This said, I am all for a simplification of French, esperanto-style, to make it easier for everyone (native and non-native users of French)
> > vzy cr
> vas-y... you lost me here. crève?
It was "vas-y carré", which in English means "go ahead, all good". I do not blame you for not knowing, I had to check twice.
> I guess you're thinking about things like "qu'est-ce que"?
qu'est-ce que c'est ça, eaux to say "o", the -amment and -emment you never know when to use, the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif that is the national joke, Louis that nobody outside of France can pronounce correctly, sometimes one r, sometimes two, sometimes one l, sometimes two.
All of this is well documented of course: the core of our grammar/vocabulary/conjugaison rules is maybe 50 pages, and then you have two or three tomes of exceptions.
Then we have writers such as Proust who are hated by children at school because they have to dissect his 15-line sentences to say which part does what.
Most of this information is completely useless - when my children started school, I had to dig back into books to recall what was what.
> This said, I am all for a simplification of French
Interestingly, they tried 15 or 20 years ago, and that went nowhere. The only thing I remember about it is they wanted to simplify oignon, but I don't even remember if they suggested removing the i or spelling it like in English.
> It was "vas-y carré"
I guess I'm too old to know this, even non abbreviated.
> sometimes one r, sometimes two, sometimes one l, sometimes two.
Same with m, etc. And many more. The "fun" part of living abroad and barely speaking or writing French is that now there are plenty of times where I can't find words or how to spell them. It's compounded by the fact that English spelling of similar words is sometimes different (e.g. address vs adresse), or worse, some words spelt the same way have different meanings (which trips French natives often, but now I sometimes have the opposite problem, ironically)
> Interestingly, they tried 15 or 20 years ago, and that went nowhere
I guess you are talking about the 1990 reform. I would not say that it went nowhere, most of the changes are now in the school curriculum.
This is far from the radical simplification I have in mind, though :)
> I guess I'm too old to know this, even non abbreviated.
It helps to have a teenager at home and a need to communicate with them through WhatsApp
> The "fun" part of living abroad and barely speaking or writing French is that now there are plenty of times where I can't find words or how to spell them
I left France for about 25 years and when I got back, I realized I lost my French accent. Today people are trying to pinpoint the place I am from, sometimes it is Belgium, sometimes Switzerland. I am from the western suburbs of Paris...
Do not worry: I sometimes have problems spelling words even though I was always very good in grammar and vocabulary, and the words I struggle with are sometimes obvious. Google helps to fix that (I type what I think is the word and it asks me "do you mean ...").
ies, but stil anoing
This said, I am all for a simplification of French, esperanto-style, to make it easier for everyone (native and non-native users of French)
> > vzy cr
> vas-y... you lost me here. crève?
It was "vas-y carré", which in English means "go ahead, all good". I do not blame you for not knowing, I had to check twice.
> I guess you're thinking about things like "qu'est-ce que"?
qu'est-ce que c'est ça, eaux to say "o", the -amment and -emment you never know when to use, the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif that is the national joke, Louis that nobody outside of France can pronounce correctly, sometimes one r, sometimes two, sometimes one l, sometimes two.
All of this is well documented of course: the core of our grammar/vocabulary/conjugaison rules is maybe 50 pages, and then you have two or three tomes of exceptions.
Then we have writers such as Proust who are hated by children at school because they have to dissect his 15-line sentences to say which part does what.
Most of this information is completely useless - when my children started school, I had to dig back into books to recall what was what.