okiteiru_

[pastel ferry]

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[magic mantle]

sentence construction is different in french but im not sure why it goes ahead of the word in french

[torn copper]

Any of these make sense to me

parfois je m'entraîne avec (thing)
je m'entraîne parfois avec (thing)
je m'entraîne avec (thing) parfois

sometimes I practice with (thing)
I sometimes practice with (thing)
I practice sometimes with (thing)
I practice with (thing) sometimes

As for why there's one less acceptable word order in French, idk

[magic mantle]

right so its never i sometimes

its i (something) sometimes

[nimble mica]

french typically doesnt like putting things between the subject and the verb

[magic mantle]

oh gotcha

at least i know where i cant use it

[torn copper]

Right, if I hear "je parfois" I'm thinking they're starting a new sentence. like "je, parfois je m'entraîne..."

[magic mantle]

sometimes is a weird word that in english we can just jam it pretty much wherever and itll make sense

sometimes i go to the toilet
i sometimes go to the toilet
i go to the toilet sometimes

[nimble mica]

i go sometimes to the toilet, sounds a bit odd tho

[magic mantle]

that one does yeah

[torn copper]

what's weirder is that "i go sometimes to the toilet" sounds weird but "I play sometimes outside" sounds fine to me if maybe a bit colloquial

[magic mantle]

but i still talk sometimes with him works

[nimble mica]

yeah

languages are just a bit odd sometimes

[magic mantle]

languages are weird man

[nimble mica]

you'll get a feel for it eventually dw

[magic mantle]

alot of it is just vibes based

like uh

mon amie

not ma amie because it just doesnt sound right

[nimble mica]

just generally speaking french doesnt tend to like things between the subject and verb. there are cases where it works but its fairly specific so its overall best to avoid unless youre sure something goes there

[nimble mica]

yeah, thats more like "an" in english tho

[magic mantle]

well true but in my case an doesn't have a gender

[nimble mica]

it just seems weird bc people expect clear boundaries between the grammatical gender which isnt always the case

[torn copper]

i had to write "a eusocial behavior" the other day and my brain flipped out trying to figure out why it's not "an"

[nimble mica]

lmao

[magic mantle]

a what behaviour

[nimble mica]

"mon" doesnt inherently have a gender either

[magic mantle]

well it follows the gender of the noun

[nimble mica]

it can indicate gender before a consonant is all

only before a consonant

[magic mantle]

yeah only before a consonant

[torn copper]

eusocial means something that tends to promote socialization or social harmony ig

[magic mantle]

but in a vacuum its mon ma mes but if its a vowel mon is used always unless its plural

[nimble mica]

yea

[magic mantle]

well thats a new word for me

[nimble mica]

the weirder stuff is like

the gender of "gens"

[magic mantle]

ill pretend i know what gens is

[nimble mica]

its like "people" kind of

[magic mantle]

people but not personne

[nimble mica]

yeah

personnes is literally people as in, humans?

[magic mantle]

hows it used?

[nimble mica]

i guess

les gens is soooooort of like a slightly informal version of that?

you can also use it to be like "hey everyone"

Salut les gens, I guess

[magic mantle]

is a tous formal then?

[nimble mica]

idk im struggling to think of good examples but its very common

[nimble mica]

its on the more formal side of things but relatively neutral imo

[torn copper]

"les gens qui s'appellent Jean connais des gens"
people named Jean know people

[nimble mica]

connaissent?

[torn copper]

wait

[torn copper]

i just realized that... he doesn't say connaissent in the song i don't think

[grave finch]

Pendant mes vacances, j'ai rencontré de belles gens chaleureux

[nimble mica]

gens was originally feminine but over time shifted more towards masculine since it became more general
so now it uses a mix of masculine and feminine agreements depending on how stuff is placed and other weird rules

[magic mantle]

its one of those words

[nimble mica]

it sure is

[magic mantle]

do we have some weird word like that in English?

[nimble mica]

if youre unsure just use masc lol

[grave finch]

I think gens is the only one that can be both masculine and feminine in the same sentence

[nimble mica]

mmm

maybe

i feel like ive seen at least one other but

its hard to be sure

[grave finch]

orgue, délice, and amour will be one or the other in a given sentence

[nimble mica]

ya

[grave finch]

At least French isn't as complex as Italian in that regard
iirc egg is masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural
and egg... well that's a pretty common word lmao

[nimble mica]

or arabic

[magic mantle]

whats that language that writes backwards

[nimble mica]

many

notably arabic tho

[magic mantle]

i dont know if this conversation is good to post or not but these words

[nimble mica]

probably arabic

im too lazy to read through to be sure

[magic mantle]

undecipherable

[nimble mica]

there are several languages that use very similar scripts

the hardest thing about it to me is that they dont typically write short vowels

s ts a bt lk trng to ndrstnd ths

which if you know the language is fine

but if you dont know how the word is pronounced and arent used to the patterns youre kinda fucked for reading

"Numeral three to ten
Arabic numerals three to ten have two distinctive characteristics: first, they are followed by a plural noun in the genitive case, and second, they show gender polarity, or reverse gender agreement with the counted noun. That is, if the singular noun is masculine, the numeral will have the feminine marker taa marbuuTa, and if the singular noun is feminine, the numeral will be in the masculine form."

[magic mantle]

what

the hell

i will never complain about french again

[nimble mica]

(this is only really MSA which most arabic speakers know a bit of but dont know 100% of, it's not really a language anyone speaks natively, just a common ground between dialects)

but yeah, languages are all kind of just jumbled up messes of weird stuff

[shut scaffold]

English generally puts verb-modifying adverbs before the verb but French does it after.

« Je vais souvent au marché »
'I often go to the market.

so really it's just a language difference

[shut scaffold]

to me, this version has the adverb sound more like an interjection

'I play, sometimes, outside'

[short hound]

well adverbs yeah

[nimble mica]

is there something other than object pronouns and negation that can go in there?