Are Americans any more 'notoriously monolingual' than the British, Australians, Canadians, Jamaicans and other West Indians or New Zealanders?
Most Anglophone countries are notoriously bad at learning other people's languages.
The exceptions would be India, former African colonies and some of the Pacific Islands that were once pink on the map. White South Africans I've met tend to speak both English and Afrikaans - or at least understand some Afrikaans if they are of British heritage - and if they are black often speak both those languages as well as indigenous ones.
What I meant was that I couldn't imagine her using either version. GG mentioned he couldn't imagine her saying "ass". I can't imagine her saying anything as impolite as those words for that body part.
@Golden Key I don't find it at all difficult to imagine HMQ using the word 'ass' to refer either to a donkey or an asinine person. It doesn't have an association here with one's backside that it has in the US, and particularly not to someone of her generation who probably doesn't watch American comedy programmes on television.
I'm curious. Americans are notoriously monolingual unless they come from bilingual families. How did those of you who come from an English speaking families but are bi- to multilingual acquire your skills? And how do you keep them over the years?
Well, Swedish au pairs meant my siblings and I got a little useful language. Then school started me on French and Latin at 7; classical Greek was added at my senior school. Backpacking in the 1970s added a few useful bits and pieces in Arabic, and then I shared a house with a load of Iranians and Afghans before moving to Hong Kong for a couple of years.
I wouldn't describe myself as multi-lingual, but I endeavour to be able to "meet and greet" if I'm going to be anywhere for a period of more than a couple of weeks. BUT of course, being a Brit I'm never really comfortable trying to speak a foreign language.
As they say in Bucharest, Nadyavam se, che pomaga (I hope that helps).
Are Americans any more 'notoriously monolingual' than the British, Australians, Canadians, Jamaicans and other West Indians or New Zealanders?
Most Anglophone countries are notoriously bad at learning other people's languages.
The exceptions would be India, former African colonies and some of the Pacific Islands that were once pink on the map. White South Africans I've met tend to speak both English and Afrikaans - or at least understand some Afrikaans if they are of British heritage - and if they are black often speak both those languages as well as indigenous ones.
What I meant was that I couldn't imagine her using either version. GG mentioned he couldn't imagine her saying "ass". I can't imagine her saying anything as impolite as those words for that body part.
Well, the Duke of Edinburgh has been known to use some choice phrases.
Besides, there is royal precedent. When James VI of Scotland / James I of England, was told that his subjects were becoming disgruntled that he wasn't appearing publicly very often, he replied, 'What? Would you have me drop down my breeches and show them my arse?'
Also, don't you think that a winking emoticon after my observation might just indicate that I'm being less than entirely serious?
Ummm...I'm not sure why this has become a big deal. Yes, you said something funny about the queen. And I simply said I couldn't imagine her saying "arse" or "ass". Doesn't fit what I've seen of her public image over the years.
Maybe she uses a lot of rude language in private. We just don't get the pleasure of hearing it.
Thanks for the answers. . As a SoCal native, I am pretty embarrassed that I have so little Spanish. Maybe that is something I might tackle while being housebound. One of my roommates came from Central America originally so I would have someone to practice with.
Spanish in high school; German and Greek in College; Hebrew in Seminary. Now that I am having more time on my hands I think I may take a refresher course in German. I also learned American Sign Language while in college and Seminary.
My son took Japanese in High School. He also has Greek under his belt. He picked up Arabic while he was immersed in Palestine for a year.
I had a friend who hated foreign languages when he was in high school but then joined the Marines. Turns out the military aptitude test indicated he could easily pick up languages. He learned Vietnamese, Chinese, French, Tagalog, and Arabic.
@Golden Key the point I'm trying to get across is that 'ass' is not a rude word over here. There will be some awareness among younger adults that it's the way over where you are that people pronounce 'arse' but it's primary meaning is a grey quadruped with long ears and rather a strident call, from which it is also a derogatory word to describe a stupid or stubborn person.
If a UKian calls you an 'ass' that's what they mean. If they want to call you an 'arse' or an 'arsehole', both of which are also derogatory but with a stronger and slightly different shade of meaning from 'ass', that is what they will call you. It has a long 'a'.
I have a reasonable 'get me out of trouble' grasp of French and a 'make understood with help of gestures' facility in Italian. Generally my problem is understanding what people say back - even if it's actually all words I know I only make out about half of them and struggle to make sense of that half. Particularly so in Welsh, where my speaking is fine but pointless because I can't make sense of the reply.
Spanish is odd. I've never learnt any but can read it for gist and I know what subject someone's talking about, even if I don't know what they're saying about it. I put that down to Latin; as far as I can tell Spanish is Latin with the hard bits taken out and some regular sound changes.
What I meant was that I couldn't imagine her using either version. GG mentioned he couldn't imagine her saying "ass". I can't imagine her saying anything as impolite as those words for that body part.
@Golden Key I don't find it at all difficult to imagine HMQ using the word 'ass' to refer either to a donkey or an asinine person. It doesn't have an association here with one's backside that it has in the US, and particularly not to someone of her generation who probably doesn't watch American comedy programmes on television.
If she's like her grandson she won't have watched Fresh Prince.
@Golden Key the point I'm trying to get across is that 'ass' is not a rude word over here. There will be some awareness among younger adults that it's the way over where you are that people pronounce 'arse' . . . .
It’s not how we pronounce “arse.” We pronounce “arse” the same way UKians do when we say “arse,” which isn’t very often. It’s the word we use instead of “arse.”
We rarely use “ass” to mean a donkey—that usage is mainly confined to Christmas carols, at which children will snicker. And if we call someone an ass, we mean more than that they are stupid or stubborn.
Canadians are definitely not notoriously monolingual. As noted above, about 20% speak a first language other than French or English, and the vast majority of those have (or quickly develop) a working knowledge of either French or English, depending on where they live. Of the remainer, about a quarter are French speakers with a good working knowledge of English, perhaps another quarter are English speakers with a good working knowledge of French, and the rest (the category into which I fall) are English speakers with vestiges of French remembered from school or picked up from bilingual packaging. Most of us can pick out the odd word when the Prime Minister speaks in French before the translator kicks in, or can read road signs and ingredients in French, but can't carry on more than a halting conversation, if that.
The official bilingualness leads to some fun misunderstandings and misreadings. When I was growing up there was a popular packaged sort of sweet cake called "1/2 Moon." The package actually read "1/2 Lune Moon," with both the French and English words for moon being the same size, so everyone I knew called them Lune Moons and we were fully into adulthood before we knew different. The same company produced another chocolate packaged treat that many of us grew up calling a "Billot Log" for the same reason. And of course lots of Canadians refer to strong cheddar as what it's called on the package: "Old Fort" Cheese.
Canadians are definitely not notoriously monolingual. As noted above, about 20% speak a first language other than French or English, and the vast majority of those have (or quickly develop) a working knowledge of either French or English, depending on where they live. Of the remainer, about a quarter are French speakers with a good working knowledge of English, perhaps another quarter are English speakers with a good working knowledge of French, and the rest (the category into which I fall) are English speakers with vestiges of French remembered from school or picked up from bilingual packaging. Most of us can pick out the odd word when the Prime Minister speaks in French before the translator kicks in, or can read road signs and ingredients in French, but can't carry on more than a halting conversation, if that.
The official bilingualness leads to some fun misunderstandings and misreadings. When I was growing up there was a popular packaged sort of sweet cake called "1/2 Moon." The package actually read "1/2 Lune Moon," with both the French and English words for moon being the same size, so everyone I knew called them Lune Moons and we were fully into adulthood before we knew different. The same company produced another chocolate packaged treat that many of us grew up calling a "Billot Log" for the same reason. And of course lots of Canadians refer to strong cheddar as what it's called on the package: "Old Fort" Cheese.
That is fun isn't it. People actually do it when they know. Jeux Canada Games. Vélo Canada Bikes. Sante Canada Health. Which leads me to that many of us can probably watch hockey and understand the play by play. When someone does something stupid, we used to call the person in butchered and incorrect French "le premiere jeu-ay de la match de ce soir, il a une Molson's!" (the first star of tonight's game, give him a beer" (Molson Canadian is a beer brand)).
I think he's saying that we *don't* say "arse" in the US, except occasionally when putting on British slang for fun. And that's probably inspired by British TV or a movie.
For the U.S. in general, the figure is closer to 20%, though about 26% of Americans can conduct a conversation in more than one language. In Canada, 35% of the population is bilingual, and 56% of Europeans speak at least two languages fluently. For the world at large, the figure is over 50%
I think he's saying that we *don't* say "arse" in the US, except occasionally when putting on British slang for fun. And that's probably inspired by British TV or a movie.
Which is all true.
Right. But if we do say it, we pronounce it “arse.”
And that we generally don’t use “ass” in the senses that UKians do, except when it shows up in the odd Christmas carol or scripture reading (“a donkey, a foal of an ass”).
But, Nick Tamen, why say 'Ass' when you mean 'Arse' ifas someone upthread said, it's not a bowdlerisation?
I said it upthread. And the reason we say "Ass" instead of "Arse" is because "Arse" is simply not a word in American English. (It is an imported word, and will doubtless be recognized by most people as such, and they'll probably get the meaning as well; but it isn't Americanized yet, if it ever becomes so, and I'm saying that on the grounds that in my (rather large) experience it never appears in conversations or writings produced by and for Americans only.
tl;dr "Arse" is simply not available as a rhetorical option in American English at this time; its range is covered by terms including "ass" and "butt" and the various compounds thereof (e.g. asshole, butthead, and so forth).
I learned French at school (as most Brits do). I can mostly understand French, as long as they don't stray too far into slang and colloquialisms, but my grammar is appalling. A few years ago, I worked with a French group, and we found that the best way we could communicate was if they spoke French and I spoke English - each understood enough of the other language to get by like that. I speak German at the tourist-asking-for-directions level (school again), and did once enjoy being the first person able to direct a lost German-speaker on the streets of Geneva. And I've picked up a handful of words in a handful of other languages (I can do "hello", "please" and "thank you" in pretty much anywhere I've ever been.) Plus Latin, of course - mine is rather rusty.
Ok. I get that 'arse' isn't in the US lexicon but surely the word 'ass' in the US sense must derive from 'arse' originally?
It can't surely have sprung magically into existence as the ink was drying on the Declaration of Independence.
Go check the OED. (I can't because I'm supposed to be working, Bad Lamb.) But it's just as likely that "ass" is a survival of an older form preserved in America and changed in the UK.
Thanks for the information on Canadian multilingualism. Apologies for underestimating how polyglot it is. I am, of course aware, of the Francophone areas and I did know that there are large Asian and other migrant communities.
There's an embarrassing level of ignorance about Canada among many British people. We really don't know much about it other than the Calgary Stampede and that they play Ice Hockey over there. I did see something about Saskatoon on Michael Portillo's Great Railway Journeys but I only watched it because NoProfit lives there and I wanted to see what it looked like. Interesting place by the looks.
Ok. I get that 'arse' isn't in the US lexicon but surely the word 'ass' in the US sense must derive from 'arse' originally?
Sure, they’re variants of the same word, with spellings that reflect dialectical differences in pronunciation, much like “burst” and “bust,” or “curse” and “cuss.”
@Nick Tamen that's interesting. In BreEnglish 'burst' and 'bust' aren't the same part of speech and don't have the same meaning. 'Burst' is usually a verb but can be a noun. It can also be used as an adjective, but is a participle. 'Bust' is normally an adjective. When it's a noun, it means something completely different and I don't think the two meanings are related. I've never thought that 'burst' and 'bust' might both derive from the same root.
I get that, Nick. To clarify, I didn't take Lamb Chopped to be saying that 'ass' was a bowldlerised version of 'arse.'
But it is a variation on 'arse.'
That doesn't mean that the older term is 'better' of course.
On the 'burst' / 'bust' thing - I'd need to check but I suspect they do have the same root. That's partly down to the following phrase used in North Staffordshire as an exemplar of that area's dialect:
'Kick a bo' aggen a wo' an' yed it till it bosts.'
In standard English, 'Kick a ball against a wall and head it till it bursts.'
The phrase 'bust a gut' meaning to exert oneself literally means 'burst an intestine.'
So I'd lay odds on 'burst' and 'bust' sharing a common root just as 'curse' and 'cuss' do and 'arse' and 'ass'.
It is not necessarily a variation on "arse"--that's why I said to check the OED and be sure. How do you know, without checking, if American "ass" of today, in its full glory of meaning, is not a development of "ass", the donkey, and later, the fool?
You've got to stop making hair trigger judgments about how things MUST have gone in etymological history, simply on the basis of sound (and perhaps, a touch of nationalism). There are such things as false etymologies.
It is not necessarily a variation on "arse"--that's why I said to check the OED and be sure. How do you know, without checking, if American "ass" of today, in its full glory of meaning, is not a development of "ass", the donkey, and later, the fool?
You've got to stop making hair trigger judgments about how things MUST have gone in etymological history, simply on the basis of sound (and perhaps, a touch of nationalism). There are such things as false etymologies.
Every etymology I’ve checked, though (which granted, doesn’t include the OED, to which I don’t have ready access), says “ass” in the American sense is indeed a variation of “arse.”
@Enoch, on “bust” as a verb, as is often the case in the US, there’s the phrase “bust out of the joint” (escape ftom jail), as well as Carousel’s “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over.”
I've googled both words while reading this thread. Their etymologies are different, but I don't think I can provide links.
From what I’ve seen, and I certainly may be missing something, the etymologies of “arse” and of “ass” in the sense of donkey are different, but the etymology of “ass” in the sense of buttocks aligns with the etymology of “arse.” See, for example, the Online Etymology Dictionary entry on “ass”, which says this with regard to “ass” in the sense of buttocks:
slang for "backside," first attested 1860 in nautical slang, in popular use from 1930; chiefly U.S.; from dialectal variant pronunciation of arse (q.v.). The loss of -r- before -s- is attested in other words (burst/bust, curse/cuss, horse/hoss, barse/bass, garsh/gash, parcel/passel). Indirect evidence of the change from arse to ass can be traced to 1785 (in euphemistic avoidance of ass "donkey" by polite speakers) and perhaps to Shakespeare, if Nick Bottom transformed into a donkey in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1594) is the word-play some think it is.
I must to the barber's, mounsieur; for me thinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me, I must scratch.
My Merriam-Webster likewise gives two etymologies for “ass”—one for the sense of donkey and one for the sense of buttocks, the latter serving from “arse.”
I just checked the OED. "Ass" has as it's first recorded use for a reference to the rectum in aprox. 1672 in a book of games, coming from Devon, so the usage predates America, however "arse" is much older and "ass" is listed as a version of it. I can give more particulars if anyone is interested.
Thanks for the information on Canadian multilingualism. Apologies for underestimating how polyglot it is. I am, of course aware, of the Francophone areas and I did know that there are large Asian and other migrant communities.
There's an embarrassing level of ignorance about Canada among many British people. We really don't know much about it other than the Calgary Stampede and that they play Ice Hockey over there. I did see something about Saskatoon on Michael Portillo's Great Railway Journeys but I only watched it because NoProfit lives there and I wanted to see what it looked like. Interesting place by the looks.
So it's good to hear more about it.
That's nice of you. Saskatoon gave the world Joni Mitchell, Gordie Howe and Yann Martel. Along with lots of experiments with LSD, other hallucinogens. and the word psychedelic.
It's done in the style of a telenovela--a Spanish-language and -culture soap opera. A local station used to run it, and I liked it. You can watch the entire 52-episode course for *free*. (It looks like it *might* be limited to US and Canadian viewers, due to licensing. But YouTube also has copies of at least some epsodes.)
I double-checked the notes for teachers, and it works for both beginners and more advanced students. And the story's plot is good, too.
Anyway, since many of us are looking for some sort of distraction right now, I thought I'd pass this along.
Oh, and there's also "French In Action" (Learner.org). Similar sort of course, and it has a plot. But it's much more funny and silly.
Have fun!
ETA: The shows have closed captioning, a big help in getting used to the words.
I've not looked up the links yet, Gramps49 but English is, of course, a fusion of Germanic (Friesian) Anglo-Saxon and medieval Norman French with some later borrowings and consciously Latinate elements.
Initially, English (and this is before you can speak of 'Brits' as a geo-political entity) absorbed or was fused with Norman French, the language of the court and the nobility after the Norman conquest. So that wasn't a case of 'borrowing' so much as a form of fusion.
Later borrowings were more self-conscious because French was seen as more Latinate and therefore more sophisticated. Also, in some instances there may not have been an English equivalent. From the 16th century onwards there were conscious efforts to refine the language and to put it on a par with the classical languages of antiquity or the other major European languages. Shakespeare poked fun at this tendency.
US English appears to have absorbed loan words and terms from Dutch, German, Spanish, Yiddish and other languages, so it's not as if the 'Brits' are the only English speakers to borrow or steal terms from elsewhere. By and large this sort of thing happens organically of course, but from time to time there are conscious efforts to refine or define - Johnson's and Webster's dictionaries in their various ways, for instance or deliberate borrowings from the French in order to sound more sophisticated.
You completely missed out the Danelaw in that explanation of the origins of English. Which was quite important. Much of modern English grammar developed in the north of the country, from Norse borrowings, and then spread southwards.
By the way, am I the only person who's attempted to learn Danish?
My favourite English borrowing from Norse is undoubtedly the word "sky". In Norse/Danish it means "cloud", a misunderstanding that tells you a lot about that the prevailing weather conditions in northern England.
Just to stir the pot a bit more, in some demotic circles in the UK there is an increasing use of 'arsed' (past participle of the verb 'to arse'?) in the sense of 'bothered'. 'I know they expect you to sort out your rubbish for recycling, but I can't be arsed.' 'I didn't vote. I couldn't be arsed.'
To return to an earlier point, last night I came across the following line in an American novel: "Thank you for meeting with me so early". The "with" would not be there in British English.
To return to an earlier point, last night I came across the following line in an American novel: "Thank you for meeting with me so early". The "with" would not be there in British English.
Not in that context, but in others....
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
Just to stir the pot a bit more, in some demotic circles in the UK there is an increasing use of 'arsed' (past participle of the verb 'to arse'?) in the sense of 'bothered'. 'I know they expect you to sort out your rubbish for recycling, but I can't be arsed.' 'I didn't vote. I couldn't be arsed.'
I expect quite soon, we will get, "I could be arsed", by analogy with that other one, which I can't remember.
Arsing around/around - mucking about - slightly nuanced difference when applied to oneself - "I've been arsing about with the settings for hours but it still beeps at 4am every night" Cf. dicking around, fannying about...
"Kids spent the afternoon dicking around in the stream"
"I just put a new tap on because I couldn't face fannying about with the washers on that knackered old one"
"Stop arsing about with that lighting fixture or you'll try yourself"
In the dear, dead days of film censorship, there was a St Trinian's (broad farce set in anarchic girls' school for the younger among you) in which Alistair Sim as the headmistress carefully enunciates 'I'll have no arson about in my school'.
Comments
Most Anglophone countries are notoriously bad at learning other people's languages.
The exceptions would be India, former African colonies and some of the Pacific Islands that were once pink on the map. White South Africans I've met tend to speak both English and Afrikaans - or at least understand some Afrikaans if they are of British heritage - and if they are black often speak both those languages as well as indigenous ones.
Well, Swedish au pairs meant my siblings and I got a little useful language. Then school started me on French and Latin at 7; classical Greek was added at my senior school. Backpacking in the 1970s added a few useful bits and pieces in Arabic, and then I shared a house with a load of Iranians and Afghans before moving to Hong Kong for a couple of years.
I wouldn't describe myself as multi-lingual, but I endeavour to be able to "meet and greet" if I'm going to be anywhere for a period of more than a couple of weeks. BUT of course, being a Brit I'm never really comfortable trying to speak a foreign language.
As they say in Bucharest, Nadyavam se, che pomaga (I hope that helps).
20% speak something other than French or English at home. Which corresponds to the percent of us who are immigrants.
Ummm...I'm not sure why this has become a big deal. Yes, you said something funny about the queen. And I simply said I couldn't imagine her saying "arse" or "ass".
Maybe she uses a lot of rude language in private.
{curtsy]
My son took Japanese in High School. He also has Greek under his belt. He picked up Arabic while he was immersed in Palestine for a year.
I had a friend who hated foreign languages when he was in high school but then joined the Marines. Turns out the military aptitude test indicated he could easily pick up languages. He learned Vietnamese, Chinese, French, Tagalog, and Arabic.
If a UKian calls you an 'ass' that's what they mean. If they want to call you an 'arse' or an 'arsehole', both of which are also derogatory but with a stronger and slightly different shade of meaning from 'ass', that is what they will call you. It has a long 'a'.
Spanish is odd. I've never learnt any but can read it for gist and I know what subject someone's talking about, even if I don't know what they're saying about it. I put that down to Latin; as far as I can tell Spanish is Latin with the hard bits taken out and some regular sound changes.
If she's like her grandson she won't have watched Fresh Prince.
We rarely use “ass” to mean a donkey—that usage is mainly confined to Christmas carols, at which children will snicker. And if we call someone an ass, we mean more than that they are stupid or stubborn.
The official bilingualness leads to some fun misunderstandings and misreadings. When I was growing up there was a popular packaged sort of sweet cake called "1/2 Moon." The package actually read "1/2 Lune Moon," with both the French and English words for moon being the same size, so everyone I knew called them Lune Moons and we were fully into adulthood before we knew different. The same company produced another chocolate packaged treat that many of us grew up calling a "Billot Log" for the same reason. And of course lots of Canadians refer to strong cheddar as what it's called on the package: "Old Fort" Cheese.
That is fun isn't it. People actually do it when they know. Jeux Canada Games. Vélo Canada Bikes. Sante Canada Health. Which leads me to that many of us can probably watch hockey and understand the play by play. When someone does something stupid, we used to call the person in butchered and incorrect French "le premiere jeu-ay de la match de ce soir, il a une Molson's!" (the first star of tonight's game, give him a beer" (Molson Canadian is a beer brand)).
Which is all true.
https://www.puertoricoreport.com/bilingual-america/#.XqmsHGhKiWs
And that we generally don’t use “ass” in the senses that UKians do, except when it shows up in the odd Christmas carol or scripture reading (“a donkey, a foal of an ass”).
I said it upthread. And the reason we say "Ass" instead of "Arse" is because "Arse" is simply not a word in American English. (It is an imported word, and will doubtless be recognized by most people as such, and they'll probably get the meaning as well; but it isn't Americanized yet, if it ever becomes so, and I'm saying that on the grounds that in my (rather large) experience it never appears in conversations or writings produced by and for Americans only.
tl;dr "Arse" is simply not available as a rhetorical option in American English at this time; its range is covered by terms including "ass" and "butt" and the various compounds thereof (e.g. asshole, butthead, and so forth).
It can't surely have sprung magically into existence as the ink was drying on the Declaration of Independence.
Go check the OED. (I can't because I'm supposed to be working, Bad Lamb.) But it's just as likely that "ass" is a survival of an older form preserved in America and changed in the UK.
There's an embarrassing level of ignorance about Canada among many British people. We really don't know much about it other than the Calgary Stampede and that they play Ice Hockey over there. I did see something about Saskatoon on Michael Portillo's Great Railway Journeys but I only watched it because NoProfit lives there and I wanted to see what it looked like. Interesting place by the looks.
So it's good to hear more about it.
But it is a variation on 'arse.'
That doesn't mean that the older term is 'better' of course.
On the 'burst' / 'bust' thing - I'd need to check but I suspect they do have the same root. That's partly down to the following phrase used in North Staffordshire as an exemplar of that area's dialect:
'Kick a bo' aggen a wo' an' yed it till it bosts.'
In standard English, 'Kick a ball against a wall and head it till it bursts.'
The phrase 'bust a gut' meaning to exert oneself literally means 'burst an intestine.'
So I'd lay odds on 'burst' and 'bust' sharing a common root just as 'curse' and 'cuss' do and 'arse' and 'ass'.
You've got to stop making hair trigger judgments about how things MUST have gone in etymological history, simply on the basis of sound (and perhaps, a touch of nationalism). There are such things as false etymologies.
@Enoch, on “bust” as a verb, as is often the case in the US, there’s the phrase “bust out of the joint” (escape ftom jail), as well as Carousel’s “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over.”
I've been wanting to revive what Spanish I learned, and I just unearthed the very good "Destinos: An Introduction To Spanish" series (Learner.org).
It's done in the style of a telenovela--a Spanish-language and -culture soap opera. A local station used to run it, and I liked it. You can watch the entire 52-episode course for *free*. (It looks like it *might* be limited to US and Canadian viewers, due to licensing. But YouTube also has copies of at least some epsodes.)
I double-checked the notes for teachers, and it works for both beginners and more advanced students. And the story's plot is good, too.
Anyway, since many of us are looking for some sort of distraction right now, I thought I'd pass this along.
Oh, and there's also "French In Action" (Learner.org). Similar sort of course, and it has a plot. But it's much more funny and silly.
Have fun!
ETA: The shows have closed captioning, a big help in getting used to the words.
Hear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEA_2lM1YdA
https://www.buzzfeed.com/watch/video/92691
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuBnHS5hwI4
There is one question about why Brits seem to steal words from the French that should be answered.
Initially, English (and this is before you can speak of 'Brits' as a geo-political entity) absorbed or was fused with Norman French, the language of the court and the nobility after the Norman conquest. So that wasn't a case of 'borrowing' so much as a form of fusion.
Later borrowings were more self-conscious because French was seen as more Latinate and therefore more sophisticated. Also, in some instances there may not have been an English equivalent. From the 16th century onwards there were conscious efforts to refine the language and to put it on a par with the classical languages of antiquity or the other major European languages. Shakespeare poked fun at this tendency.
US English appears to have absorbed loan words and terms from Dutch, German, Spanish, Yiddish and other languages, so it's not as if the 'Brits' are the only English speakers to borrow or steal terms from elsewhere. By and large this sort of thing happens organically of course, but from time to time there are conscious efforts to refine or define - Johnson's and Webster's dictionaries in their various ways, for instance or deliberate borrowings from the French in order to sound more sophisticated.
By the way, am I the only person who's attempted to learn Danish?
My favourite English borrowing from Norse is undoubtedly the word "sky". In Norse/Danish it means "cloud", a misunderstanding that tells you a lot about that the prevailing weather conditions in northern England.
Not in that context, but in others....
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same
I expect quite soon, we will get, "I could be arsed", by analogy with that other one, which I can't remember.
Not really. Other creative uses though:
Arsing around/around - mucking about - slightly nuanced difference when applied to oneself - "I've been arsing about with the settings for hours but it still beeps at 4am every night" Cf. dicking around, fannying about...
"Kids spent the afternoon dicking around in the stream"
"I just put a new tap on because I couldn't face fannying about with the washers on that knackered old one"
"Stop arsing about with that lighting fixture or you'll try yourself"
Stream = Creek, Tap = Faucet.
People don't say dicking around any more, I do hear farting around and goofing around.