: People who know how to count in French
14:13: When it’s time to talk about verbs in whatever language “Ahh shit, here we go again”
14:21: (Homer in the tub) Competence at conjugation - (Bart with the chair) Irregular verbs
15:32: Doubt
15:42: The example verbs will be…
16:20: Letters -ent at the end of a word: *exist* - Verbs:
17:25: When you’d spent a good amount of time with the composed past and you learn that there are verbs that don’t take avoir
19:15: “Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture.” - “They’re the same picture.”
20:09: Don’t breathe too much
20:27: (Water) French irregular verbs - (Fred with the mop) Me during this video
20:56: where destination
20:58: When you leave out the destination from a French sentence “WHERE IS IT?!”
21:53: Mentions elision - Never addresses it
22:04: Us: *about to do something with an initial vowel* - H aspiré: ABSOLUTELY F*CKING NOT
22:09: One uses elision when they need to in writing.
22:11: I use elision in speech wh’n’I feel like’t’s appropriate
22:14: Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

[diad]

It seems I'm the first French native to come across this video! And what a video this is. I mean, you're making me feel like you know more about the language than I do. (Well, I slept through a majority of French grammar in school.) Also, not that I blame you, but I have to say that you have some incongruent phrasings that.. glaringly? reveal your English origins, although I don't have the willpower to point them all out. The meme translations are definitely fascinating, in that they both absolutely crush me but also like I get it. Uncanny is what it is. Similar but tainted.
But all in all, I honestly think your channel is deserving of a bigger audience! Great stuff

[rpostre]

24:06 My eyes almost exploded from this diabolical choice of color.

[leon-didi]

As a native québécois who didn’t learn how to speak French as a child, French as a language has really grown on me the past couple years. I’d honestly say that the sound and orthography are some of my favorites of any language

[Copyright_Infringement]

Hello, linguist again!
Overall, this is a good summary of French. There are some key things that were skipped over that I think are important, though:.
This is admittedly minor, bu the phoneme /œ̃/ is still present in many varieties, including in some parts of France, so I think it was a mistake not to include it, as the distinction might cause confusion in some settings.
On the morphophonological side of things, I think it would have been good to point out that words that end in -L often change that -L to a -UX in the masculine plural (internationaux, animaux); I only say this because it personally helps me better understand forms like "bel" and "foux"
Also in the vein of demystifying strange behaviour, I feel as though I must point out that the "irregularities" of the French verbal system are largely a result of an unwillingness to descriptively reanalyze French's grammatical behaviour. The irregulars in OIR are actually fairly predictable, and RE verbs are often made to seem unnecessarily complex to learners. Not necessarily a problem with the video itself, but just something I notice a lot.
Finally, while I understand it might feel a bit prescriptivist to describe the placement of adjectives with rules, the fact remains that French puts a lot more adjectives before the noun than in most varieties of its romance brethren, and that placement before vs. after may yield different meanings for certain adjectives; as such, I think BANGS-PC or some similar categorization at least bears mentioning.

Not necessarily something you missed or got wrong, but when you mention that French has little allophonic variation, I can't help but think of a paper I read recently on how Parisian French is possibly developing allophonic ATR harmony based on the final vowel of a given word (ie. étais pronounced as /ɛtɛ/, or causer pronounced as /koze/). IDK, lmk if you're interested, and I can scrounge up the link

[dragskcinnay]

funny that you mentioned the "passé" simple being obsolete (which is, indeed, almost systematically replaced by "passé composé" in spoken French ; in written French it's almost always dropped in informal writing but not always in formal writing), but not "imparfait du subjonctif", which is even _more_ obsolete

[olivierlanguin-cattoen]

Great video! I’ve spotted two mistakes that are actually quite subtle, and made me ponder over my own native language for a while… Because the rules you invoke are generally correct but not in these situations!

17:49 : A girl would actually say "Je me le suis dit", not "dite". In that situation the agreement is with the masculine complement "le", not the subject "Je". There are actually several kinds of "se dire" with different meanings :

1) "se dire *X*" = "dire *X* à soi-même" (to tell X to oneself)
You can analyze "Je me *le* suis dit" = "J’ai dit *quelque chose* à moi-même" = "Je *l’*ai dit à moi-même" and the agreement follows the rule with _avoir_ when the complement is placed before the verb.
Correct (though uncommon): "Je me *la* suis dit*e*" as in "*La chose* que je me suis dit*e*". But for the general case you default to the masculine "le", especially with _se dire que X_ ("Je me suis dit *que j’aimais ce film*" = "Je me *le* suis dit")

2) "se dire *X*" = "dire qu’on est *X*" (to say/claim you are X)
In that case you could say "*Elle* s’est dite choqué*e*" (she said she was shocked)

And you have a similar pattern with verbs like _faire_:
1) "se faire *X*" = "faire *X* pour soi-même" (to make something for oneself)
"Elle s’est fait *un gâteau*" = "Elle se *l’*est fait" = "Elle a fait *un gâteau* pour elle-même" (She made herself a cake, as in She made a cake for herself)
"Je me suis fait *une pizza*" = "Je me *la* suis fait*e*" = "J’ai fait *une pizza* pour moi-même"

2) "se faire *X*" = "devenir *X* par soi-même" (to become something thanks to oneself)
"*Elle* s’est fait*e* *belle*" (she smartened herself up)

23:19 : We write "On n’est pas ensemble"/"Nous ne sommes pas ensemble", and not "ensembles". Here _ensemble_ is an adverb, thus invariable, as in "Nous mangeons ensemble".
Weirdly enough you would say "On est séparés" (here an adjective) to mean the exact same thing. "On est séparément" sounds wrong… But "Nous mangeons séparé*ment*" is correct. Crazy stuff I know.

[cogitoergosum]

Actually, _eu, œu, _ and _œ_ all represent two phonemes: /ø/ and /œ/, which have a lot of complementary distribution.

Also, French has 4 verb classes: -er, -ir, -re, and -oir

EDIT: actually, I just found out that _œ_ can also be pronounced /e/ or /ɔ/ in the word _stœchiométrie_ so take what I wrote with a grain of salt.

[Mercure]

Great video. I have a few things I'd like to comment on.

Liaison is actually sometimes mandatory and sometimes facultative. I can't tell the rules exactly, but there are moments where you did liaison and I thought "Huh, I actually wouldn't do it here". Not that you were wrong, I just thought it was interesting to point out.


Passé simple is still used in literary writing. It is however true that outside this context, it's pretty much obsolete. However, it's interesting that you thought subjonctif imparfait is still commonly in use, even though it's even more obsolete than passé simple.

You are correct about the general rule for forming adverbs, however, that are exceptions, mainly the adjectives ending in "-ent" or "-ant". These will go "-emment" and "-amment" respectively (évident -> évidemment), unless the adjective is monosyllabic, in which case it follows the normal rule (lent -> lentement). Btw, both endings are pronounced the same, /-amɑ̃/.

I'd say it's more accurate to say the third group of verbs is the "-dre" verbs, rather than the "-re" verbs. Non-"-dre" "-re" tend to work differently from "-dre" verbs. The two exceptions being "prendre" and related verbs (apprendre, comprendre, surprendre, reprendre), and the "-soudre" verbs. Those work differently from other "-dre" verbs.

2nd person singular imperative always drops the "s" for first group (-er) verbs, unless it's followed by a pronoun (including "y" and "en"). Speaking of, "y" is also used with the verb "penser", as in "Je pense à something" -> "J'y pense", and personally, I like to describe "en" as the pronoun that's used for things you would use "de" with.

Subjunctive is used for more than just doubt, it's also used for things like desires and feelings and all kinds of stuff. For example, one would use it with "vouloir", as in "Je veux que tu partes" ("I want you to leave", with "partir" being in the subjunctive here). It can also be used with attributive adjectives, as in "Je suis content que tu sois là" (I'm glad that you're here).
More importantly, the doubt part is not as straightforward as it may seem. If you use verbs like "penser" or "croire", you're actually presupposing the thing is indeed real, and thus, you would use the indicative, but if it's negative, then you're presupposing the thing is indeed not real, and you would use the subjunctive (although some people may used the indicative still). So you would never say "Je pense que tu sois" or "Je crois que tu sois", but you would say "Je ne pense pas que tu sois", "Je ne crois pas que tu sois".

"ne" can be dropped in informal speech.

And lastly, /ø/ and /œ/ can be written "eu", "œ", or "œu"; the distinction between the two phonemes is from phonological context (like /ø/ being found at the end of words, and /œ/ in most closed syllables, for example), with the only exception being the minimal pair "jeune" and "jeûne" (which is pronounced the same in some accents). Also, "œ" alone is sometimes pronounced differently, like /e/ in "fœtus" or /o/ in "stœchiométrie".

And that's pretty much it for the actual content of the video. There's also a lot I could comment on about the actual French translations, but I'd rather give a few tips rather than do a full correction. I need to properly look at the most "problematic" mistakes first, though, and that'll take a while to parse through. If I end up doing it, that will be on another day. Despite that, however, the effort that went into the translation is appreciated. Just ignore people being rude about your skills. I think some French speakers can be too proud of their own language, and it translates as a negative attitude towards learners, I feel.

[guadalupefreyre]

8:46 noun and adjectif placement
9:22 article
10:05 nouns
10:58 prenoms
12:17 nombre
13:02 adjectif
14:03 adverb

[hampussward]

This was pretty nice, but the passé simple is still in use, it is definitely more in use than the imparfait du subjonctif, although both are expected if you are to speak or write in a formal setting.

[Pluiepluie]

17:49 "Je me le suis dite" is grammatically incorrect, and as a native it sounds wierd (descriptivism, yay !). With the auxiliary "être" the participle agrees with the object (in that case "le") because the participle behaves as an adjective like you mentioned, and here "dite" goes with "le", the pronoun is the thing being said. So you would say "je me le suis dit" whether the subject is male or female, and "je me la suis dite" with a feminine object. Note that for stupid reasons, the participle used with "avoir" only agrees if the object is placed before the verb. Otherwise very good video, that's really the only thing that caught my ear :)

[pkameneva]

I love your videos! You take a look at Quebec French and how different it can be

[joshua-ybpk]

great video, perfectly made.

i did notice one mistake though, you said vouloir means "can", which could have been an arrangement error or you mixed that up with pouvoir which means "can." but great video!!

[ujhcmxn]

dont know if this was mentionned but the letter z at the end of the word also changes the way the vowel is spoken ("ne" vs. "nez")

[FenolftaleinRE]

Wish you could make one of these for German!

[Inconito___]

Really nice video, I'm french and you did a really good job at capturing all the difficulties of the language, you definitely need more subs. You did some mistakes in the sequence in french at the very end, here is the corrected transcription "La langue française a beaucoup changer lors de ses 1900 dernières années d'évolutions, c'est une langue neuve qui ne resemble en rien à ses voisins, mais qui reussit à s'accrocher à des bribes de son passé. Certaines personne pensent que c'est une façon d'augmenter la difficulter d'apprentissage de la langue, mais sans ces characteristiques tel que la liaison, l'élision, et les lettres muettes son orthographe representerais un imaginaire (déconnecter du réel), pas une realité fort complexe. Merci beaucoup d'avoir regardés, et de m'avoir écoutés vous expliquer le pourquoi des lettres muettes. Laisse un j'aime si tu as apprécié la vidéo, abonne toi et clique sur la cloche pour rester au courrant de la prochaine fois ou je mettrais en ligne une video. A la prochaine !"

[takemeseriouslynt]

I love learning my language from an outsider perspective. French is a very artistic language created I believe much for the beauty and complexity of it than for its practicality

[dragskcinnay]

22:50 oooouch that one hurts.
"Ensemble" can mean two things :
–a set of things, or similar meaning (like a musical ensemble), or
–together
The first meaning is just a noun, so it takes the usual 's' in the plural.
But here, it's the latter meaning, and that's an _adverb, _ not an adjective (just like in English !). And adverbs are, like, the archetype of words that don't inflect in pretty much all languages which have them, so there shouldn't be an 's' at the end there :)

[alancantu]

Great video, especially for someone starting a French class in college that wants to take it seriously instead of just for the credits. One comment, though: There are decaf brands out there that taste just as good…

[the]

i love watching these videos not understanding a damn thing