#'Oh! French uses letters like this! Those must be from its Gaulish roots'

[solradguy]

I can speak any of the Romance languages just fine but for some god forsaken reason I CANNOT speak French like what the fuck is a bourgeoisie and why can’t I say it correctly for the life of me.

Yeah, French is pretty tricky... Figuring out what letters to pronounce is difficult and I can do the sounds for it in my head when I think I've figured it out (sort of) but my mouth lacks the flexibility to do them out loud haha

A long while ago I read Les Fleurs du Mal, and my copy is dual-language with the original French on the left page and an English translation on the right, and it drove me nuts that I didn't know how to read the sounds for the French so I read a crash course guide for it. It helped a lot once I realized that a good portion of the letters that aren't pronounced in a French word function similarly to an accented character in that it's there only to modify the sounds of the letters near it than to contribute in a major way to the overall sound of the word itself. My native Germanic language (English) brain really wants all of those letters to be doing something up-front instead rofl

Though, English also has its special words with sneaky little helper letters that aren't pronounced... ("sovereign...")

#asks #I dipped my toes into Gaelic and Welsh once upon a time and when I read about the letter pronunciation I was like #'Oh! French uses letters like this! Those must be from its Gaulish roots' #I LOVE the interconnectedness of languages. It's one of my favorite things to read about #Humans want to talk to each other and share cultures so much!! #Twirling my hair and kicking my feet thinking about Nordic traders learning languages in southern parts of Europe to trade with its people #So far from home and a language so different from their own... #God even just the traders and traveling people and cultures within just China alone. It's a diverse place!! #AND THE INTERNET!! I wish my Japanese writing skills were better so I could more efficiently communicate with my- #-Japanese Twitter mutuals... #Isn't it incredible how we're some of the first people in ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY that can feasibly maintain- #-friendships with people on the other side of the planet thousands and thousands of miles away... #Hundreds of thousands of years of human existence and only in these last 35 can we now do that #Ok I need to go get work done now lol This ask activated me