Enamored Of These Descriptions - Tumblr Posts
“ French is lying down next to a pond fascinated by its own reflection while English is racing by with such efficiency it sometimes trips on its own feet and faceplants but together we could be normal. Ish. “ - @hedgehog-moss
I think English is more efficient than French in a lot of ways but if you guys would just let us donate a few diacritics, I swear it would change your life. Imagine having an accent to indicate which syllable in a word is stressed. You look at it and you immediately know. It’s more efficient than guessing or remembering, you have to admit. Spanish does it because Spanish loves you, while English revels in confusion and fear. What about an accent that tells you if the ‘read’ you’re looking at is the one that’s pronounced read instead of read, or one that lets you know if the letter i in a particular word is pronounced ai or ee. I’m still not over that time I had to talk about Pride & Prejudice in English class and couldn’t remember which one was pronounced which way. Just add a little circumflex. Prîde and Prejudice. The word even looks more prîdeful now that it’s got a hat!
French is such a nanny state of a language in comparison, “a is a verb and à is a preposition and cote is pronounced with the mouth slightly more open compared to côte, we MUST dispatch our best accents to provide assistance and prevent panic.” We’ve got 15 accented letters and special characters (é, è, ê, ë, à, â, ô, ù, û, î, ï, ç, æ and œ) and many of them are just here wringing their hands hoping that thanks to them you won’t be confused re: pronunciation or meaning, or even slight nuances in verbal mood. French is gently guiding you by the hand around potential pitfalls of meaning like “it’s vital for the past tense of ‘have’ to be spelt eut in the indicative mood and eût in the subjunctive else you might be confused as to whether the verb carries a connotation of conjecture or doubt <3”, English is driving you home in reverse down the highway with broken headlights at night like “had had, who cares! I guess homonyms and syllable stress might trip people up once in a while? thoughts & prayers”
Then again not all of our accents are terrifically useful, some of them are more like people doggedly holding on to a job that modern life has rendered obsolete, like the circumflexes that are just here to tell you that an s used to live here (forest -> forêt, haste -> hâte). We keep them around because they make the word more interesting (bonus etymology!) and nicer to look at but I wouldn’t mind giving them away for a good cause. French is lying down next to a pond fascinated by its own reflection while English is racing by with such efficiency it sometimes trips on its own feet and faceplants but together we could be normal. Ish.