is i not a shortening of something like
n'est ce pas vrai?
s that not correct/true/right?

I went to a restaurant in Paris and attempted to dust off my GCSE French. The waitress flinched and informed me in no uncertain terms that we would do our business in English. I think she was suffering actual physical pain at my mangling of her language.

Really is vraiment.

'N'est ce pas vrai' means 'isn't it true'. 'Ce n'est pas vrai' means 'it's not true' and is shortened to 'c'est pas vrai' said as a question means - no, really, you're kidding etc.

I can't think what 'ne vrai' could apply to. You don't mean 'n'est-ce pas?'

If you really want to converse with them, then there's no harm in asking them to slow down

When I first went over to the UK I thought I'd have no problems after all I did well in English lessons at school and could usually follow the UK shows on TV

But encountering actual English people with accents and speaking much quicker than they did on TV was a shock

You never really get to properly use a language unless you're doing it on a daily basis

But these days if someone is trying to speak to me and German is not their 1st language I ensure I slow down my speech and attempt to pronounce properly.

But people forget that foreigners have dialects too, when I'm up in North Germany I we practically have to pretend if one another are foreign by speaking slowly and clearly I was in a bakery shop on Saturday and had to repeat my order several times. No doubt the assistant thought I was a right rural

I just travelled back in time

left Paris CDG at 18:20 and the plane landed in Heathrow at 18:17

This is what I'm not sure about.

Do the French get more upset that you don't make an effort to speak French, or that you mangle their language?

I don't want to cause a faux-pas...

Wow I'm really impressed... the guy working at Costa Coffee in the arrivals hall at Heathrow switched to fluent French when he served the French customer after me

Not hard when you consider that Europe, save for Portugal is one hour ahead of U.K.
When you landed at 18.17 U.K. time, it was 19.17 French time.
Incidentally, you must have had had a tail wind, flight time from CDG to LHR is usually around 1hr. 10 mins.

Good point, Tony. Looks like Ovalteenie didn't travel through time after all.

I experienced the opposite in a cafe in Calais. They were very patient with me and paused whilst I murdered their language. I think they were genuinely appreciative that I was giving it a go rather than all day having to put up with English people shouting louder and talking to them like are 2 when they spoke and understood perfect English themselves.

Just the same as an approx 11 hour flight to LA. As LA is 8 hours behind you are on a plane for 11 hours and land 3 hours after you took off!

Always a miracle. Surprised the CDG Baggage Handlers, or ATC or the Trains weren't on Strike.

Things tend to revert to Horse and Cart then.

Similar to the 21.35 BA flight from London to Cape Town, arriving Cape Town at 11.05 the next day, an eleven and a half hour flight, but as Cape Town is only 2 hours ahead, it is 09.05 in the U.K. when you land in South Africa.
Think I got that right, it must be 7 or 8 years ago that I made that trip, apologies if memory failed.

alenda lux ubi orta libertas

I did the Irish Junior and Leaving Cert and the French I learned is enough to get by and I can read menus and ask for hotel rooms and that sort of thing but I can't really have a decent conversation in the language. We had an oral exam in Leaving Cert but most of us learned off phrases to use. It wasn't really a 'natural' conversation from what I remember. We spent a lot of time doing grammar and reading comprehensions and writing pieces on abstract topics (eg the environment, health, technology). Then of course we had to learn verbs (ugh, French verbs, gotta be one of the hardest things I've ever done!) The emphasis was mainly on written French and grammar. In Junior Cert we learned at beginners level and it was fairly basic. I'm able to get by and I can read it but not speak it very well. I went back to evening classes offered by my university and I didn't find them that good. It was at the same level as Leaving Cert French and most of the students were expected to have some knowledge of the language. Maybe it's because French is so popular in schools.

I'm now learning German at evening classes (again in my university) and we're learning some conversational German but so far no a lot written apart from basic sentences and phrases. It's a beginners course and students are not expected to know the language beforehand.

We can't in most places, as most of our tunnels are not high enough to fit double decker trains, aka the loading gauge is incorrect.

Lots of languages have this. It's an affirmation seeker.

In English it's "isn't it?"
In Welsh "nage fe?"
In German it's "nicht wahr?"


Probably a terrorist or an illegal. *Take back control*

I can speak several languages badly Portuguese, Polish and bits of Italian (did French for five years and understand no more then the day I started), it is kind of funny when you try speaking in another language to someone and they switch to English but their English is as poor or worse it can be quite annoying too!

I know how you feel.

Had an impromptu holiday in France a few years ago due to flying anywhere on a last minute deal being ruled out by the Iceland ash cloud.
I got a D at GCSE back in 94(ish) and had to use pigeon French to get by. We had no hotels booked when we got to Caen by ferry & made a decision to try to speak as much Fench as possible.

First challenge was getting a hotel room which I managed. The hotel guy didn't speak English really or allowed me to do my best and a room were given. The waiter in the restaurant we went to spoke less English than I did french but again we both muddled our way through & had a lovely meal. After that we used more touristy places and most of the people spoke enough English to make communication a lot easier but we tried at every cafe, bar, hotel to speak French first, our logic being if we a bit of an effort to speak the language we might be treated better than someone that just shouts slowly in English!
Generally the hospitality staff allowed us to do our best then replied in English to complete our orders, directions etc which I didn't mind at all.
The best experience was going into a small bar (only one in Bayeux we could find open in the evening apart from an Irish pub oddly!) where I ordered 2 bottles of Desperado lager. Once finished my partner (who really spoke no French at all) said she wanted to get them this time. She proudly got to the bar & with her nerves kicking in (and Desperados being a Mexican themed lager) said "Dos Desperados por favor", much to my amusement! The French bar tender, quick as a flash replied "It's okay, I speak Spanish too!. I was gone by this point and my partner was mortified, not only that she had used the wrong language to order the beers but that it was pronounced badly enough for a French person to understand it, guess that she was English, and reply in her native tongue!

pigeon
noun A stout seed- or fruit-eating bird with a cooing voice, typically having grey and white plumage.

pidgin
noun A grammatically simplified form of a language, especially as used by a non-native speaker.

I'm not really surprised that some people didn't pick up much French at high school considering how poor our standards of English are. Therein lies the difference between studying a language and speaking it.

@skinj

My brain has forgotten most of my German, but it has been replaced by my very limited few hundred words of Japanese.

So in German Bars, I may order in Japanese. It is indeed very embarrassing.

It doesn't affect me in France. The brain is weird.

Don't think I've ever seen the word written down before. One of those words I've heard used and used myself hundreds of times. Never even occurred to me that it wasn't spelt like the bird! Annoyingly the two words appear to be linked in their etymology too!
"1876, from pigeon English (1859), the reduced form of the language used in China for communication with Europeans, from pigeon (1826), itself a pidgin word, representing a Chinese pronunciation of business. Meaning extended 1891 to "any simplified language."

It's unlikely that 'pidgin' was derived from 'pigeon'. The only link there is that the former is often misspelled as the latter, and always has been. It's widely understood that "pidgin English" comes from the Chinese traders of the 19th century (opium dealers, mostly) who mispronounced the word 'business'.

The word 'pigeon', as in the bird, supposedly comes form the Old French for "young dove", which explains the '-jeune' (young), and I think the 'pi-' from 'pipio', which is Latin for "chirping bird".

FFS why do various etymology places say they're linked in some way? I hate the English language at times, love it normally though!
Even read there is a theory that the term derives in some way from the abbreviated notes that were able to be sent via carrier pigeon!