toomuchreality
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Favorite Drink: Sometimes I drink water... just to surprise my liver!
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Post by toomuchreality on Jan 5, 2015 19:45:58 GMT -5
Wow. I'm impressed!
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Bonny
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Post by Bonny on Jan 5, 2015 21:38:23 GMT -5
if you want to talk about butchering the French language, take a look at the dialect I speak - Chiac I grew up speaking this dialect of French with my family, and then made the mistake of taking French in school - thinking I'd earn an easy A. I got that A, but managed to frustrate myself in the process when taking tests that covered subject matter where Parisian differs from Chiac. I love it! I could read the examples just fine, LOL I can't imagine what the accent would sound like!
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chiver78
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Post by chiver78 on Jan 5, 2015 21:51:15 GMT -5
I'm told that the Maritime accent is closer to Parisian than Quebecois, even if the vocabulary and syntax are out in left field. one of my older cousins is a newspaper editor. he and his wife are pretty well-travelled. one of his anecdotes is from their trip to St Pierre et Miquelon. the islanders had a hard time with their slang and word choices, but could actually understand them better than the Quebec crowd that typically infiltrates the island in season.
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mroped
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Post by mroped on Jan 5, 2015 22:57:15 GMT -5
Unless you live for a while in Quebec and use french(?) for communications, it is hard to understand it even if your French is awesome! There are so many "tse-tse and lo-lo that makes your head spin. the normal " ca va" becomes " ca va lo?" And pretty much anything that defines a place, state of mind, action, literally anything has a "lo" attached. All that makes quebecoise unique and to me beautiful!
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Bob Ross
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Post by Bob Ross on Jan 6, 2015 12:40:10 GMT -5
I shout English really loud at foreigners. That's KINDA like speaking a foreign language.
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 6, 2015 13:02:24 GMT -5
Unless you live for a while in Quebec and use french(?) for communications, it is hard to understand it even if your French is awesome! There are so many " tse-tse and lo-lo that makes your head spin. the normal " ca va" becomes " ca va lo?" And pretty much anything that defines a place, state of mind, action, literally anything has a "lo" attached. All that makes quebecoise unique and to me beautiful! Tse-tse? Oh, you mean "estie"? (actually "ostie") Quebec slang and obscenities are peppered with religious connotations. "Estie" refers to the host in Roman Catholicism. When you swear in French, you use terms relating to the church. Quebecers really don't like the church and haven't since the Quiet Revolution.
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Bob Ross
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Post by Bob Ross on Jan 6, 2015 15:23:29 GMT -5
Is "lo" the French Canadian equivalent of "eh" or "dontchaknow"? Anyways, all I know about French Canadians I learned from watching French Canadian porn. Those people are sick!
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 6, 2015 15:28:50 GMT -5
Is "lo" the French Canadian equivalent of "eh" or "dontchaknow"? Anyways, all I know about French Canadians I learned from watching French Canadian porn. Those people are sick! It's "la" but pronounced between an a and an o. It doesn't mean much of anything, just like "eh", or "you know".
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mroped
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Post by mroped on Jan 6, 2015 16:00:31 GMT -5
Yeah, I know about " ostie" but the only place that they actually used is when they curse as in "ostie de collise de tabernac" or something like that. Might have misspelled it! The tse-tse I was referring to is in fact on regular speech anything or almost that has a vowel after a "T" becomes "tse, tsu, too, tsa" For example " ou va tu?" You in fact hear " ou va tsu?" Regardless, I lived in Montreal for a couple of years and loved it. The quebecoise were great, warm hearted people. If I were to choose a place to live for the rest of my life, Quebec Province would be it!
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 6, 2015 16:01:53 GMT -5
In this province, using terms like taberacle, chalice, host or sacrament is FAR more offensive than using terms referring to body parts that never see the light of day, excrement and illicit coitus.
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 6, 2015 16:08:27 GMT -5
In French-speaking Quebec, swearing sounds like an inventory being taken at a church. English-speaking Canadians use profanities that would be well understood in the United States, many of them scatological or sexual terms. But the Quebecois prefer to turn to religion when they are mad. They adopt commonplace Catholic terms -- and often creative permutations of them -- for swearing. In doing so, their oaths speak volumes about the history of this French province. "When you get mad, you look for words that attack what represses you," said Louise Lamarre, a Montreal cinematographer who must tread lightly around the language, depending on whether her films are in French or English. "In America, you are so Puritan that the swearing is mostly about sex. Here, since we were repressed so long by the church, people use religious terms." And the words that are shocking in English -- including the slang for intercourse -- are so mild in Quebecois French they appear routinely in the media. But not church terms. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120401286.html
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Jan 6, 2015 16:12:15 GMT -5
Yeah, I know about " ostie" but the only place that they actually used is when they curse as in "ostie de collise de tabernac" or something like that. Might have misspelled it! The tse-tse I was referring to is in fact on regular speech anything or almost that has a vowel after a "T" becomes "tse, tsu, too, tsa" For example " ou va tu?" You in fact hear " ou va tsu?" Regardless, I lived in Montreal for a couple of years and loved it. The quebecoise were great, warm hearted people. If I were to choose a place to live for the rest of my life, Quebec Province would be it! Lol! Even "poutine" has an "s" sound in it. It's a great place to live I've lived in many places around the world, but always come home. Montreal has a certain je ne sais quoi that is hard to describe.
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mroped
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Post by mroped on Jan 6, 2015 16:23:59 GMT -5
I've spent a few years around the world. All places that I've been to and stayed for more than a couple of days, you could clearly see dislike/disrespect and sometime plain hate towards those that were not native or a different race, sex, religion. That is not the case in Montreal: all live together in the city with nothing but respect for each other. There is no black and white, man and woman, French or German or russian! Everybody is the same! Maybe that's what it got me to like it so much.
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NastyWoman
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Post by NastyWoman on Jan 7, 2015 2:27:53 GMT -5
Is "lo" the French Canadian equivalent of "eh" or "dontchaknow"? Anyways, all I know about French Canadians I learned from watching French Canadian porn. Those people are sick! It's "la" but pronounced between an a and an o. It doesn't mean much of anything, just like "eh", or "you know". And then there is the "lah" used in Singapore by the Malay speakers. Same meaning (none that is). It works a little bit like a period since it indicates a complete statement
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spartan7886
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Post by spartan7886 on Jan 7, 2015 9:31:58 GMT -5
Sidetracking back to the original question,
First language - English Decent, but rusty - Spanish Bits and pieces - Dutch, Italian (these two from traveling), Japanese (too much anime)
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cael
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Post by cael on Jan 7, 2015 9:42:16 GMT -5
I took Spanish throughout grades 1-12 so you'd think I could speak it... I remember a lot, understand a lot of what's said to me and can understand a lot of written Spanish. However I can't particularly speak it well... if I did some immersion language trip I'd bet I'd come out of it a pretty decent speaker. We had German for 2-3 years in elementary school too but I've lost most of that, barely remember any of it. I desperately wish my DH's father had bothered to teach him Greek... they sent SIL to Greece as a kid for a year to learn the language, and the story is that she came back home, started kindergarten and had a tantrum because she couldn't speak English well anymore, so dad quit talking to her in Greek because she said she didn't want to speak it anymore. Now she recognizes some words and phrases, but can't speak it anymore and doesn't know that much. SIL is 10 years older than us so by the time DH came along, their dad didn't bother - never sent/took him to Greece and didn't teach him the language
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