In reply to K ) who wrote this in
, I, Marvo, say :

Uncle Marvo writes
In reply to La Puce ) who wrote this in
, I, Marvo, say
:
K wrote:

A boat? The plural of boat is boats. And they are all female,
unlike your male bateau, and your bateaux.

Ship or sheep or chip sound? I never know.

I think she means 'sheep' as the plural of 'sheep' as compared with
'sheeps' as the plural of 'sheep' = boat with a french accent ;-)

o) But no, it's the 'ship' and 'sheep' sound thing.

Sheep sounds like chips, and ship sounds like nothing French at all.

I hadn't realised till this thread that, perhaps, the short i sound
(like bit, fish, ship etc) isn't a sound used by french speakers.
Rather like we have problems with the french 'u' (eg tu) or the welsh
ll or the portuguese nasals, and have to be given anatomical
descriptions of how to produce the sound.

It's easy (well, it is for me) to take the anglocentric view that our
sounds are 'normal' and that it's other languages which have strange
sounds, and forget that probably most of our sounds are strange to
speakers of some country or other.

If you watch a polyglot speak alien languages (something I do often) you
will see that their face changes completely. An indigenous Englishperson
speaking French will make his/her nose "thinner" and pout.

Really.