Quote of the (last work-)day

[pphaneuf]

From one of my co-workers, on internal IRC, after I once more exhibited my sketchy grasp of the French grammar:

curl --mirror http://www.leconjugueur.com/ | ssh pphaneuf 'cat >/dev/brain'

Comments

[caspianxi.livejournal.com]

jésus. Wait until they meet me.

"ouais, ch'ete neé au Québac, mais chsuis anglephon."

It's all about destroying organized language. Grammar is for chairladies.

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Hahaha! But at least, you have the excuse of being anglo!

I'm all the more surprising, grammar-wise, as while I do have an accent, it remains rather clean, and only use the occasional word they find weird in France (like "fournaise" to refer to a fuel-burning central heating system, as opposed to electric baseboards or seomthing similar, but they have hardly any grasp on the whole "heating your house" concept around here), and I'm actually pretty anal about writing as correctly as I can, even on IRC, IM and SMS.

But I simply gave up on written French grammar around 6th grade, where I deemed it more difficult than machine vision or other problems.

The French could be the leading technology super-power if they used all the brain cells they use for mastering their grammar and use them on stuff like quantum physics. We'd all be buying Renault teleporters right now if they spoke English.

But instead, no, they're listening to fucking reggae and world music all the time, and driving like idiots, because their brains is busy remembering things like the third past subjonctive of "baiser". Jebus.

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

que j'eusse baisé
que tu eusses baisé
qu'il eût baisé
que nous eussions baisé
que vous eussiez baisé
qu'ils eussent baisé

Quantum physics suck!

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

See? You'd already be ruling the world if you didn't speak French! ;-)

[dcoombs.livejournal.com]

When the conjugated form has NO LETTERS IN COMMON WITH THE BASE VERB ("eusse" / "avoir"), I think I am justified in my confusion.

[azrhey.livejournal.com]

I AM
you ARE
he IS

what verb is that again?

;-)

[dcoombs.livejournal.com]

Did I say English was easy? I did not. Anyway, at least those are shorter. :)

Esperanto

[muadda.livejournal.com]

English and French are badly designed. That's why we need Esperanto

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

[muadda.livejournal.com]

Pour conjuguer au passé du subjonctif, il eut fallu que je le susse. Mais heureusement, ce n'est pas très utile.

http://leconjugueur.com/php/newconjugue.php?lang=fr&verbe=savoir
http://leconjugueur.com/php/newconjugue.php?verbe=falloir&lang=fr

Et puis, le français, c'est simple: il y a même des verbes qui ne se conjuguent qu'à la troisième personne du singulier, comme pleuvoir, falloir, etc.

http://leconjugueur.com/php/newconjugue.php?lang=fr&verbe=pleuvoir

[v0idnull.livejournal.com]

wait
what?

internal IRC?

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes, why? An internal IRC server, behind a firewall, for our own nefarious proprietary chatter. ;-)

[v0idnull.livejournal.com]

I can honestly say I have never seen a corporate irc network before.

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a network of one server, so it's kind of a degenerate case. We had one at NITI as well, which was even better, because we had a #quiz channel (with a quizbot). :-)

[dcoombs.livejournal.com]

...which sometimes worked!

[muadda.livejournal.com]

Comment traduire en anglais le jeu de mot suivant?

«Je fume, tu fumes, nous fûmes.»

[pphaneuf.livejournal.com]

Haha! I don't think it's possible. :-)

[dcoombs.livejournal.com]

Haha, that's cute. You could say "I smoke, you smoke, we're dead" to translate only the meaning, but you lose all the cleverness.

[dcoombs.livejournal.com]

"I smoke, you smoke, we're smoked!" ?? It's a bit of a stretch...