Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
French has a T-V distinction in the second person singular. That is, it uses two different sets of pronouns: tu and vous and their various forms. The usage of tu and vous depends on the kind of relationship (formal or informal) that exists between the speaker and the person with whom they are speaking and the age differences between these subjects. [1]
Some (very rare) nouns change gender according to the way they are used: the words amour 'love' and délice 'pleasure' are masculine in singular and feminine in plural; the word orgue 'organ' is masculine, but when used emphatically in plural to refer to a church organ it becomes feminine (les grandes orgues); the plural noun gens 'people ...
French has a complex system of personal pronouns (analogous to English I, we, they, and so on). When compared to English, the particularities of French personal pronouns include: a T-V distinction in the second person singular (familiar tu vs. polite vous) the placement of object pronouns before the verb: « Agnès les voit. » ("Agnès sees ...
For example, gender can indirectly influence the productivity of noun-patterns in what he calls the "Israeli" language: the Israeli neologism מברשת (mivréshet, transl. brush) is fitted into the feminine noun-pattern mi⌂⌂é⌂et (each ⌂ represents a slot where a radical is inserted) because of the feminine gender of the matched words ...
à la short for (ellipsis of) à la manière de; in the manner of/in the style of [1]à la carte lit. "on the card, i.e. menu". In restaurants it refers to ordering individual dishes from the menu rather than a fixed-price meal.
The word femme is taken from the French word for woman. The word butch, meaning "masculine", may have been coined by abbreviating the word butcher, as first noted in George Cassidy's nickname, Butch Cassidy. [12] However, the exact origin of the word is still unknown. Butch-Femme symbol by Daddy Rhon
A hendiadys is a phrase that contains two complementary words, and a gender-neutral hendiadys will include a feminine word and a masculine word, e.g. toutes et tous, citoyennes et citoyens. Within France, this gender-inclusive language has been met with some harsh resistance from the Académie Française and French conservatives .
The word couple is used in standard French as a masculine noun (a couple, married or unmarried), but in Quebec it is also used as a feminine noun in phrases like une couple de semaines (a couple of weeks). This is often thought to be an anglicism, but is in fact a preservation of an archaic French usage.