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Although English is my native language, I played this for a while a few months back. I have to say, some of the questions are very difficult, even for a native like me! :confused:

Love the peach one! It's quite funny how so many French idioms seem to involve fruit or veg. And Topcho, I'm sure I remember reading that one! Well, I guess cats are quite scratchy, so it makes sense. Certainly makes more sense than having a frog in your throat like we do in English!

Ah, I see what you mean! Although I have to say, I did manage to understand a good amount of that. It seems like it follows English speech patterns a bit more than standard French, and - this is going to sound weird - it's more "clicky"!

I'm not actually familiar with the Quebecois accent. What's it like, BWL? Does it have much influence from English-speaking Canadian dialects/accents?

I like "pedir peras al olmo" - it literally means "to ask the elm tree for pears", but is an expresison meaning that you're asking an impossible favour.

My first Spanish lesson was in school, and our teacher was a multilingual British woman (kind of the norm for a British secondary school!). It was pretty relaxed, as we just learnt greetings and basic things like that, so we all felt at ease quite quickly.

You're right LauraM, "set" does have the most definitions. It spans several pages in the average dictionary. I'm not sure I can think of that many meanings for it off the top of my head though: a group or collection; when a liquid dries or solidifies; a badger's home...I can't think of any more, but there's obviously hundreds of definitions I'm forgetting!

It would be useful, but I think it would be very sad to universalise language and risk losing the traditional languages and dialects of individual cultures. Access to foreign cultures is the number one for learning a language, in my opinion, and it would be very disappointing if this was lost.

One that always perplexes me, even as a native English speaker, is "new and improved". It's one or the other - if it's new, then there's no former version to improve upon!

Does anyone find, when studying French, that certain accents are much clearer and easier to follow? At school, we were taught by teachers from both the North and the South, and while I got used to both, I definitely found the Northern accent easier to follow. It's much less sing-song-y, in my opinion. As for the accents from French-speaking countries and regions outside of France, I have no idea. What French accent do you find easiest to understand?

All languages have false friends - words which look like they mean one thing, but actually don't. Some of the most common ones which cause problems are: "Sensible" = sensitive. "Sage" = sensible. "Actuellement" = currently. "En fait" = actually. "Réunion" = meeting. "Retrouvailles" = reunion. "Librairie" = book shop. "Bibliothèque" = library. There are many more. Can anyone add to the list?

I had a French dictionary in high school which was dedicated to idioms, and some of them were brilliant! Some of my favourites include: "Ce ne sont pas tes oignons" - none of your business, literally "these aren't your onions" "C'est la fin des haricots" - it's useless, literally "it's the end of the beans" "J'en ai ras-le-bol" - I can't take it anymore, literally "my bowl if overflowing" What are your favourites?

I speak French - I studied it at school for eight years, so I'm almost fluent now. It's a really beautiful and interesting language which allows you to access an amazing culture. My advice is to take it slow - it's one of these languages that needs a lot of care and attention to really grasp. The wonderful thing about French is that it's one of the hardest Romance languages, so if you learn Spanish or Italian afterwards, they're a walk in the park!

I've known about Esperanto for a few years now but I'm still unsure what to make of it. In my opinion, the true beauty of knowing a foreign language is how it can make another culture accessible to you. I also like knowing about language in a historical context. Obviously Esperanto doesn't have much of a heritage, since it was mainly created for business purposes. On the other hand, I read an article earlier about how learning Esperanto can make learning to converse in a foreign language much quicker and more effective, and it can act as a "practice" language. I'm divided. What do you think?

That's really interesting. I've never heard of that blog before, but I think I may have to bookmark it now - very useful! I've just skim-read some of his posts and I must admit, he's given me a new perspective on things. In particular, the article about Esperanto helping you learn to communicate in another language more quickly and effectively made me think - I've always thought Esperanto seemed rather pointless, but he made some good points about using it as a "practice" language.

Me gusta bailar en mis calzoncillos! (or just "en calzoncillos") They will never believe what happened.

One I like is "pensar en la immortalidad del cangrejo", which literally translates as "thinking about the immortality of the crab" but is used, informally and humourously, to mean daydreaming.

Haha! Excellent example of pronunciation gone wrong. When I learnt Spanish in school, our teacher always nagged us about pronunciation, but I can definitely see her point - it seems like words which sound similar have the most awkward meanings when interchanged. For example, she would stop us on the spot if, when talking about our age, we said "tengo...anos" rather than "tengo...años", which hopefully you can translate for yourself. Now that would be an awkward one to use in conversation with a native speaker! :shy:

It can be useful, but only for short phrases or individual words - I wouldn't dare trust it to translate entire sentences for me. We were always berated in school if we used Google Translate, and for good reason - one time, my friend tried to cheat in French by using Google to translate "I used to like to play in the sand pit", and when we translated the French back into English, it came back as "I liked to play in the vertical sand drainage"! :bored:

I'm from Scotland, so we were introduced to Gaelic and taught it in school from about the age of four. It was never very useful though, nobody really had any interest in what the teacher was saying, and to this day, I still think it was rather pointless. However, when I was nine, our Gaelic lessons were replaced with French, which was much better. I continued with French all the way through high school (so I studied it for about eight years in total), and I'm so glad I started at a young age because I have a very good grasp of the language now.

In everyday speech, you start consciously identifying and compartmentalising each part of your sentence in terms of grammatical features.

While I would agree that slang is inapproriate in more formal situations, on the whole I think it is a good thing as long as it's not disrespectful. Language is constantly evolving and it's pointless trying to stop these linguistic changes from happening. While I think it would be a shame to lose more 'correct' terms in favour of slang, it's important to remember that many words have become obselete in this way. No word is really superior or inferior to what it's replaced with, but rather it's just different. It's peoples attitudes which decide whether a word is "proper" or not, and if we can get over this, then communication will be much more free.

Much as I love the sound of Spanish, for me, that's not the number one reason for learning the language. It's incredibly useful, and if I remember correctly, is one of the top three most widely-spoken languages in the world (along with Mandarin and English). By learning Spanish, you're opening youself up to the possibility of understanding millions of people worldwide and their respective cultures, not to mention how helpful it must be for business purposes.

You say something in your native tongue, then translate it in your head.

Mr is British, Mr. is American. Same goes for Mrs/Mrs., Dr/Dr. etc. "Yours sincerely" is used when you know the person's name i.e. have adressed it to Mr/Mrs blah blah blah. "Yours faithfully" is used when you've used a generic salutation, like "sir" or "madam". Youc ould also sign it off with "best wishes", "kind regards" or even simply "regards" - these are still considered polite.