Saturday, February 04, 2012

French quiz

Here's an excerpt from an excellent culinary blog I'm now following:

Ce filet de porc peut être dégusté en raclette, servi sur des canapés ou apprécié seul, avec des fromages. C'est toujours gratifiant de faire ce genre de recette maison, car on peut l'adapter à ses goûts personnels et on a toujours la fierté d'affirmer aux invités que "C'est moi qui l'ai fais..." La prochaine fois, je me munierai d'un coûteau mieux aiguisé pour faire des tranches plus minces, mais c'était quand même très bon et addictif.

1. The excerpt contains one grammatical error. What is it?

2. The excerpt provides one clue that the writer isn't French, but is likely Canadian. What's the clue?


_

3 comments:

daeguowl said...

Answers? Only thing I could come up with is a possible missing e on la fierte...

Kevin Kim said...

Thanks for trying! I was sad that no one had anything to say, so I'm glad to see anyone make an effort.

As it turns out, "fierté" is fine, but Jasmine wrote "C'est moi qui l'ai fais"-- and "fais" is the wrong spelling for the past participle of "faire." She should have written "C'est moi qui l'ai fait."

As for the second question: Jasmine used the word "addictif," which isn't what they say in France at all. Modern Québecois borrows freely from English, so we're looking at un anglicisme. In French, the word for "addiction" is "la toxicomanie," although you can also say "la dépendance."

I noticed that, if you type "This is addictive!" into Google Translate, you get "C'est addictif!"-- but I suspect this is a concession to Québecois. If you visit a hardcore French French site like Lexilogos, you find that "addictif" is "introuvable" (i.e., can't be found). I never heard it while in France and Switzerland, but I admit my knowledge could be out of date.

daeguowl said...

Il m'a semble tres facile mais j'ai eu tort. It has been a while since high school French. This leaves me able to figure out the gist of what is written but not to dissect the intricacies of grammar. Still better than most of those damn maths questions!