Separate forum category?

[garçoncanadien]

you are partially right SupaKrupa he said douze mille francs - I guess the translator exchanged it into euros.

All the contractions in French can look like secret code. For English, words are contracted simply for convenience and quicker flow of speech. But in French contractions are not the same. "C'est" means ce est. But ce est is never written in French. Two words together ending and starting with vowels "ce est" will always be contracted. In English "the orange" is written this way but when spoken it actually sounds more like "Thee orange" and not "thuh orange". "Thuh Orange" doesn't roll off of the tongue very well. Written English doesn't indicate the altered speech but French does. In French one doesn't say la orange. It's l'orange. The "ah" syllable of La is removed.

Alright, the élision occurs for these reasons:

When you would have a hard vowel-vowel break, you make an élision
When le/la comes before a word that starts with a vowel, le/la becomes l'
de + le = du, de + les = des, à + le = au, à + les = aux

The other point is consonants at the end of words are rarely pronounced except when in front of a word that starts with a vowel. It's cumbersome to speak two words that end and begin with vowels or vowel sounds so to compensate for it the first word's last consonant is pronounced when it otherwise would not be. "I am here" in French is Je suis ici. Suis is pronounced "swee". It ends with a vowel sound so when the following word also has a vowel like "eesee" the S in suis is pronounced. The phonetic would then be Je sweez eesee in lieu of Je swee eesee.

7 rules for you:

1. Most of the time don't pronounce the final e; pronounce instead the final letter before it. Singers may do it for musical reasons, don't do it in normal speech.
2. The -es ending on certain verbs and nouns is not pronounced.
3. The -ent verb ending is silent; however in nouns, adjectives, adverbs, it is pronounced like the word en.
4. You must learn the difference in pronounciation between es, è, é, er, and ê.
5. Most final consonants are not said except for C,R,F,L.
6. Words are usually link pronounced to the next vowel sound (there is a liaison), unless it is et. For example, aux amis is pronounced auzami. Aux hiboux is pronounced auzhibou.
7. Beginning H is never said.

[aFrenchie]

Originally Posted by Twitch

It's mine might be Ça appartient a moi (It belongs to me) but there are probably less formal and better ways of saying It's mine.

The correct phrase is "ça m'appartient". Even less formal: "c'est à moi"

Originally Posted by garçoncanadien

Aux hiboux is pronounced auzhibou.

wrong. the "h" in hibou isn't mute, so no "z" for the liaison

7. Beginning H is never said.

right and wrong. Some of them (see above) are considered not mute, although they are! You actually have to take in account that it's there but it's still not pronounced. Quite hard to explain...
For example you don't say "l'hache" but "la hache", although you only pronounced "la ache" (no "aspiration" for any "h" in French)

[SupaKrupa]

So difficult... lol

[garçoncanadien]

merci de l'information aFrenchie! and sorry for my mistakes.

[SupaKrupa]

Hmm... I know that "merci de l'information" means "Thank you for the information but does "de" mean "for"? When i stick it into some translator it says it means "of". Why's that? (Hope the answer isn't a bad translator lol)

[garçoncanadien]

sorry, I no longer know the reason why If I had to invent the reason probably I would say it's an idiomatic expression you have to remember. I was told to say that in primary school.

[HibyPrime]

"thanks of the information" makes some sence in english, it just is not gramatically correct..

it might have been truncated over the years from "J'ai merci de l'information" - "I have thanks of the information" which, atleast in english, sounds like the kind of thing shakespeare would say..

[Twitch]

I would have said in my bad French 'Merci pour l'information', but that is probably not how a native French speaker would have said it (pour = for). That why I like these lessons, helps me learn the most natural way of saying things in French. And in turn understand them when they are said to me.

[CFHollister]

This problem with prepositions like in this situation (for/of, etc) arise in languages that lack an effective and comprehensive case-marking system such as Latin has (why the French dropped it we may never know). As a result many oblique case roles (and some non-oblique ones) have to be associated to the verb argument through the idiomatic use of propositinal phrases in which the exact preposition to be used simply has to be learned on a case-by-case basis lather than being logically deducable. English is pretty bad, but it is also my understanding that French is particularly problematic in this respect. The prepostions "of" and "for" (and their equivilents on other languages) are especially bad offenders having many diverse and unrelated meanings. One of those things I'm trying to design out of (as much as I can) the artificial language I am in the process of creating .

[aFrenchie]

Originally Posted by Twitch

I would have said in my bad French 'Merci pour l'information'

Your bad French is not that bad
Sorry not to have corrected this myself earlier: garçoncanadien should have used "pour" ("for") indeed, just like in English . "de" is wrong in that sentence.