What Did You Just Say?

PATRICK AND JULIA were doing homework over the weekend and they happened to be studying homophones. Now, we have these in English (red v. read; straight v. strait, hoe v. ho!), but the French language takes homophones to the next level -- they are everywhere! Take this for example: in French the following words are all pronounced vair [like the English ‘fair’, but with a nice throaty ‘r’]

• vert (green)
• vers (towards)
• une verre (glass)
• une ver (worm)
• une vers (verse)

That’s FIVE words that are pronounced exactly the same. But there are plenty of other examples. How about these words, all pronounced core [but, again, with the fancy ‘r’ sound]

• la cour (courtyard)
• le court (court, like tennis)
• court (short)
• le cours (course/class or grand courtyard)
• courre (a conjugation of 'to run')

Or these -- again, pronounced the same:

• vingt (twenty); le vin (wine); vain (vain); vint (a conjugation of 'to come')
• c'est (it is, or it's); s'est (a reflexive version of it is); sais (1st/2nd person singular of 'to know'); sait (3rd person singular of 'to know'); ses (a possesive pronoun); ces (these/those), and, of course, the letter 'c'.

Kerri and I have both been having a hard time understanding the French language recently (think of it this way: we can ask someone a question, we just can’t understand them when they answer). It’s bad enough when you don’t know the idoms and figures of speech (a big part of any language), but it makes it harder when so many words sound the same.

Here's a fun link to even more French homophones (hope you caught the sarcasm there, cause I'm laying it on pretty thick).

[obscure reference guide: layng it on pretty thick]
CJS