Chapter 2
A verb is a doing word ?
Thus was I taught in junior school. I was taught that you could recognise a verb because you could put the words "I will" behind one and it would make sense. I was never slow on the uptake; I will ........take! Go! Be! Eat! And all that. Not "I will... airport" or "I will bigMac and Small fries". No, no, I understood this. Go! Be! Eat! Order! Pay! Verbs, yes, all of them. But are they all doing words? What about the verbs 'to be' or 'to seem'? What are we doing there? Niente. De nada. Que Dalle. Nuttin'.
Bernardo.
Bernardo is a friend of mine, and one of the 125 people that live in the military, fortified hilltop town that I call home. We all see a lot of each other. Bernardo was born deaf. I referred to him recently in English as 'deaf and dumb' and my French bilingual-ish son went ballistic: "Don't you bloody-well call him dumb - he's as clever as any of us! RANT RANT" and I had to really calm him down to explain that 'dumb' and 'mute' meant the same thing in English but he wasn't having it and said that dumb meant stupid and that the word was 'MUTE' thank you very much and DON'T DO IT AGAIN. Linguistic point taken. I wonder how that came about. Anyway, I digress. Back to Bernardo. He kept in mainstream education, became a painter/plasterer, and retired last year. He has developed and taught us his own form of sign language (signing, like talking, is different in every country, as is their right) and occasionally, during a conversation, he will painfully pronounce the names of towns or people when necessary. Otherwise, we all sign. It's great. English friends on holiday out here with no French can have lengthy conversations with him. I had a long chat during a horribly loud concert once. It could only have been with him. He's football-mad so when I first arrived in Domme and wrote 'Manchester' on a bit of paper (hadn't learnt his protocol at that stage), he was dead chuffed. Anyway, he mimes verbs of action - sleep, raining, painting - and skips verbs of state. "I am tired" is "I tired" if you try it. Go on: mime it and you will skip the verb 'to be'. "You seem sad" likewise dispenses with the "seem". You go straight from 'you' to 'sad'.
Verbs of action versus verbs of state... You'd not mime a one of them; you'd go straight into the describing word waiting just after. Note that 'horrible person' is very hard to mime. This is problematic. For me, anyway.
{I had initially written that 'twat' is hard to mime, but it isn't!! It's easy to mime. It just doesn't mean the same. So I tried 'tosser' and 'wanker' and 'arsehole' and just gave up and put 'horrible person'.}
Here are the most used French verbs of action:
Être to be Rester to stay
Demeurer to remain/stay S'appeler to be called
Sembler to seem Avoir l'air to seem
Paraître to appear Passer pour to come off as
Devenir to become Se nommer to be called
Se montrer to show ones self as
"Tired" is easy to mime, like "angry" or "sad". These are all adjectives, by the way. They give a quality to the subject you are describing. The French call them 'les adjectifs qualificatifs' which is a pretty thing to say out loud [lè za jè CTIF ka li fi ka TIF]. Sometimes these describing words sit right next to their subject - "fat sumo wrestlers" - or they are linked by a verb of state - "sumo wrestlers are fat". The former are epithetical, the latter attributes. I only say this because French kiddiwinkles have to know these details for 'o' level (or GCSE or whatever it will be soon) and I feel that we should share their pain (momentarily).
So, verbs are split into two groups: verbs of state and verbs of action. Here are some jolly photos demonstrating verbs of action. The idea is to see how many verbs you can find (many, many, I hope) and then to find them in French. The format for your verbs in English and in French won't be the same, which will be interesting, and will also the be the topic of my next blog. Have a see, and also admire my Hollyhocks, The War Memorial at Cénac by Marguerite Mazet, my lovely boy, and an ancient skittle game much cherished by Les Dommois.
I thank you for you time.
A verb is a doing word ?
Thus was I taught in junior school. I was taught that you could recognise a verb because you could put the words "I will" behind one and it would make sense. I was never slow on the uptake; I will ........take! Go! Be! Eat! And all that. Not "I will... airport" or "I will bigMac and Small fries". No, no, I understood this. Go! Be! Eat! Order! Pay! Verbs, yes, all of them. But are they all doing words? What about the verbs 'to be' or 'to seem'? What are we doing there? Niente. De nada. Que Dalle. Nuttin'.
Bernardo.
Bernardo is a friend of mine, and one of the 125 people that live in the military, fortified hilltop town that I call home. We all see a lot of each other. Bernardo was born deaf. I referred to him recently in English as 'deaf and dumb' and my French bilingual-ish son went ballistic: "Don't you bloody-well call him dumb - he's as clever as any of us! RANT RANT" and I had to really calm him down to explain that 'dumb' and 'mute' meant the same thing in English but he wasn't having it and said that dumb meant stupid and that the word was 'MUTE' thank you very much and DON'T DO IT AGAIN. Linguistic point taken. I wonder how that came about. Anyway, I digress. Back to Bernardo. He kept in mainstream education, became a painter/plasterer, and retired last year. He has developed and taught us his own form of sign language (signing, like talking, is different in every country, as is their right) and occasionally, during a conversation, he will painfully pronounce the names of towns or people when necessary. Otherwise, we all sign. It's great. English friends on holiday out here with no French can have lengthy conversations with him. I had a long chat during a horribly loud concert once. It could only have been with him. He's football-mad so when I first arrived in Domme and wrote 'Manchester' on a bit of paper (hadn't learnt his protocol at that stage), he was dead chuffed. Anyway, he mimes verbs of action - sleep, raining, painting - and skips verbs of state. "I am tired" is "I tired" if you try it. Go on: mime it and you will skip the verb 'to be'. "You seem sad" likewise dispenses with the "seem". You go straight from 'you' to 'sad'.
Verbs of action versus verbs of state... You'd not mime a one of them; you'd go straight into the describing word waiting just after. Note that 'horrible person' is very hard to mime. This is problematic. For me, anyway.
{I had initially written that 'twat' is hard to mime, but it isn't!! It's easy to mime. It just doesn't mean the same. So I tried 'tosser' and 'wanker' and 'arsehole' and just gave up and put 'horrible person'.}
Here are the most used French verbs of action:
Être to be Rester to stay
Demeurer to remain/stay S'appeler to be called
Sembler to seem Avoir l'air to seem
Paraître to appear Passer pour to come off as
Devenir to become Se nommer to be called
Se montrer to show ones self as
"Tired" is easy to mime, like "angry" or "sad". These are all adjectives, by the way. They give a quality to the subject you are describing. The French call them 'les adjectifs qualificatifs' which is a pretty thing to say out loud [lè za jè CTIF ka li fi ka TIF]. Sometimes these describing words sit right next to their subject - "fat sumo wrestlers" - or they are linked by a verb of state - "sumo wrestlers are fat". The former are epithetical, the latter attributes. I only say this because French kiddiwinkles have to know these details for 'o' level (or GCSE or whatever it will be soon) and I feel that we should share their pain (momentarily).
So, verbs are split into two groups: verbs of state and verbs of action. Here are some jolly photos demonstrating verbs of action. The idea is to see how many verbs you can find (many, many, I hope) and then to find them in French. The format for your verbs in English and in French won't be the same, which will be interesting, and will also the be the topic of my next blog. Have a see, and also admire my Hollyhocks, The War Memorial at Cénac by Marguerite Mazet, my lovely boy, and an ancient skittle game much cherished by Les Dommois.
I thank you for you time.