Some questions on French

French isn't my first language, but something like "je préfère que non" could be close to the mark?

Ahhhhhhhhhh! That is interesting! And it would make all the more sense

there is an example of this kind of verbal usage.
>Je préfère rester seul à la maison.(I prefer to rest alone in my home.)
Taking this into consideration, the structure "préférer+ne pas(negational adverb which makes infinitive negative)+infinitive" can pass.
well, this is a bit arbitrary because it twists their way of applying their syntax notions to match the reality of the language

I’m more than down with fake rules to match reality. All my language abilities come from Latin and Greek where the “grammar” was invented off observation with an exception for almost everything. So I live by arbitrary rules!

Don't you get me?

Yeah I agree to you.
I'm always puzzled that English grammar principles have a lot of exceptions and grammatical scholars put many minor rules to fix it, which we should have in mind to be as fluent as you are...

Yeah I know that exact translations are a fantasy but I am wishful that certain ways of translating things convey a similar tone across a language barrier. That was more so what I was looking for.

What’s most interesting is that our school systems do not teach us any grammar as children. Most English speakers don’t know what a subjunctive is, and only learn about it from learning another language. I have a joint degree in both English and Classical Philology so my grammar is a bit more refind than any given native English speaker, but we essentially learn nothing about syntax or grammar in school.

well, I'm Japanese and let me talk out of my own experience.
In Japan we are taught our language's grammar(so-called "school grammar"-publically formal but relatively "classical" enough to be challenged in a scholarly way).
Thus a not small number of people know such notions.
Moreover, I think that your school hold an English class("National language class"), where I guess you guys are taught such things.

interesting thread

Our English classes are all reading comprehension and formal composition. We don’t focus on grammatical nusiances. We are hardly taught the parts of speech lol. Most of my peers would not be able to tell you what an adverb is/does.

Bouta go to work and wage my life away but keep this grammar talk going nibs, i’ll pop in and out

-OP

Well, languages are just a bunch of patterns people use over and over again. Doesn't matter if people follow the proper rules as long as enough people follow the /same/ rules.
Did you know the proper pronunciation of ask used to be 'aks'?

It depends on who you're speaking to really

> “I would prefer not to.”
what i hear the most often is "je préfèrerais éviter" (literally "i would prefer to avoid")

>“Parlez-vous français” the article ‘le’ is left out before français (or any language)
what i most often hear is "tu parles français ?" or "vous parlez français ?" "tu parles le français ?" or "vous parlez le français ?"

>but in any other context it is “le français” or “l’anglais”? This has been confusing me greatly.
yes, every time you use the verb parler you skip the le but otherwise you keep it

both are completely right

Yeah prescriptive grammar is essentially bullshit BUT descriptive grammar becomes presriptive after a given rule is established as proper. For example, you can’t leave than out of a comparative statement, and it could be deemed incorrect because a native speaker could not internally digest “he is a better speaker him” to us, that is most certainly “wrong” prescriptively, because past description of our grammar notes its impossibility.

yeah you are right.
Language changes over decades, years, and centuries, and "proper rule" might be an arbitrary restriction made by grammarers whose concepts of their language are a bit old-fashioned and thus who cannot fully follow the transition of the language(how could they apply their theory to Internet slangs!?).
Yes you may condemn me for my prescriptivism which may neglect the reality of the language, however the grammar is what leads me to the /same/ rules you say.
I mean, without it it would take me too much time and other costs, therefore I reckon the grammar is a great guide to us.
And what I'd like to say additionally is , and that "rule" or "value" is what we, foreign students, must begin to study and follow even if it is old-school.
Yeah our compatriots say that as for English education, it is often said that we had better start educating children from middle-aged grade of elementary school with conversation-oriented methods.
I agree with this idea, but when they become junior high students, I insist that they should get to understand English grammar as well because of its utility in comprehending written language.

bump
c'mon frenchmen!

Didn't you get your answer

my answer? what do you mean?
I did just say my opinion about the relation between grammar and the reality of language education.
Yeah I'd like to have responses to mine, but I don't demand any though.

Absolutely, don't get me wrong. There's no sense being a grammatical anarchist for the hell of it. My main point was that in practise, grammar doesn't have a perfect ruleset that comes from high on down: there's nonsensical things in every language, so it's always good to hold that notion in the back of your mind so as not to get mentally blocked by all the weird shit.
As for English, the syntax is pretty analytic, if we'd retained more complicated morphology (complex conjugation, explicit cases) we might have been taught more of that in school. But as is, the only real thing to remember are exceptions which don't really mess with the fundamental structure. Most everything we need is encapsulated in word order and a bunch of prepositions. Which are also kind flexible, in part cause the other thing English has is the lack of a standardising organisation. Apart from guidelines for formal writing, which is again based on past communications anyway.

Je ne préfèrerais pas labourer le cul d'une chintok si je pouvais fourrer celui d'une gook

That's not to say don't study grammar at all. These notions of completely abandoning grammars altogether is a ridiculous step in autodidactic language learning.

hell yeah, your words come home to me desu.
What you mean is truly righteous and there is no point in sticking to grammar too much.
Even so, I take the position where I suggest that you should have grammatical knowledge in mind to make yourselves understood as much as possible.
I'd like to extract this principle; "to break rules, it is necessary to remember them."
Even though it isn't required to break rules, but to get you across to others it is helpful to apply grammatical insights to your own linguistic practices.

I'm not disagreeing with you, www
I'll put it like this.
English is retarded. Don't worry about it too much. Keep at it.

Actually have you had much of a look into the history of english? Clears up a lot of the wacky stuff better than the whole "i before e except after c" mnemonics you often see.

>look into the history of english
I know just its outline, like notorious Great Vowel Shift.
And what is "i before e except after c"?

It's a spelling rule to teach children how to spell words like "receive" and "conceit" cause a lot of basic words they learn like "pie, flies, died, smilie" tend to make them write in the order "ie" anytime they see an 'i' and an 'e'. It also doesn't help that most of the time they associate "ie" with an "ee" sound like in the word "teeth". It just so happens many of these tricky "cei" words are pronounced with a "see" sound, so they can't tell based on pronunciation. The rule immediately fails with words like "protein" and "science" perhaps with more exceptions than words that actually follow the rule.

When you look at where these words come from, you find that they were transmitted to English through Old French dialects. And because English was not standardised when people were writing these French words into their language, you could basically write them however you wanted; i before e or e before i. That doesn't help until you look further and find that most "cei" words you'd be using come from the same French word.

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>our school systems do not teach us any grammar as children. Most English speakers don’t know what a subjunctive is, and only learn about it from learning another language
america wtf

>talking about etymological roots of English words
yeah I know the effect of French from Norman Conquest and their mutual resemblance; as you can see my name, I'm a Japanese student who study French as well as English, so I'm enjoying this similarity lmao.
Anyway as for English spellings, because of the language's complicated etymological derivation routes there is no easy way to cut off the cost to remember the spellings of the words.
I don't pay any attention to such a "memorising rule" but I just remember as many as possible.
However, I often confuse a word with another whose spelling is alike(like "regression" and "recession") and I always depend on chrome's automatic error-reporting system kek.

ok, we have to settle it once for all, french, or english ?

If I had to choose one, then I'd pick out English.
Désolé mon kop1, mais c'est naturel en considérant la réalité de cette dominance de l'Anglais...

And that tends to make it easier to pick out the "cei" exceptions. Because "cei" is an exception itself. Because most of those words come from formations that are mutations of Latin "capio" through Old French.

Now "Protein" is also pronounced with an "ee" sound where the "ei" is, but "Protein" is a Greek word, so it hints that the construction of the word is different because of it's origin.
"Science" is also from Old French. But it has no relation to the Latin word "capio" when you look at the history of the word; so you wouldn't expect it to be written "cei". Funnily enough it changed pronunciation anyway cause people made an analogy between the spelling for the "ai" sound in pies, flies and dies.

j'ai bien fait d'apprendre le coréen

Oh, that stuff

rester does not mean to rest, it means to stay. If I tell you "reste la, je viens tout de suite" I'm not telling you to take a nap until I come back.

Generally, I guess it would simply be translated by "je ne préfère pas".

Do you want to go outdoor?
I would prefer not to.

Veux tu aller dehors ?
Je ne préfère pas.

>Because "cei" is an exception itself
Ah...I see, since "cei" derived from "capio" is an exceptional morpheme which spread over a lot of major words, it doesn't only stand out but also it's easy to distinguish.
oh shit...ok then I should've said reposer...

Yeah sorry if that post came off as patronising.
Anyway I would suggest that being able to detect etymological origins goes a long way to making sense of spelling. You're doing French already, so I reckon the patterns shouldn't be too difficult to distinguish between Germanic and French words.

I feel that it is important to keep the condotionality of it though

Ce n'est pas le moment pour se reposer. How popular is French in Japan? You haven't joined the circlejerk yet.

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I see...hmm, it seems that I should pay more attention to etymological descending structure.
Thank you sensei.

English because the cultural associations are less rooted and more universal

Most Frenchies don't have English skills sufficient enough to articulate the answer

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I’d do interpals but I’m too lazy, I am willing to help a frenchman with english (much grammatical understanding on my part can be very helpful) for help with my french.

-OP

Here's another fun thing. Do you know what do support is?

>ce n'est pas le moment pour se reposer.
ah merde c'est un phrase anglais adopté que je dois réviser: "I prefer to stay alone in my home".
Well, the reputation of French...hmm.
Thanks to our cult in French culture and French language's "phonetic beauty", that is given more or less special prestige in Japan.
However it isn't necessarily connected with its popularity as a subject in university.
Say, taking the utility or the ease to study and get a credit of a given language into consideration, at least from my opinion, in Todai they tend to choose Spanish or Chinese.
do support? what the heck is that

Français

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>opinion
this is the mistake of experience

Je ne préfère pas. (de manière humoristique pour une raison évidente ou alors simplement en tant que synonyme de "non").

Je ne préférerais pas. (sous entendu je n'aime pas ça mais je vais le faire quand même ou alors "demande moi pourquoi").

But generally, we use conditional for the future events; nobody if you ask him: "do you want to drink?" will answer to you with "I would prefer not to", it sounds off. (in French of course)

Ahhh that’s interesting, I didn’t realize the connotation the tense carried, I mean that is sensible seeing it’s based upon the future stem

>learning french

get a real hobby

I want to read your novels and Racine thoo

It's in the structure of the question itself.
"Do you know what do support is?"
Now in Japanese the structure of this question is something like:
「Do support」+ KNOWING VERB + GRAMMAR INFLECTION
So implied subject (you), object, verb.
In French I might ask something like "Connais-vous 'Do support' ?" :
"Know you do support?"
In colloquial speech,
"Vous connais 'Do support' ?"
I'd be very comfortable saying to you the direct translation "You know 'Do support'?"
These all have only 3 basic components. the Verb, the Subject, the Object.
Why so in English, in proper speech, do I have to add "Do" to the beginning of a whole bunch of questions that aren't "who, what, when, where, why, how, which." I can easily work without them, and people understand me regardless.
French doesn't really do it. Japanese doesn't. German doesn't. What's with this ridiculous sentence where I can say "I do like the weather today" when I can easily have just said "I like the weather today"? French doesn't do it. Japanese doesn't. German doesn't.
Look through history. It's the Welsh. More accurately the Celtic people influencing Anglo Saxon with their own syntax. "Do" may have served a purpose in these kinds of sentences and questions as some sort of grammatical particle once, but in most cases it's redundant.

>Je préfère rester seul à la maison.
>à la maison

You could said that only to one who shares your house (your mother for example).
Otherwise, you have to say: "à ma maison" or more commonly "chez moi".

Notice the future form is orally identical to the conditional form:
Je ne préférais pas
Je ne préférai pas.

ahhhhhhhh so you refer to the use of "do" as auxiliary verb to signify emphasis or to make question.
Woah...it's surprising. Yeah once told so I get to wonder why we have to add that auxiliary verb.
Your etymological knowledge is magnificent!

I accept your advice but my dictionary adopted that sentence and I just quoted it...

>Je ne préférais pas
>Je ne préférai pas.

Sorry, mistake of spelling:
the-conjugation.com/french/verb/preferer.php

>>Je préfère rester seul à la maison.
>>à la maison
>You could said that only to one who shares your house (your mother for example).
>Otherwise, you have to say: "à ma maison" or more commonly "chez moi".

I disagree, whenever I don't feel like going out and tell it to my friend I can use both "chez moi" and "à la maison". I'm not the only one among the people I know
A ma maison sounds weird to me and I can't remember hearing it from anyone lately

yeah I agree to you on that point.
My teacher said to me that "à ma maison" is not suitable thus instead you should use "à la maison" or "chez moi".

It is correct but not in all context.

I prefer to rest alone in my home.
Je préfère rester seul à ma maison. (your interlocutor doesn't live at your home).
Works too:
Je préfère rester seul chez moi.

Je préfère rester seul à la maison.
I prefer to stay alone at home. (your interlocutor has the same home than you).

>A ma maison sounds weird to me and I can't remember hearing it from anyone lately
youtube.com/watch?v=jiPz_1hRVc8

Yeah, I'd try to explain that one further but Welsh is a whole other ball game right now. Point being the weirdness of English comes from it's different influences, so it's worth looking at why things came about if they're thoroughly confusing to you.

>wanting to help a Frenchman and not a French woman
user...

Is this a dialectical thing?

CHINO CHAN

Perhaps, which is why I didn't say he was wrong but just that it sounded weird

M8 There’mst no women here

Okay, so what's this?

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bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/actualites/20120416.OBS6303/traduire-bartleby-j-aimerais-mieux-pas.html
This could help you.
There are maybe other articles about that sentence who seem so special in English.
In resume, the article says: "j'aimerais autant pas".

Un pain au chocolat.

Nothing painful about pain au chocolat.

Ye olde pain au chocolat

Seeing that’s its more chocolate in bread, I would think it would be chocolat au pain, but language can be very illogical

They do, retard
Je ne préfère pas X
Je préfère ne pas X

Chocolate au pain would mean chocolate with bread. Like a pan with melted chocolate and you sprinkle bread on top.

That's not what the "au" means
Chocolat au pain would mean like bread-flavored chocolate, which it's not

I can't think of another word but "flavored" in this case, but basically what comes before the "au" is the main ingredient, the basis (here bread), and what comes after the "au" is a precision of what makes this food more than just bread (chocolate), so it's a pain au chocolat

Damn, no chocolatine contrarians
Yeah, it's the same concept with cafe au lait, right?

Indeed

Or glace à la vanille ("à la" because vanille is female in French)

is there a difference in nuance here?

"Je préfèrerias ne pas ---"

So simply ending with a ne pas and no complimentary infinitive is acceptable?

Yes and it is more polite.

Awesome, it is that simplicity and ambiguity I was looking for

how do you prnounce nuit

Neu-ee

Ee and no T sound is right but I'm not sure how this eu is supposed to sound

Got any full English word that would have it so I can confirm it's how we prononce "nuit" ?