Greetings,
I decided to try to get a jump on my upcomming reading French class
by doing a little studying on my own. I got a French/English dictionary,
a teach yourself work book with tapes, and a picture dictionary.
A few hundred vocabulary words later I was feeling pretty cocky and
decided to try something recreational and "easy" –> Reading a children’s
book written in French.
Well, I waltz down to the library and get "Le Bon Lion" and open it to the
first sentence:
"Il y avait une fois un lion qui ‘etait tr`es heureux."
it there ? once a lion that ? very happy
Now I figure that chances are this baby says something like:
"Once upon a time there was a very happy lion."
Unfortunately when I try to find "avait" and "`etait" in my dictionary
I can’t. First I says "wait a second, Gonzo, them there French verbs
got that there conjugation stuff." So’s I looks and sees "-it" could
be 2nd or 3rd conjugation 3rd person ending making the infinitive
form, near as I can reckon ‘em: avair, avaer, ‘etair, ‘etaer.
My dictionary (Cassel’s) doesn’t seem to have any of these forms.
Wait!, I say, what about them there irregular verbs. But, alas, my poor eyes
find no avait’s or ‘etait in the lists. Sigh, heavy sigh.
HELP! Is this some kind of conspiracy for preventing bozo’s from learning
French on their own or what?
Nathan Miles
n…@acd4.acd.com
In article <1993Jan18.141833.12…@acd4.acd.com>, n…@iedv7.acd.com ( Nathan Miles (ICTT) ) writes:
|> Greetings,
|>
|> I decided to try to get a jump on my upcomming reading French class
|> by doing a little studying on my own. I got a French/English dictionary,
|> a teach yourself work book with tapes, and a picture dictionary.
|> A few hundred vocabulary words later I was feeling pretty cocky and
|> decided to try something recreational and "easy" –> Reading a children’s
|> book written in French.
|>
|> Well, I waltz down to the library and get "Le Bon Lion" and open it to the
|> first sentence:
|>
|> "Il y avait une fois un lion qui ‘etait tr`es heureux."
|> it there ? once a lion that ? very happy
|>
|> Now I figure that chances are this baby says something like:
|>
|> "Once upon a time there was a very happy lion."
|>
|> Unfortunately when I try to find "avait" and "`etait" in my dictionary
|> I can’t. First I says "wait a second, Gonzo, them there French verbs
|> got that there conjugation stuff." So’s I looks and sees "-it" could
|> be 2nd or 3rd conjugation 3rd person ending making the infinitive
|> form, near as I can reckon ‘em: avair, avaer, ‘etair, ‘etaer.
|> My dictionary (Cassel’s) doesn’t seem to have any of these forms.
|>
|> Wait!, I say, what about them there irregular verbs. But, alas, my poor eyes
|> find no avait’s or ‘etait in the lists. Sigh, heavy sigh.
|>
|> HELP! Is this some kind of conspiracy for preventing bozo’s from learning
|> French on their own or what?
|>
|> Nathan Miles
|> n…@acd4.acd.com
An amusing anecdote, which I aver is a true story. A friend of
mine prepared for an exam to test the ability to read French in much
the same way as this. Alas, when doing the prescribed translation,
he came up against these words that weren’t in the dictionary, so,
as he told me later, he just used the words closest to them. As I
recall, one of those forms of "etre" he translated as "hoot owl".
Later, he complained that the red pencil marks on the corrected
copy of the exam stopped at that point.
–
Tom Scharle |scharle@irishmvs(Bitnet)
Room G003 Computing Center |scha…@lukasiewicz.cc.nd.edu(Internet)
University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556-0539 USA
In article <1993Jan18.141833.12…@acd4.acd.com> n…@iedv7.acd.com ( Nathan Miles (ICTT) ) writes:
>Unfortunately when I try to find "avait" and "`etait" in my dictionary
>I can’t. First I says "wait a second, Gonzo, them there French verbs
>…
Many years ago, our high-school French teacher procured for class
purchase a really useful reference book giving all the verb forms for
all regular French verbs and a good many irregular ones. It is
actually fairly thin, and having forgotten most of what I learned in
highschool — use it or lose it — I have found it extremely useful
when I have need to read (or is it decode) French since then. I
suppose such books are not hard to find wherever French reading matter
is sold.
Mike Urban
ur…@cobra.jpl.nasa.gov
ur…@sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov (Michael P Urban) writes:
>>Unfortunately when I try to find "avait" and "`etait" in my dictionary
>Many years ago, our high-school French teacher procured for class
>purchase a really useful reference book giving all the verb forms for
>all regular French verbs and a good many irregular ones. It is
>actually fairly thin, and having forgotten most of what I learned in
>highschool — use it or lose it — I have found it extremely useful
>when I have need to read (or is it decode) French since then. I
>suppose such books are not hard to find wherever French reading matter
>is sold.
Yes, that book is known as "le Bescherelle" or "le nouveau Bescherelle" and is
IMHO absolutely indispensable. The actual title is "L’art de conjugaison" or
some such. I have a copy, but it was necessary to order it from France.
Unfortunately, le Bescherelle is more useful for finding the correct 2nd
imperfect subjunctive of the verb oi"r or whatever than for looking up words
that you suspect to be irregular verb forms. To conjugate a verb, you just
look in the index for the page number of the table giving all the possible
forms; to look up a verb form, you more or less have to browse through the
book at random until you stumble across it.
Seth L. Blumberg \ "The whole thing was an accident. No saboteur
sl…@columbia.edu (play) \ could have been so wildly optimistic as to think
se…@ctr.columbia.edu (work) \ he could destroy an airplane this way."
> No one I know shares my opinions, least of all Columbia University. <