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René, Renée: Navigating subtle gender differences in French forenames
Columnist Nick Inman explores why masculine and feminine versions of first names can trip up foreigners
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8 false friends from my French students that we can learn from
False friends in French can cause lots of confusion for language learners
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‘Anglicisms? They are French words we loaned to English after 1066’
A provocative linguist explains how the two languages have borrowed from each other for centuries
What is the tilde in Breton?
I read about a Breton family winning a court battle to keep the tilde on their son’s Breton name Fañch. In Spanish, this alters the sound of the letter N. What does it do in Breton? S.B.
In Breton, this accent usually “nasalises” the preceding vowel so the sound is placed more in the nose.
The parents of the child told Le Télégramme the name sounds, with Breton pronunciation, like planche (with a nasal n) but without the accent the vowel would sound like an open “O” as in Octobre (or as it might be pronounced with an English accent).
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