Consumer Dummies - French Visual Dictionary For Dummies

French Visual Dictionary For Dummies

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933246

ISBN: 978-1-119-71719-5; ePDF: 978-1-119-71701-0; ePub: 978-1-119-71725-6

This Visual Dictionary For Dummies is your ideal travel companion. It can be carried conveniently and consulted quickly; all you have to do is show the picture of the thing youre talking about or of the situation you wish to describe, and presto! And since the pictures are accompanied by the corresponding English words and their French translations, you will also be able to learn a lot of new vocabulary!

French and English have a lot in common, including a common history. French is a Romance language descended from Latin with German and English influences, while English is a Germanic language peppered with French and Latin borrowings. Thus, they share some similarities, most notably the same alphabet and a number of true cognates words that are the same in both French and English, such as original, final, and mental.

In English, the vowels are divided into two groups: the so-called long or tense vowels and the so-called short or lax vowels. French has a similar system, with a few twists. For example, vowels in French are what are known as pure vowels; that is to say they are not diphthongs as in British and American English. Most English speakers pronounce the letters a and e with an extra yuh sound at the end, and their os and us with an extra wuh sound at the end. You must not do this in French.

The distinction between long and short vowels exists in French, but two of the English short vowels do not exist (the short i in did and the short u in put) so make sure to never pronounce these vowels when speaking French.

Heres a listing of the vowel sounds found in French:

• acheter (short a): The French sound in acheter is kind of like American Englishs short o sound, as in hot, but in French the lips are spread more widely. It may be spelled A or (an accent grave). In one word femme it is spelled with an e.

  Only three French vowels can take the accent grave: , , and . The purpose of the accent depends on the letter in question, although it generally indicates that the vowel should be short.

• ptes (long a): This sound is pronounced with more rounded lips and is slightly elongated; it falls somewhere between the French short a and the au sound in the English word pauper.

  The accent circonflexe (here on the ) can be found on a, e, i, o, or u. It often means that, in the original Latin form of the word, the vowel was followed by the letter s. It can be used to distinguish between two words sur (on) versus sr (sure), for example or to change pronunciation.

• cole (long e): The French e sound in cole matches the sound we have for the a in gate. The annoying thing about the long e sound is that there are at least 6 different spellings for this sound in addition to the in cole:
  • er: At the end of an infinitive verb (chanter)
  • ez: Second person plural verb ending (vous chantez)
  • ez: At the end of a word (nez)
  • e (ss): At the beginning of a word (essence)
  • ed: At the end of a word (pied)
  • e (ff): At the beginning of a word (effort)

  The accent aigu (, acute accent) can only be added to the letter e. At the beginning of a word, is usually a sort of linguistic marker, indicating that the Old French or Latin word started with es or s. For example, you can trace the French word cole back to the Middle French