• Ddinistrioll@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    In French, baguette means “long stick”. The bread name comes from this meaning, as it is a long, thin kind of bread :) We also call drum sticks “baguette”, as well as anything wooden, long and thin, like a conductor baton or a magic wand!

  • Maultasche@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    And because they mostly just say “wand” in the Harry Potter films, the French dub always uses the shorter “baguette” which made it pretty funny for me as a child learning French.

      • casmael@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Years of research and development and yet no practical use found for words having gender. They have played us for absolute fools!

        • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          And worse, even native speakers don’t know them all. It’s 50/50 whether it’s un or une airplane, bus, trampoline…, depending of the speaker.

        • Ddinistrioll@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Am French, can confirm, gendered languages (there are lots of these!) would probably be better without them… But eh, languages in general are not known to be logical and practical. And English is not an exception!

          • casmael@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            Yeah English is really silly. I can only apologise for through / though / thought etc. The ough did used to make sense in pronunciation, but has long since fallen out of use.

            Any good resources spring to mind for learning French btw? I’ve been smashing through Duolingo but it’s a 6/10 at best tbh.

            • Ddinistrioll@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              No, sorry, I’m actually French so I would not really have use for these

              I know that for English, subscribing to various EN youtube channels helped me a lot, but obviously you need some base level to understand enough of it for it to be useful

              Also, I think learning how to write French is wayyy harder than learning to listen, read or even speak French, so I’d advise against really trying to be able to write, and focusing more on the 3 other aspects.

              If you have French-related questions, feel free to pm me :)

          • Aatube@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            Some say gender can distinguish between similar-sounding words and what a pronoun refers to.

            • Ddinistrioll@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              It’s true, at least in French. Because we “concord” (I’m not sure of the translation there) adjectives with the noun, it means that we can understand which adjectives is linked to which noun on complex sentences. Same with some determiners and articles.

              A basic example: “Un abricot et des pommes juteuses” (An apricot and some juicy apples) Because in French adjectives comes after the noun, it could apply to either only the apples, or both fruits. But since apricot is masculine, apple is feminine, and “juteuses” is the feminine version of the adjective, we know it applies only to the apples.

              But honestly? This feature is not THAT important imo. And it makes gendered languages so much more difficult to learn, even as a native speakers sometimes I misgender some words I’m not used to use.

              And my example doesn’t even work if both fruits are the same gender, so it’s not like it is a critical feature of the language!

  • LazaroFilm@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Other funny things. Underwear is “slip” (pronounced like sleep) and bathing suit is “slip de bain”

  • Epicurus0319@sopuli.xyz
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    11 months ago

    Hon hon hon oui, oui madame, can je put mon baguette into your- hon hon hon- vageaux- honhonhon, oui oui, in your vageaux-hon hon hon

    • wieson@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I’ll never understand why Americans do this. It’s so stupid. French people don’t even pronounce the H.

    • timou@jlai.lu
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      11 months ago

      Well, it actually translates to “baguette magique”, so nothing to fix, here at least.

      • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
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        11 months ago

        I don’t pretend to speak French but do they actually call a magical stick a Baguette Magique or wouldn’t some other synonym be more fitting?

        • timou@jlai.lu
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          11 months ago

          They actually call it a Baguette Magique.

          Source: I’m french. (Also, look at the other comments, they explain it better than I could)

    • fer0n@lemm.eeOP
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      11 months ago

      For one, it’s not google translate. And for another the translation is correct. I actually took a look at Harry Potter with french dub as I couldn’t believe it either and they definitely called their wands “baguette”. Also confirmed by other comments here.