A Real Book. A Long History. Written in French. Sigh.
You may think I’m going to talk about dialects of French, and there certainly are a lot of them to consider. French is spoken as a native language in the Carribean, in Canada, in Africa, and in Polynesia plus some other places. But, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that, whatever dialect you speak, you probably will need to learn two French languages. Spoken French (not too awful) and Written French (too awful.)
To begin with, let me show you a few letter combinations you can write to represent the sound we call a “long A”.
è, é, ai, ait, er (on the end of a word), and several more if you can believe it. Now, about the plain old e. It’s a schwa (the linguists term for it) which means it’s just a generic vowel mostly considered unworthy of being pronounced, especially if it is at the end of a word. Chien, is pronounced sort of like shieh. It means Dog, masculine or just generically. Chiene is pronounced sort of like “she-en” and means Dog, feminine. Many times, a vowel with an e on the end of it is the feminine form of an otherwise masculine word. If you see an unaccented e on the end of a word, never pronounce it. If you do, the members of Richlieu’s Academy will probably come threaten you with their swords, and maybe send you to their secret jail somewhere. (Kidding)
French, like English, changes verb forms depending on who’s doing it. I run, you run, he runs, that sort of thing. They run, easy enough. In French that phrase looks like ils courent. The word “to run” is courer. Keep up, now. To run sounds like “Cou-ray”. I run sounds like “Cour” (there is an s on the end of the word.) courent sonds just like cours. Yep, ent means absolutely nothing to how one pronounces the word in French, but it absolutely must be put there if you’re writing it out. L’academie français, founded by that famous Cardinal Richlieu, keeps a tight grip on written French. But, being a free country, French people say whatever they want to.
For example, if you take French, they’ll tell you that “I don’t know” is Je ne sais pas. Sounds sort of like Zhe nay say pah. But, forget that. Write it, but in speaking it, I kid you not, what comes out sounds a lot like Zhay Pah. In French, even under current rules, you could write that out as J’ai pas, but don’t ever do that, or the ghost of every retired French grammar teacher will haunt you to your grave. (J’ai pas, by the way, could be translated as “I have nothing.” That would even work, wouldn’t it?)
This, then, is a warning. study your academic French well. You’ll need that, if only to fill out government paperwork (or to read government paperwork) but remember to speak the way French people do, in what is, pretty much, an entirely different language.
