10 fautes d'orthographe courantes que vous ne ferez plus 1. L'accord du participe passé précédant un infinitif Faut-il accorder un participe passé suivi d'un infinitif ou non? Cela dépend. Il faut d'abord identifier le sujet du verbe à l'infinitif. Par exemple, dans la phrase "les arbres que j'ai vu planter", les arbres ne font pas l'action de planter. En revanche, dans "les arbres, que j'ai vus se dessécher", les arbres sont le vrai sujet du verbe se dessécher. : Pour vérifier si le sujet fait bien l'action, il est possible d'ajouter "en train de" entre le participe passé et le verbe à l'infinitif: "Les arbres que j'ai vus en train de se dessécher." >> Cliquez et corrigez notre fausse lettre d'amour truffée de fautes, ci-dessous! 2. On orthographie "sandales roses" mais on écrit "voitures rouge vif": cherchez l'erreur! Les adjectifs de couleur composés restent aussi invariables: "des carreaux bleus" mais des "carreaux bleu ciel", des "poussins jaunes", mais "des rideaux jaune poussin". 3. Erreur courante, mais qui paie cher. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Creating names with emotional appeal I’m working with a client who wants to change his startup’s name, in part because the company’s focus has shifted. But he cited another, equally important reason for a name change: the current name isn’t inspiring. It lacks an emotional charge. My mission: to develop a set of names that meet this “more emotion” objective while also being appropriate, authentic, memorable, and legally available. Here’s how I’m approaching the challenge. Feel free to borrow these suggestions for your own naming project. First, define the emotion you want to evoke. Next, define your brand personality. Now start creating word lists. Old words. Sense words. Nature words. Art words. Adventure words. Personal names. I’ve given you examples of words with positive inflections, but in some circumstances you’ll want to look at negative-emotion words – if, say, you want to signal an outlaw stance or a love of risk.
Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore – Lingua Franca - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education In the undergraduate history of English course I am teaching this term, I request/require that the students teach me two new slang words every day before I begin class. I learn some great words this way (e.g., hangry “cranky or angry due to feeling hungry”; adorkable “adorable in a dorky way”). More importantly, the activity reinforces for students a key message of the course: that the history of English is happening all around us (and that slang is humans’ linguistic creativity at work, not linguistic corruption). Two weeks ago, one student brought up the word slash as an example of new slang, and it quickly became clear to me that many students are using slash in ways unfamiliar to me. In the classes since then, I have come to the students with follow-up questions about the new use of slash. Finally, a student asked, “Why are you so interested in this?” Let me explain. Now I wouldn’t write that phrase down that way, with the slash spelled out, but students tell me they now often do.
What is language extinction and why should we care? | NITV Almost half of the roughly 6,900 languages spoken around the world today are endangered. Scarily, the rate of extinction is accelerating and there is a whole lot at stake. By Lauren Johnson 6 Oct 2016 - 6:06 AM UPDATED 6 Oct 2016 - 2:37 PM A language becomes extinct when its last native speaker dies, and it’s usually the result of its speakers shifting to a lingua franca like English, Arabic or Spanish. Launch this special SBS indigenous language interactive Why is it happening? Greg Dickson, a linguist at the University of Queensland, specialising in Indigenous Australian languages explained to SBS that it can often be “ongoing historical pressures that contribute to people shifting away from a traditional language." Economic growth and globalisation are also key factors that are driving this global trend. But should a dying language be saved? 1. Humans know a lot about the world, but it’s not all written down. 2. Indígenas Ashaninka (Photo via Ministério da Cultura /Flickr) 3. 4. 5. 6.
English language weird rules: Tweet reveals our bizarre way of speaking This single tweet proves just how bizarre the English language is. I’M NOT racist, but English is a bloody ridiculous language. Just about anybody who has studied a second language can attest to that. To illustrate this point, read one of these sentences out loud: “The bandage was wound around the wound.” “Seeing the tear in the painting made me shed a tear.” “When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.” Or think about this: The words cough, rough and though don’t rhyme. Contract, the noun — as in “Please sign this contract” — emphasises the “con”. We waste four whole extra letters on the word queue. If English is your second language, I am so, so sorry. Oh English. To really highlight the insanity that is this violent tool of human communication, BBC reporter Matthew Anderson tweeted a photo of an extract from the book called The Elements of Eloquence. It points out that there’s actually a super-specific order we use to describe things, known as adjective order. Say it aloud. Bloody oath.
Remarkable increase in number of Basque speakers, new survey data reveal There have never been so many bilingual speakers in the Basque country. This is one of the key findings of the latest 6th Sociolinguistic Survey [VI Encuesta Sociolingüistica] published recently by the Government of the Basque country. According to the latest figures presented (2016), 33,9% of the population in the Basque Country over 16 y.o claim to be Basque speakers (631,000 people), 19,1% (356,000) claim to be passive speakers, that is, they understand it but they do not speak it fluently, and the remaining 47% (877,000) do not speak or understand Basque. “These are remarkable figures if we consider that today, there are 212,000 more fluent speakers of Basque than in 1991” – stated Patxi Baztarrika, Vice-minister for Language Policy at the Basque Country and Chair of NPLD, referring to the data presented. One of the most interesting changes in the vitality of the Basque language is the increasing number of young speakers. Baztarrika presented these figures along with Mr.
Here’s What Happens in Your Brain When You Hear a Pun -- Science of Us Why do spiders make great baseball players? Because they know how to catch flies. Sorry, sorry, I know that was bad. For the study, led by University of Windsor psychologist Lori Buchanan, a team of researchers presented participants with a pun on one side of their visual field, so that it would be processed first by one side of the brain — things viewed on the right go to the left hemisphere, and things on the left go to to the right. With each pun, Buchanan and her colleagues timed how long it took the participant to catch the wordplay on the screen. The interaction between the right and left hemispheres “enables us to ‘get’ the joke because puns, as a form of word play, complete humor’s basic formula: expectation plus incongruity equals laughter,” Jacobson wrote. For a pun to land, in other words, both sides of your brain have to engage in a little teamwork.
Et voilà pourquoi l’allemand met le verbe à la fin - Le Temps Le Temps: Dans votre livre* «Penser entre les langues», vous écrivez, à propos du «Hochdeutsch»: «Cette langue qui, pour être parlée, suppose que les locuteurs soient libérés de la contingence des affects.» C’est exactement l’argument avancé par les Alémaniques pour défendre leur emploi du dialecte. Les Allemands parlent-ils donc aussi le dialecte en famille? Heinz Wismann: Par Hochdeutsch, on désigne la langue allemande codifiée, imposant le respect strict de ses règles syntaxiques. Et j’observe qu’à partir du moment où, entre deux locuteurs, l’affect s’en mêle, où la tonalité de l’échange devient plus familière, la syntaxe est malmenée. – Pourquoi l’est-il? – Le français place le déterminant après le déterminé: «Une tasse à café». – … parce qu’on ne peut pas interrompre un Allemand qui parle. – Aux oreilles d’un Allemand, les Français sont des gens qui parlent tous en même temps. – Mais d’où vient la rigidité de l’allemand? – L’histoire du Hochdeutsch est compliquée. – Oui.
Argot | Veille CFTTR Tout d’abord, il est important de rappeler qu’aucune forme d’argot ne peut rivaliser avec l’impératrice de celle-ci : le verlan franco-français, que le dubitatif écoute de la bouche de Fabrice Lucchini dans Tout peut arriver. Cela n’empêche pas pour autant d’en voir fleurir dans toutes les langues que ce soit pour des raisons pratiques, d’appartenance à un milieu social, ou encore juste pour s’amuser ! On trouve chez les anglophones l’exemple des totes abbreviations ou totesing, procédé consistant à abréger des mots par troncature (le mot totes est lui-même la forme ainsi abrégée du mot totally). Ces abréviations se forment en quatre étapes simples et intuitives, à condition d’être soi-même anglophone, ou de parler couramment l’anglais : Repérer et isoler la syllabe accentuée. Pour ginormous par exemple, ce sera gi – NOR – mous.Y associer toutes les consonnes consécutives suivantes : norm. Il est important de noter qu’il s’agit ici d’oral, non d’écrit. Florian Huynh-Tan
Pourquoi certains noms de pays sont-ils masculins et d'autres féminins? Nous nous sommes rendus coupables de faute d'orthographe (1) il y a quelques semaines en mettant l'Iran au féminin. Vous nous avez corrigés (2) et grâce à vous nous nous sommes demandé (3): pourquoi l'Iran serait-il de genre masculin? Et pourquoi d'autres pays sont-ils féminins? Les noms féminins Les noms féminins constituent la plus large catégorie des noms de pays. Il y a aussi des formes dérivées de cela: certains noms féminins en "-e" sont des déformations des féminins en "-ia" ou "-ie": l'Allemagne était par exemple Allemania et s'est déformée oralement; l'Espagne était auparavant Hispanie. Toute une série de noms de pays sont devenus des noms de pays après avoir été des adjectifs. La République dominicaine n'a pas de nom de pays: seulement un nom d'Etat. Les noms masculins Les noms masculins sont moins courants. Evidemment, s'il n'y avait pas d'exception ce serait trop facile. En Afrique, beaucoup de pays sont masculins pour d'autres raisons. Qui tranche? Israël Et puis il y a Israël.
La prononciation authentique en langue étrangère : un problème négligé Tout maître de langue sait par expérience qu’une prononciation correcte en langue étrangère n’est ‘apprenable’ que jusqu’à un certain niveau. Un niveau qui diffère en outre d’un apprenant à l’autre. Mais, ce niveau une fois acquis, aucun enseignement de la prononciation, aucun livre de phonétique, aucun cours intensif de prononciation, ne semble pouvoir y changer grand’chose. Dans l’enseignement des langues étrangères (plus loin : LE), on avance souvent comme (un des) buts que la prononciation doit être quasi-authentique, ‘near native’, une formulation qui est difficilement opérationalisable, et qui dans la pratique revient en général à dire que l’apprenant doit respecter les distinctions phonologiques de la langue-cible. Ainsi, bien que l’acquisition d’une prononciation native en langue étrangère soit quelque chose de rare, elle n’est pas complètement exclue. Nous ne le croyons pas.
The Lingua File: The Wide World of English Demonyms In most cases, when you start learning a language, you begin with basic vocabulary. Usually, this includes colors, numbers, foods, everyday items, and locations, which makes sense since they're some of the most useful words in every language. However, there's another category that I've noticed is almost always included in the initial stages of learning a language: nationalities, also known demonyms. People love to use demonyms (and other labels) because they make it easier to identify and distinguish ourselves from others, so it's only natural that they're included in language courses. If you're learning English, then you'll need to remember that demonyms are usually created by combining the name of the location with a suffix, most of which are of Latin or Germanic origin. -an: Bolivian, Zimbabwean -ian: Brazilian, Ecuadorian -ese: Chinese, Senegalese -i: Iraqi, Somali -ish: Danish, Polish -ene: Slovene-ine: Argentine -anian: Guamanian -nian: Panamanian -gian: Norwegian, Glaswegian (Glasgow)
Words We're Watching: -Zilla | Merriam-Webster Godzilla, king of the monsters, made his big screen debut in a 1954 Japanese film directed by Ishirō Honda. The success of that first movie inspired an onslaught of sequels pitting Godzilla against a host of foes: giant moths, robots, space beasts, all of humanity. Eventually Godzilla would even come for the English language itself. We're talking, of course, about the practice of creating new nouns by attaching the tail end of the word Godzilla to an existing noun. Sears began marketing its trademarked Bagzilla in 1977. Other –zilla words, such as hogzilla, began to appear in the late 1970s. What is probably the most successful of the –zilla words is also the one which has deviated the most from the usual meaning of ‘large, impressive in strength,’ and that is the bridezilla. If you would like to use any of these words, you should be free from litigation. Words We're Watching talks about words we are increasingly seeing in use but that have not yet met our criteria for entry.