Top 20 Interesting & Strange Facts about French Language

Top 20 Interesting & Strange Facts about French Language

Let’s face it. I have been forced to learn it and i was not happy about it at all! Before coming to France I haven’t spoken French at all. I have been totally scared of French language. It has always been like a music for me, too beautiful and magical to understand and it was just enough to listen to it. So yes, I do appreciate the French language and love it but I would never imagine I could say anything in French. Anyway I have started to learn and as hard as it is I will continue! During my let’s call it ‘adventure’ with French language I have been fascinated by some facts that I discovered about it. They are pretty surprising that is why I decided I will share them with you.

Top 20 Interesting & Strange Facts about French Language

Check out my List of Top 20 Interesting & Strange Facts about French language. Be amazed today by the French language!

  1. The longest word in the dictionary is anticonstitutionnellement and it has 25 letters!
  2. The longest word of all is the full chemical name for thiamine has 49 letters, is: aminométhylpyrimidinylhydroxyéthylméthythiazolium…now you can saythe longest french wordOh la la…It is long, isnt it?
  3. On contrary, the shortest French word with all the vowels is oiseau.oiseau
  4. Meanwhile oiseaux (birds) is the longest word where you don’t pronounce any of the letters individually. So now try to say it loud and you will see!
  5. There are more words in French that have just one letter than there are letters in the alphabet. While you’ve heard of words like y and a, there are also words like à. But it also includes words like j’ (as in j’aime) and c’ (as in c’est) and there are few more. So it seem French are going into expreme from the longest 49 letter word to one letter one.ayc-words
  6. There are some French words like  “simple”, “quatorze”, “quinze” or “monstre”. which don’t rhyme with any other French word. So do not try to write a poem with them 😉
  7. French is the only language (besides English) that’s spoken on all the continents. (Much of west Africa is French speaking, Canada in North America, French Guiana in south America, Vanuatu in Oceania
  8. Longest town name is Saint-Remy-en-Bouzemont-Saint-Genest-et-Isson in the Marne département, north eastern France.
  9. The shortest town name is Y. It is located in Somme, northern France.
  10. Three ‘e’ words! However that sounds, there are few French words that have three e’s in a row. These are créée and agréée, dégréée.3e french words
  11. Do you know the plural of the French eye (Oeil)? It is yeux (eyes) so it is the only one French word that starts with a different letter when in plural.
  12. The most common letter in French is e, recurring at a frequency of 14.7 percent. It’s followed by s at 7.9 percent and a at 7.6 percent.
  13. The least common letter is the ï (known as a trema) at 0.005 percent.i-trema
  14. The French typists’ phrase, is the sentence which has  every letter in the particular language alphabet and in French it is: “Allez porter ce vieux whisky au juge blond qui fume un havane” (‘Take this old whiskey to the blond judge who is smoking a cigar). In English such a  typists’ warm-up is “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,”
  15. More than 75 percent of the slang English language phrases containing the word “French” and are connected with sex. They include: French letter (condom), French maid, French pox or French disease (syphilis), French kissing, and the gay term Frenching (fellatio).
  16. French also make an interesting use of English in their slag. Have you hear about capote anglaise it means “English hood” and stands for condom in French slang. Another one is syphilis was referred to as la maladie anglaise.
  17. About a third to a half of basic English words come from French., The most famous ones are: pedigree, surf, view, strive, challenge, pride, staunch and war.
  18. The French Academy, created in 1635, was the first body ever to rule over a language.
  19. French has more than a million words and 20,000 new ones are created every year.french-tngue-twisters
  20. Lastly, did you hear about  tongue twisters? Here you have some to practice your French. Enjoy!
  • Un chasseur sachant chasser sait chasser sans son chien de chasse”! (A hunter who knows how to hunt knows how to hunt without his hunting dog)
  • “Si six scies scient six cyprès, six cents scies scient six cent cypress” (If six saws saw six cypresses, six hundred saws saw six hundred cypresses).
  • “Les chaussettes de l’archiduchesse sont-elles sèches, archi-sèches“ ? (Are the Archduchess’ socks dry, very dry)

So did you get amazed by the French language? I hope you liked my List of Top 20 Interesting and Strange about French language and I hope you can add some other facts you heard about? I would appreciate if you could share them with me. I love to learn something new each day and the French language is now my objective.

stay-positiave-and-happy-keep-on-learning-french

Make me amazed by the French language with any interesting and strange fact about it. Thank you in advance!

jadorelyon

I am a Polish girl who felt in love with Lyon from the first sight! Jadorelyon is my way of exploring France, the French way of life, their cuisine, sharing the experience from visiting beautiful places in France. Jadorelyon is my new way of adding some Polish influence into French lives and watching on how they like it...

4 thoughts on “Top 20 Interesting & Strange Facts about French Language

  1. When I was learning French at school my teacher told us to speak like Inspector Clouseau, that way, our English accents would be less noticeable :’D

    1. Thank you for visiting my blog. I have too many ideas for posts as I felt in Love with Lyon and France. Enjoy reading and let me know if you have ideas on what you would like to read 🌹

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