While the vocabulary of the love language is known for being charming and sophisticated, French language is also pretty ridiculous sometimes. Let's celebrate a few of French grammar moments that really made us mort de rire.
French is spoken by an estimated 274 million people in the world, but that doesn't mean it's a walk in the park. French pronunciation has up to 17 vowels depending on the dialect, and most of them are nasal. Many words sound the same but mean completely different things. Everything has a gender. It can take days of examining your relationship to someone before you figure out if it's more polite to call them tu or vous. Oh, and also we must not forget the funny French way of counting! Adding all of this together, French sure seems like the hardest language to learn.
Whether you consider yourself a Francophile, or you've barely mastered bonjour, these struggles will be all too real. To make the French learning process a bit easier we've compiled some really funny jokes about it, so at least you can practice your laughing in French.
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French Cats
The French Way Of Counting
The Correct Way To Name A Potato
French School Years
They are counting how many years left before they can go to uni and do dru- I mean study hard.
The French Numeric System
But it's pronounced 'kes ke say' a lot of French autograph has silent letters
99 Problems, But Longer
Funny French Language
French Numerals
Not all french speaking countries count this way. Belgium and Switzerland still use, septante (70), huitante (80) and nonante (90)
Funny French Expressions
"Go on and cry, you'll p**s less". Great! I will use it in italian
The French Word For Shower
Funny French Language
La Petite Mort
Tu vs. Vous
Come on this is done in many many languages, it's just you English speakers who don't :D
It looked scary and complicated at first, then I remembered in Poland we use "ty" (and "wy" in plural c: ) in not formal situations like like French "tu" and - oh boy - "Pan (for man), Pani (for woman), Panowie (for men), Panie (for women), Państwo (for group of men and women)" as "vous" c: You're welcome c:
I wouldn't say "poor us" since it doesn't exactly detriment our lives, but I can see the benefit of it.
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It's the same in Serbian just replace ''Tu'' with ''Ti" and ''Vous'' with ''Vi".
It's the same in Hungarian. The (apparent) lack of polite speech freaked me out, when I started studying in Britain. But it!s actually there, just done in a weird, subtle way.
Indonesian Javanese has 3 grades of language, and it's own written characters. So this chart is not complicated enough for me.
In Serbian is exactly the same just replace ''Vous'' with ''Vi'' and ''Tu'' with ''Ti''.
At Antioquia's Spanish (Medellín, not Pablo Escobar please), there are two different words for TU, each one with its rules.
In Portuguese is the same... if you 're friends or family or have any intimacy it's TU if not it's VOCÊ or VÓS.... it's just a question of respect.
I've come to a very complicated way of doing this in my professionnal environnment. Most of my coworkers are in this public service, post-1968 corporate culture of saying "tu" to everyone from the moment you've worked with them. However I insist on saying a cold and distant "vous" to someone who is much higher than me in the hierarchy and I don't trust or feel acquaitanced with. Meanwhile I'm used to saying a polite and respectful "vous" to every visitor of the service I work in, be it an elder or a teenager. I only say "tu" to kids who are obviously under 12 (appearance must be deceptive though, kids nowadays tend to look like damn grown-ups and I have already said "vous" to 11 year-old girls). All of this results in absurd situations when for example a teenager I've been used to talk with "vous" suddenly comes to work in my service as a trainee and I magically start to say "tu" like I do with any of my 50 year-old coworkers.
Ça va c'est pas compliqué ça ! En vrai ce n'est pas grave si l'on tutois un adulte mais c'est juste du respect... après suivant la relation avec la personne, on sait comment s'adresser à elle ! Et puis au pire on demande si ça lui dérange de se faire tutoyer...
....I actually need to save this. I know a lot of it, but I get tripped up on like co-workers and stuff.
I'd like to say something funny about it, but I'm Italian: we have "Tu", "Lei" and (rarely) "Voi" :(
Actually there are some really twisted rules, like God apparently is informal and the 1968 riots and Woodstock that makes for pretty specific cases, this would be found in most languages :D
It's quite easy. It's about feeling the situation "tu" is friendly and "vous" is" formal ". Sometimes you can use "tu" with someone you don't know or not much. Young people does it : child and young adult with other young . " Vous" is the rule/the law and "tu" sometimes happens with people you have learn to know IF YOU OR THE OTHER PERSON FEEL IT. Sometimes you're wrong :(
Makes sense to me, but I know many languages. English is the doozie...and it's my mother language!
It's not because French is funny. A lot of languages have the distinction of formal and informal addressing forms. It's just another indication that English is a boring language.
The English Have Landed
Magic Baguette
French Letters And Their Pronunciation
Funny French Language
Actually more like "oil of nut of coco", or else French would be "huile de la noix du coco" whereas it's "huile de noix de coco". Makes sense.
The Love Language
Diversifying Words
Learning The French Language
Confusing Language
but then again he spelled it as "handfull". how we know if he meant handful or hand full? it's ok to be confused! ;)
The Law Is The Law
I Am Late
Funny French Language
I'm fairly certain that "breaking my balls" is also an English phrase. Not sure what country it originates from.
Word Similarities
Until you meet "actually" "actuellement" "eventually" et "éventuellement" or dramatic/dramatique which ended with different meanings xD
French Language Jokes
Oui = yes in french + ja = yes in german = oui+ja = ouija. Sorry, mate
Minute Changes
One Big Ooof, Please
Ne vous inquiétez pas, vos expressions idiomatiques sont hilarantes aussi. Do not worry, your idiomatic expressions are hilarious too.
I think it's nice we can make fun of each other. Laughter makes the world a better place!
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And then people complain because Spanish is weird... Yo hablo los tres idiomas; Français est le plus difficile mais je l'aime tout de même. That's all! Gracias :)
The one thing that makes me crazy is the way that in French, nouns have to be preceded by what in English we would translate as "the", that is "le / la". I'm sure someone will point out something like "you don't have to when speaking French casually, or in this dialect" but you know what I mean - generally "proper".
is nobody here going to talk about the significance of the tu in permets-tu? ok then...
When my grandmother was taking french, she only learned written french, so when she moved schools (either changing schools or going to a higher school (middle to high school, etc) her french class was primarily spoken french, so on the first day the teacher would speak rapid fire french, and she couldn’t understand anything. At one point he pointed to her and asked her a question in french, and she’s like, “Uhhh...” and he was like, ”Oui! Un!” (like the number).
Regarding Tu and Vous, that applies to many other languages. I'm not sure if any of us would like to keep it, though. :-)
Je ne savais pas que ce genre de choses existaient xD c'est enrichissant !
French is diverse. In Switzerland and Belgium 97 is 90 + 7 "nonante-sept" not the funny "quatre-vingt dix-sept".
With the current political, global disarray, the timing of this is left to be desired
Hi, french there. I'd like to say all of this is not true, but i would lie x) Really funny, thanks
And in most others. English is the only language I know that doesn't do that and even though I'm very fluent in english it's incredibly hard for me to use "it" for animals, too. That is completely unnatural.
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Hahhaha aww man this made my sides hurt lol. For any of you people wanting to have a laugh at English, Google: An ode to English plural. I promise it'll give you a chuckle.
Thanks for the laugh. I'm French but have been living in English speaking countries for 13 years now and I always think English has weird rules and words. But it's nice to be reminded of the fun side of French as well! PS: I have ALWAYS thought pineapple was such a weird name for a... well... fruit that is not an apple and does not grow on pine trees.
Pineapples don't even grow in trees. They grow on top of weird stalks.
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Only last week I learned the French say Talky Walky instead of Walky Talky. That's just adorable. xD
Sil-vous plaît, put your opinions somewhere else, not on this page, mon ami.
Load More Replies... Ne vous inquiétez pas, vos expressions idiomatiques sont hilarantes aussi. Do not worry, your idiomatic expressions are hilarious too.
I think it's nice we can make fun of each other. Laughter makes the world a better place!
Load More Replies... And then people complain because Spanish is weird... Yo hablo los tres idiomas; Français est le plus difficile mais je l'aime tout de même. That's all! Gracias :)
The one thing that makes me crazy is the way that in French, nouns have to be preceded by what in English we would translate as "the", that is "le / la". I'm sure someone will point out something like "you don't have to when speaking French casually, or in this dialect" but you know what I mean - generally "proper".
is nobody here going to talk about the significance of the tu in permets-tu? ok then...
When my grandmother was taking french, she only learned written french, so when she moved schools (either changing schools or going to a higher school (middle to high school, etc) her french class was primarily spoken french, so on the first day the teacher would speak rapid fire french, and she couldn’t understand anything. At one point he pointed to her and asked her a question in french, and she’s like, “Uhhh...” and he was like, ”Oui! Un!” (like the number).
Regarding Tu and Vous, that applies to many other languages. I'm not sure if any of us would like to keep it, though. :-)
Je ne savais pas que ce genre de choses existaient xD c'est enrichissant !
French is diverse. In Switzerland and Belgium 97 is 90 + 7 "nonante-sept" not the funny "quatre-vingt dix-sept".
With the current political, global disarray, the timing of this is left to be desired
Hi, french there. I'd like to say all of this is not true, but i would lie x) Really funny, thanks
And in most others. English is the only language I know that doesn't do that and even though I'm very fluent in english it's incredibly hard for me to use "it" for animals, too. That is completely unnatural.
Load More Replies... Hahhaha aww man this made my sides hurt lol. For any of you people wanting to have a laugh at English, Google: An ode to English plural. I promise it'll give you a chuckle.
Thanks for the laugh. I'm French but have been living in English speaking countries for 13 years now and I always think English has weird rules and words. But it's nice to be reminded of the fun side of French as well! PS: I have ALWAYS thought pineapple was such a weird name for a... well... fruit that is not an apple and does not grow on pine trees.
Pineapples don't even grow in trees. They grow on top of weird stalks.
Load More Replies... Only last week I learned the French say Talky Walky instead of Walky Talky. That's just adorable. xD
Sil-vous plaît, put your opinions somewhere else, not on this page, mon ami.
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