"I don't care how badly you pronounce things," they claim, when in reality, every time you say something wrong, they're silently murdering you in their heads. Sometimes, it's so bad that they can't even understand what you're trying to read.
Today at lunch, I learned that when speaking French, this rule no longer applies.
This is one of the most important principles of pretending to know French: Ignore 90% of the letters.
For example, "Qu'est ce que" is pronounced "Kesca" or something along those lines.
(I'm sorry if I'm wrong. I don't take French).
Qu'est ce que.
Kesca.
How does that even work.
Letter combinations like "est" and "is" at the end of words also tend to be ignored.
I guess French people just hate certain letters. And making a language that's actually speakable.
They're so biased against those last few letters. Favoritism is wrong.
We're just kind of supposed to ignore all the endings.
Rule Two: The letter "i" either goes "wheeee", "swa", or is ignored.
For example, "Oui". Contrary to popular belief (or it's just me ^.^"), that is pronounced "Whee", not "Oy".
Whoops. Learned that the hard way.
This happens in other words, like "Merci", too.
In a different word, "Bonsoir", you basically ignore the "r", and it's pronounced: Bon swa.
"Quoi" is secretly "kwa" and "voici" is actually "vwa cee".
It's like the letters have personality issues and keep going undercover.
Thirdly, words that look like English words are basically pronounced the exact same way in French, except with an accent on the last syllable.
As one anonymous freshman taught me today, "chewing gum" in French is "chewing-gum", and it's pronounced "chewing-gum".
I also discovered "weekend" is pronounced "weekend" and "jogging" is "jogging".
(Btw, I'm getting all these pronunciations from here)
Seriously, who came up with this system.
Unfortunately, because it's French and it's not as awesome as Spanish, these rules don't even apply 70% of the time.
You just basically have to guess.
I don't know how to pronounce anything.
I just kind of say half the word and hope for the best.
When in doubt, don't pronounce any of the endings, and you can usually get away with it ^.^
Basically, if you take French and actually clicked on this to learn to pronounce things, I'm sorry.
I have no advice.
You're just screwed :)