scary but awesome...

[sergebroom]

Back in the very early 1990s, I was at a newstand, checking the various publications. So were a man and his 4-year-old daughter. The latter, being short, was forced to stare at the bottom of the stand, where magazines are that few adults care to peruse. The little lady, upon coming across something titled 'Psychology' asked her dad, without mangling the word, what psychology was.

His response?

"That's what you do with me and your mom."

Comments

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

"It's a wise father that knows his own child."

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

...and it is a good parent who nurtures her/his child.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

When I was a lad, never having heard the word spoken, I thought it was pronounced 'pissy-cology'. Silly me.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

You siwwy siwwy boy.

Of course, in my case, I can't take any credit for pronouncing it correctly because there is no such thing as a silent letter in French.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Really? One might ask the late M. Levesque about that...., eh (or et...) ;-)

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Hoisted on my own pétard... On the other hand, 'Lévesque' is a person's name, which follows archaic rules. Off the top of my head, I can't think of nouns and verbs and adjectives and such where you'd find such silent letters. Which means that, when I check on my blog tomorrow, you'll probably have come up with another example to prove me wrongwrongwrong.

Bring it on.

Heheheh...

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

True, 'Levesque' is an archaic form of 'l'evêque', but there's also that silent tee in 'et', eh?

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

True. Those silent letters are usually found at the end of words. For example, the French word for 'green' is 'vert' if attached to a masculine-gender word like 'homme', which is 'man'. In that case, the 't' isn't pronounced. The feminine version of 'vert' is 'verte' and the 't' then is pronounced.

Lest one thinks otherwise, I haven't forgotten how to speak French. It's just that, because it is my native language, I have internalized it so well, that I have to remind myself of the exceptions when talking about it. If that makes any sense.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Before you say it... One indeed does not pronounce the 'u' in 'que'. And the letter combo 'aill' is pronounced like the English letter 'i'.

Grumblegrumblegrumble...

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It happens to all of us. We forget, since we're immersed in it, what the exceptions are.

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

You guys are gonna make me think the Academie Francaise has suddenly taken to reading blogs.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Enfants de la Patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé...

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons...

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me how one of my favorite scenes in Casablanca is the one where everybody stands up and starts singing La Marseillaise, thus making the Nazis very very unhappy.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That's one of my favourites too, along with Captain Renault expressing his shock at gambling.