French/English ski dictionary

Dave Mac wrote:

Pablo Escobar wrote:Sprechen sie dick?

Rather too much vernacular there Pablo!

funny film tho!

je ne comprend pas.................I do not understand (use that one a lot)

or the other version of that No comprendy :lol:

Thanks Eljay,
It's amazing how bad we all are at French when I would think most of us studied it at school, and a lot of us ski in France.

The correct version of that is 'Je ne comprends pas' (with the 's') and if you want to be very clever you add on 'ce que vous dites'.

My French was as bad as everyone else's until we went ski-ing in France and I found there were things I wanted to say to French people, (who's English seemed to be as bad as my French), and I felt really frustrated because I'd spend years at school learning French (30 years ago!) and I could remember very little of it. So I decided to go back to adult French classes.

It was simple things I wanted to say - like 'Is that seat free?' in the restaurant.

So, I thought doing a small phrase book specifically written for skiers, would be very helpful. Of course, it would be even better if someone knows of one already, but so far I haven't been able to find one.

What else would you really like to be able to say?

Ally

bandit wrote:Um,Tino.....

What is a venetre? :D

Edit...did you mean fenetre (window)? That would make sense :D

I didn't say I could write it in French )

If you want a really confusing European language, Catalan is the way to go. They seen to take some elements of French and some of Spanish then make up the rest.

For example.

Please:

French = sil vous plait
Spanish = por favor
Catalan = suis plau

I once found myself talking to a woman in Girona airport, I started in Catalan, quickly slipped into French, realized my mistake and for some reason German took over, panicked and resorted to English, then finished with a flourish in Italain :shock: I don't even know any Italian.

Tino, Catalan was once described to me, as a bit like listening to dogs barking :D The language has a lot more hard edges to the words than Castillian does.

bandit wrote:Tino, Catalan was once described to me, as a bit like listening to dogs barking :D The language has a lot more hard edges to the words than Castillian does.

Also they speak about 3 times faster than the Castillians, which is hard to believe and even harder to follow.

Tino,
I find understanding spoken French very difficult, because they speak so fast and they use different expressions, words, and accents to the ones I was taught at school. So I totally understand your difficulty in understanding Catalan.

If you're good at German maybe you could do the German version of the skiers phrase book?

Ally