Quote:
|
Originally Posted by marina
you are so clever , sometimes you frighten me !
|
Haha *blushes*
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by marina
Where else can you see the words with 5 , 6 , 8 letters in it and half of them is silent ?
|
Hehe, in French! The number of silent letters in English is *nothing* compared to the number of silent letters in French, we are the specialists of silent letters.
I'll give you a typical example which is often given to non-natives trying to learn French to show them what they can expect and how confusing it can be for them:
"Les poules du couvent couvent." which means "The hens of the convent are brooding."
Now the same sentence with the silent letters in brackets: "Le(s) poul(es) du couven(t) couv(ent)."
As you can see, the main difficulty is that the last two words are spelled exactly the same *but* pronounced differently, the first "couvent" means "convent" (and obviously the English word comes from Norman-French) and is pronounced "couven", the second "couvent" means "brood" and it is a form of the verb "couver" (to brood) which happens to take the "ent" ending at the 3rd plural person of the indicative present tense, becoming identical in spelling to the first "couvent" but not in pronunciation since the verbal "ent" ending is always silent.
You see, a typical French verb has about 40 to 50 verbal endings, but most of them are either silent or partially silent, and many are identical in pronunciation but different in spelling.
An example of that, here's the conjugation of the verb "parler" (1st verbal group, regular) at the present tense (numbers represent personal pronouns in their usual order):
1. parle - 2. parles - 3. parle - 4. parlons - 5. parlez - 6. parlent
Now with silent letters in brackets:
1. parl(e) - 2. parl(es) - 3. parl(e) - 4. parlon(s) - 5. parle(z) - 6. parl(ent)
As you can see, 4 out of 6 endings are totally silent (and therefore the verb is pronounced exactly the same), the 2 other endings have a final silent letter. You'll find the same kind of thing in all tenses and all verbal groups.
And don't think it's limited to verbs, many adjectives for example end with a silent letter (at their masculine form), and what makes it even more complex is that 'unsilencing' that letter is how the feminine form is made, that's right!
For example: "fort" (masculine) and "forte" (feminine) [meaning "strong"] are pronounced "for" and "fort" respectively…
Or "long" (masculine) and "longue" (feminine) [meaning "long", duh] are pronounced "lon" and "long" respectively…
'Unsilencing' the last consonant is what makes the second form feminine, and of course there's no way for a non-native to ever guess what letter they should add to a masculine form to get the feminine one since those letters follow no other logic than Latin ethymology.
I'll finish by adding that just like in English, you simply add an 's' to nouns (and adjectives and past participles in French) to create the plural form of a word, but guess what… The plural 's' is always silent in French.
