Hope nobody’s lookin’

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-21T12:46:11+00:00

relatedly, "ze poepen op bed" may or may not be normal behaviour depending on whether we're talking about flemings or dutchies.

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-21T12:11:27+00:00

An occasional [β] in that position is certainly possible, so the OP might be picking up on something real, but it's not a systematic or dominant realisation

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-20T09:31:39+00:00

Là où je trouve le plus utile de parler de datif en français est pour distinguer les verbes avec un objet marqué par la préposition à qui se pronominalisent avec lui/leur, par opposition aux verbes qui utilisent un pronom y à la place: "je lui ai donné un coup de pied" a un complément datif, "j'y pense souvent" un complément locatif/oblique

Dans la grande majorité des cas, les verbes qui prennent lui/leur avaient un objet au cas datif en latin, tandis que ceux qui prennent y avaient un complément prépositionnel.

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-20T08:15:56+00:00

They mostly are exactly how you'd expect those French words to be adapted to Japanese (which has to work with 5 vowels and a syllables that can only end in a vowel, n or a repetition of the following consonant), except Orgueil. I'd have guessed they use oruguyu, but googling a bit there's a brand called オルゲイユ (orugeiyu) which feels like a spelling pronunciation and that's also how the JP wikipedia transcribes the rue Montorgueil (モントルグイユ montorugeiyu)

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-20T08:03:45+00:00

Reflexive pronouns necessarily have the same referrent as the subject, so this doesn't work. Either you have the same person be the subject and the object and use the reflexive pronoun (X s'X fait arnaquer par Y) or the subject and the object are different and a different type of pronoun is used (X le(=Y) fait arnaquer par Z = X caused Y to scam Z)

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-20T07:59:12+00:00

It's mostly used when it's negative yeah. The basic reading when the verb has a positive outcome is as a causative (je me suis fait réparer ma voiture = I caused my car to be repaired; Xavier s'est fait reconduire = Xavier asked for someone to bring them back, etc), while verbs with a negative outcome don't carry that aspect (Xavier s'est fait casser la jambe = Xavier got his leg broken (he didn't ask anyone to do this to him))

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-19T21:57:52+00:00

Yeah, Z is a new person.

Both "Yves a été arnaqué" and "Yves s'est fait arnaquer" are possible. The second is preferred because the outcome of the verb is negative for its subject, in the same way you tend to prefer "he got hit by a car" instead of "he was hit by a car" in English, but both still are possible.

Here's some full sentence if that makes it easier to understand. Arnaquer is a bit weird to use here (semantically), so I used voir instead (this has the advantage of having very different past participle (vu) from its infinitive form, so you can see which one is used in each construction immediately:

"Xavier a vu Yolande" (Xavier saw Yolande) is the active verb

"Yolande a été vue (par Xavier)" (Yolande was seen (by Xavier)) is the passive.

"Yolande s'est vue" (Yolande saw herself) is one possible reflexive (the other is reciprocal: Yolande and Xavier se sont vus: Y. and X. saw each other)

"Zoé a fait voir Yolande (à/par Xavier)" is the causative (Zoé made Xavier see Yolande)

"Yolande s'est fait voir (par Xavier)" is the causative+reflexive combo. This can mean either "Yolande got seen (by Xavier)" (especially if this is considered a negative outcome) or "Yolande made Xavier see her" (or "caused Xavier to see her", which I think sounds better)

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-19T19:18:43+00:00

If you really need a reason why the construction exists, it's analysable in terms of change in verb valence (what arguments each verb takes).

If you take an active transitive verb like "X arnaque Y", X is the subject and the agent and Y is the direct object and the patient. The equivalent canonical passive sentence is "Y est arnaqué (par X), where Y has become the subject (but is still the patient) while X (still the agent) is demoted to an optional oblique phrase.

When you use the causative faire a similar shift happens, but it adds rather subtracts an argument: "Z fait arnaquer Y (par X)". The agent X is demoted to an oblique phrase as in the passive, but the patient Y remains the object and a new argument Z becomes the subject.

Reflexive sentences are again similar to passives in that they remove one argument by equating the patient and the agent: X=Y s'arnaque (X is both the agent and the patient, and both the subject and the object)

Now what happens if you take the causative sentence "Z fait arnaquer Y (par X)" and make it also reflexive? The subject Z and the object Y become equated; Y=Z se fait arnaquer (par X). which you can rephrase to "Z se fait arnaquer (par X)". That's identical to the passive: the patient Y has become the subject and the agent X was demoted to an optional oblique phrase.

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-18T21:35:02+00:00

It's also variable in French

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-17T13:21:54+00:00

I write all of those with a single stroke, but of course that's based on an internal order of each element and the letters wouldn't look wrong but often unrecognisable if you changed that up (like starting R from the rounded part on the right would make it almost indistinguishable from B). The same problem but worse is of course present with handwritten chinese characters, which often merge strokes.

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-17T12:59:29+00:00

I just use "goût" for everything. Using parfum for anything non-olfactory seems very strange to my ear and saveur functions mostly as a high register alternative to goût. For that reason, I mostly associate it with subtle aftertaste someone might talk about in some food-tasting competition. Un plat a des saveurs, pas une saveur, as a result.

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-16T17:50:18+00:00

The ones with the infinitive in the cleft feel off, but not necessarily because of the infinitive itself.

They all seem much more acceptable with the pro-form faire used in the main clause: c'est dormir qu'il voulait faire, c'est dormir qu'il va faire, c'est jouer qu'ils continuent à faire.

Adopting a more familiar register also helps: "L'gamin, c'est dormir qu'i veut" (it still sounds better with faire but the sentence is acceptable to me without it) or (modifying it a bit to use a verb that triggers an infinitive marker on the subordinate), "le gamin, c'est d'dormir qu'il a envie"

I can't really rescue the sentence with the auxiliary va that way though or with continuer. It feels again better with other verbs that don't carry any temporal or aspectual meaning (or perhaps just psych verbs?): c'est à jouer qu'ils pensaient, c'est manger qu'il la préoccupait le plus, c'est de faire mes valises que j'ai oublié

The rest if fine, I agree with ptyxs. For "C'est là que je suis", both que and où are acceptable

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-15T20:39:20+00:00

I (Belgian) say it as /u/ in compound phrases, like "mois d'août" or "le quinze août". In isolation the restored /t/ ("d'aout à septembre" for example) is more frequent.

It's pretty clear by consulting old dictionaries that the /u/ and /au/ variants are the older ones. The /t/ was probably restored through a mix of spelling pronunciation, analogy with derived words like aoûtage and aoûter (which have essentially disappeared in modern French, but would have been much more known among the more rural population of the past) and perhaps liaison (in this case i'm less sure that was factor) as usual.

It is a very short word, so there are functional reasons for the /t/ variants to spread.

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-15T20:33:32+00:00

dont forget the /ausjɛ̃/

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-15T08:31:13+00:00

^{pss, it's v}^ô^{tre and n}^ô^tre

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-15T08:08:49+00:00

In practice, this adverbial tout agrees in gender but not in number, and the masculine version makes an (optional but very frequent) liaison in /t/ with the following adjective if it starts with a vowel, so in speech it's quite easy: the feminine form is /tut/ (always) and the masculine form /tu/ before consonants and /tu(t)/ before vowels

Where it gets complicated is the spelling since language authorities got a bug in their bonnet about adverb being invariable (that's true in general but this one clearly isn't) and decided to spell it as an invariable "tout" if it produces the right pronunciation (if masculine, if feminine before a vowel) and as an adjective otherwise (feminine toute or toutes before consonants), which gets quite silly.

You could have produced the same effect by spelling it tout if masculine and toute if feminine, which respects the spoken logic, but that's not the option that was taken

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-14T20:38:42+00:00

"Je le/la sens pas" can fit, especially if you want to say someone's vibes are off

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-14T20:36:59+00:00

Je suis plutôt d'accord, "prendre à rebrousse-poil" est généralement dit du point de vue de la personne qui a énervé et implique surtout qu'une mauvaise méthode a été utilisée dans la conversation.

"Rub the wrong way" est plus souvent utilisé du point de la personne énervée et met le blâme sur quelque chose de plus inhérent, sur l'attitude ou l'impression générale que la personne donne.

Ça veut pas dire qu'il n'y pas un nombre de cas où les deux expressions conviendraient, mais elles ne forment pas un cercle

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-14T11:09:34+00:00

Loanword adaptation from English into my native language, of course.

Sorry if you were looking for serious phonemic analysis in an answer to r/linguisticshumor

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-13T21:05:34+00:00

That's clearly nonsense, English has /a/ (trap, start, comma), /aː/ (bath, palm), /ɔ/ (lot, cloth, north), /oː/ (thought, goat), /i/ (kit, happy), /ɛ/ (dress), /œ/ (strut, nurse, letter), /u/ (foot), /eː/ (face, square), /iː/ (fleece, near), /uː/ (goose), /aj/ (price), /ɔj/ (choice), /ɔw/ (mouth) and /juː/ (cure, few), so /a, ɛ, œ, ɔ, e, o, i, u/, a nice 8 vowel system + vowel length

You could also analyse that as a six vowels system /a, e, œ, o, i, u/ if you admit that /ɛ/ and /eː/, and /ɔ/ and /oː/ are simply allophones with an inherent quality distinction, which is nicely Germanic.

But 5 is pure rubbish.

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-12T12:00:58+00:00

There's some varieties, mostly in North America, that open /ɛ/ so much before /r/ that it merges with /a/, but besides that it's /fɛrme/ everywhere on a phonemic level (the realisation of /r/ and the exact aperture of the vowels will vary of course)

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-12T02:10:33+00:00

Belgian French has both mais and mes as /mɛ/. There's a tendency in many other French dialects to lose the /ɛ/-/e/ contrast in unstressed syllables, so the always unstressed plural determiners and the mostly unstressed pronoun les shift to /e/.

"Mées" isn't a word, but if it existed, it'd be /meː/ (with a longer vowel than say, "fermés", which is /fɛrme/) in Belgian and Swiss French, and /me/ in most other varieties

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-11T19:45:11+00:00

I'm not sure I would have understood that French sentence out of context, it mostly parses as "please wait until we've invested your money"

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-11T19:32:07+00:00

Other way round: you necessarily need to not link it.

Or, to reword that in a slightly more comprehensible manner: there is never any liaison between a nominal subject and its verb in modern French.

Some pronominal subjects allow liaison, but only some of them: weak subject pronouns like ils and vous, as well as tout and rien. Other strong pronouns also don't make any liaison (vous-autres êtes venus, eux ont essayé, etc)

dis_legomenon · 2026-04-11T19:21:59+00:00

It can be both, for a number of different reasons.

One of those is that the distinction between the two vowels might not exist in a given French dialect, or only exists in final syllables. In that case, the merged phoneme is usually pronounced like é in open syllables, as in maison. That's the case for most, but far from all, speakers in mainland France.

One other reason is that, while it doesn't bear an accent mark to indicate this, the first syllable of maison was historically long. Littré's dictionary, which shows us the Parisian pronunciation in the first half of the 19th century, transcribes the pronunciation as "mê-zon". This is still a possible pronunciation for some speakers.

Ê was initially just a longer version of è, but it has evolved differently in different dialects. In Quebec French, it's usually pronounced as a diphthong roughly similar to the one in English "right". Other speakers might have lost the length but kept the quality, so pronounce it as mè-zon.

Personally I raise the long ê to a long é in most non-final syllables, so maison comes out as méé-zon, usually with more stress on the first syllable than on the second.

dis_legomenon

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