#so anyway including the whole sentence 'il est le onzième' is a bit misleading because you think oh it's just an example sentence

[coquelicoq]

fascinated to see that this dico calls no especial attention to the fact that you're not supposed to make elision with the words onze or onzième (i.e., you say le onzième rather than l'onzième). i was curious to see if they would take the same route as my english-french dico, which puts an asterisk before the pronunciation like it does with words that begin with an aspirated h, but the only thing this one does is include the example sentence Il est le onzième.

#it includes example sentences all the time and it's not always immediately apparent to me what any given example sentence #is doing. in this case because i was already looking for it (and because i read the sentence aloud) i saw the 'le' (instead of l') #but i'm not positive i would have noticed otherwise #in fact this is maybe less clear than just including the example phrase 'le onzième' would be (instead of the whole sentence) #because it's an abridged dictionary so much of the context comes from how much information is included #like for example the pronunciation notes. to save space this dico only tells you the pronunciation of words that are exceptions #and even then only tells you the pronunciation for the part of the word that is pronounced differently than one would expect #rather than for the whole word #this is very helpful to me because a) when i see a pronunciation next to a word i always notice it because it's rare #and b) it tells me exactly in what way the word is pronounced weirdly #(which also often allows me to infer how that spelling would be pronounced if it weren't an exception) #lecture du dico #lexicography #french #my posts #so anyway including the whole sentence 'il est le onzième' is a bit misleading because you think oh it's just an example sentence #which could be in there for who knows what reason. the fewer units of information you have (words in this instance) #the less you have to guess at what they're meant to convey to you. because you can focus right in on the relevant part #(which in this case is the le instead of l') with fewer red herrings #when i first saw this example sentence i thought it was just showing how the adjective onzième can be used as a noun #which is a not-infrequent purpose of example sentences in this dico #but because i was scrutinizing the entry for clues as to the lack of elision i noticed it #it's fascinating because i didn't realize this about onze until a couple years ago #and when i asked my french teacher (who is french) about it she had no clue what i was talking about #even though she personally never made elision with these words either #she didn't realize it was an exception or anything that would have to be told to L2 learners. it was completely natural to her #trying to remember now if she had the same reaction with huit cuz i knew i brought that up too #cuz to me they're functionally the same...you don't make elision or liaison with either of them #but everybody talks about aspirated hs and i don't even know if there's a word for what's going on with onze #or any other words in that same category of start-with-vowel-but-no-elision-or-liaison (there must be? but i can't think of any)