| Most Recent Messages of Each Discussion |
Created by |
Re:Re:in English you can change the infinitive of words like to hep into helper so that you are the one helping how do you do this in french.
Hi Quentin! Welcome to MLE!
I think perhaps you may have misunderstood what Rachel was asking (or I did--Rachel, let me know if I'm lying about you) I think Rachel was asking about the -er suffix we use to turn an act into the person who does it: Help + er = helper: one who helps; teach + er = teacher: one who teaches, etc. I know, for example, that French has the euse / eur endings and you have to use the one appropriate to the gender. So, for example, your verb moquer, to mock or to tease can be turned into the person who does it: moqueur, a man who teases, or moqueuse, a woman who teases. Likewise, masser, to massage, can become masseur and masseuse, a man or woman who massages. I'm sure this isn't a construction you can use indescriminantly. In English, a person who walks is a walker, but we just call a person who cooks a cook, and a person who polices is called a janitor! ("police" is often used in the military as a verb meaning to clean up).
Anyway, I think that was what Rachel was asking about. Perhaps you can shed more light on how verbs are modified in French to become words for the people who do the action of the verb.
Thanks! And again, welcome!
Best,
Mark / Sacramento CA
|
Language pair: English; French
|
|
Mark S.
July 17, 2005
# Msgs: 1
|
Re:air force: vocabulary, Part 4 of 5
Part 4 of 5
-Flight, atention( could FLIGHT here mean COMPAÑíA?). Yes. The unit of manpower that the army calls a "company" (about 25 or 50 soldiers) is called a "flight" in the air force. So instead of addressing the company, which is an army expression, the Air Force addresses the flight.
-to buzz the field. This is a really obnoxious practice pilots use to harass ground and to risk their lives. It's really poplar in flying movies and such, but in the real world, pilots will get in serous trouble for doing it because it is very dangerous. "Buzzing" someone or something (like the air field the plane is about to land on) is flying really low over it. It gives the pilot a cheap thrill because he gets to show off being a brave guy, and it scares the bejeezus (the hell) out of anyone on the ground below being buzzed, because suddenly you have this airplane coming at you and the engines are roaring outrageously loudly, and you don't know if the pilot is playing with you or if he's about to crash on your head or what. If you've ever seen the movie, "Catch-22", you might remember that awful scene where one of the pilots is flying low over the water, and this guy on a raft gets killed, and then the pilot flies away and crashes into a mountain and kills himself. What that was all about was that he was trying to buzz the guy on the raft (and flying by the seat of his pants, because the instruments won't help you do a stupid thing like that). Well, I told you it was a stupid, dangerous thing to do, and that's why the guy on the raft got killed. The pilot miscalculated, and hit the kid with the propeller of the plane. And that's why he then went and killed himself flying the plane into the mountain—because it was such an awful, stupid thing, and he couldn't live with himself having killed a guy like that. Anyway, buzzing is flying really low to show off or to scare people on the ground.
-crankshaft. Here again, I really need to know the situation how this was used. A crankshaft is the shaft in an engine that all of the pistons are mounted on. The crankshaft is all cranky shaped, like the pedal crank on your bicycle, so that as it rotates, the pistons will all rise and fall at different cycles. This makes sure that the force of energy pushing one piston down will drive another one up to compress another chamber.
See part 5 of 5
|
Language pair: Spanish; English
|
|
Mark S.
July 17, 2005
# Msgs: 9
Latest: July 20, 2005
|
Re:air force: vocabulary, Part 5 of 5
Part 5 of 5
Because a crankshaft is all crooked and twisty, sometimes we use the term "crankshaft" to describe someone who's a little bit loco. When somebody's ideas don't seem to follow a predictable pattern, we call them a crankshaft, because a crankshaft is designed to alter the pattern that something attached to it rotates. We have a cartoon here in the US called "Crankshaft". It's a double pun, because not only is the main character of the cartoon a little bit crazy, and therefore a crankshaft for that reason, but he's also a very "cranky" person. We say a person is cranky when they are grumpy or irritable. "Crankshaft" is written by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers. Plug them into your search engine and check them out.
-crankshaft journal. A journal could be like a newspaper or a magazine of some kind. So a crankshaft journal could be a disreputable one whose articles can't be counted on to report facts accurately. We generally think of "tabloids" as being "crankshaft journals" As always, context is very helpful
-wing man. When flying in formation, generally four planes fly together in a diamond-shaped arrangement. The leader flies ahead with a wing-man on each side, just behind him, and a fourth plane flying at the back between the two wing-men. The planes at the right and left of the formation are called wing men, because they are flying at the wings of the leading plane.
-spot landing: I'm not familiar with this one. Taking a wild guess at it, I'd have to point out that planes always have a certain amount of room they need to have available to them in order to land. This is why aircraft carriers are so big and so long. If they were too short, you can imagine the plains would all skid right across the flight deck and fall of the end of the carrier right back into the ocean. My guess is that a spot landing is a landing that is so short that the pilot has just barely enough room to touch the ground and bring the plane safely to stop.
-windmill speed. I've never heard of this. Context, Context. My wild guess is that the blades of a windmill turn very slowly compared to the blades of the propeller of a plane. I'm guessing that " windmill" speed would probably be very slow.
-trim: move the flaps of the plane, the aileron and the vertical stabilizer to maintain proper course, heading and flight "attitude" (pointed the right direction with the correct side up).
-propeller shaft: Just like the axle of your car carries the energy from the engine to your wheels, the plane needs a shaft—a metal rod, very much like an axle—that carries energy from the engine of the plane to the propeller that must spin to drive the plane forward. The propeller shaft is the rod coming out of the nose of the engine that the propeller bolts onto the end of.
That was fun. Thanks for asking. Let me know the context for any of the answers I gave that didn't make sense.
Best,
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA
|
Language pair: Spanish; English
|
|
Mark S.
July 17, 2005
# Msgs: 9
Latest: July 20, 2005
|
Re:air force: vocabulary, Part 3 of 5
Part 3 of 5
-stall. This word describes what happens to a plane when it's not moving fast enough for air pressure to keep it in the air. The plane begins to drop like a rock, and it usually starts spiraling as it falls, so it can make the pilot really dizzy, which is part of why it's so dangerous. Of course, it's also critical to know what to do if it happens, so I understand that pilots are required to learn how to put the plane into a stall and then recover from it as part of their training. Stunt flyers love to use stalling maneuvers in their routines because they're so scary and so spectacular to watch. One of my favorite tricks is called a hammerhead stall, where a plane flies straight up, another perfect way to force the plane to stall. The plane then falls sideways into a spiral, and then the pilot will recover from that and move into another maneuver.
-skids.—I don't know this one. It may have something to do with parking the plane on the flight line. If you tell me the context you heard it in, I might have a better idea.. IT could refer to the way the plane slides off course to the side if it tries to bank too sharply in a turn (the same way a car can skid when you turn too sharply at high speed, or it could refer to a part of the mechanism that makes the landing gear work. It could also refer to the platforms that cargo is stored on for loading the cargo onto the plane, or it could refer to the design of the mechanisms in the plane that allow workers to load the loaded platforms onto the plane.
-slips.: I don't know what this is all about. Again, if you give me the rest of the sentence, it might help. I know that slips are parking places for boats in a marina. I guess it's not impossible that they have slips for planes, too at some air fields. You also might be thinking of the slipstream. As you know, when a boat is speeding through the water, it leaves a path behind it on the surface of the water that we call the "wake" in English. Naturally, a plane flying through the air also leaves a path of disturbed air behind it, just like the boat disturbs the water. We can't see the "wake" of a plane, but we know it's their, especially if we've ever been standing at the side of the freeway when cars are speeding by. We hear them and we feel them. So when a moving object creates a "wake" in the air it is moving through, we call that "wake" a slipstream. OF course, I don't know if that's what you're looking for. There's also something called a sideslip, where a plane moves sideways through the air—kind of like intentionally making the plane skid sideways as it turns-just like one of the meanings of "skid" I suggested above. .
See part 4 of 5
|
Language pair: Spanish; English
|
|
Mark S.
July 17, 2005
# Msgs: 9
Latest: July 20, 2005
|
Re:air force: vocabulary, Part 2 of 5
Part 2 of 5
-fourth classman Or this one. Again, I might have a better idea with the context. The only numberings of classmen I know of are ranks and academy statues. Cadets at the academy are either upperclassmen or underclassmen, depending on how long they've been in the academy. I'm not sure, but I think the freshmen and sophomores are underclassmen and the juniors and seniors are upperclassmen. I don't know about the numbers, though. I was briefly an Airman first class when I had two stripes on my sleeve. This is the second promotion you get after you enlist, if you start at the lowest level. There used to be an Airman second class many years ago when the Air Force first split off from the Army, but they changed that to Airman. There hasn't been a second class for years, and I don't think there were ever third class or fourth class airmen. Sometimes, we use the expressions "second class" or "third class" or "third rate" to say that something has poor quality. "I'm tired of going to this second-class school" or "I'm tired of being treated like a second class citizen". I've never heard of anyone using "fourth class" in this way, though.
-to be a seat of the pants. I wonder if you are quoting this one exactly right. I've never heard it said this way, but I have often heard the expression, to "fly by the seat of your pants." If you're flying a plane and your instruments fail, and visibility is poor due to bad weather, you have no way to know which direction to fly. You have to guess and hope you end up flying where you wanted to. It's possible that this expression is also used when visibility is okay but you have to gauge all of your maneuvers by hand and by eye. I don't know why they call this "by the seat of your pants" It may have something to do with the anxiety. You may have noticed that when you're flying in a plane and the weather is bad, people tend to hold onto the arms of the chairs very tightly, almost as if they hope to keep the plain in the air by pulling up on the arms of the chairs. We have a lot of jokes about that phenomenon, because we always do it. Of course, the pilot cant, because he has to keep his hands on the control stick, so perhaps he's clutching tight to the chair with "the seat of his pants" while he's flying the plane. That's just a guess, of course.
-right face (this one could be sth like "vista derecha"?) I don't know, but that sounds good to me. "Right face" is the command your commanding officer gives when you're in formation and he wants everyone to turn ninety degrees to the right.
See part 3 of 5
|
Language pair: Spanish; English
|
|
Mark S.
July 17, 2005
# Msgs: 9
Latest: July 20, 2005
|
Re:air force: vocabulary, Part 1 of 5
Hi, American,
It's funny, I was in the Air force for eight years, and I never heard of most of those expressions you mentioned. What are you doing, reading a Richard Bach novel or something?
Anyway, it's a very interesting puzzle, and I thought I'd see how much I could help with. I speak pretty good Spanish, but I have no vocabulary to deal with these terms, so I'll explain to you in English as much as I can, and if you want to ask me questions in Spanish, I'll give it my best shot. Of course, there's bound to be someone around who knows some of these that I don't.
-hit a brace.: I never heard this one. What was the context? How was the expression used? Is it possible you misheard somebody who meant to say either "hit the brakes" or "hit the bricks?" Hit the brakes means to stop a plan that is underway. If I am going to lead an assault on a local village and I discover that the enemy has bombed the bridge I'm depending on to get to the village, I might have to hit the brakes on my assault plans. To "hit the bricks" means to go out on the streets and work at something, usually, looking for a job, or selling a product door-to-door." It basically means to get busy doing work that requires a lot of traveling through the streets. "the bricks" refer to the cobblestones that many streets have been made of—many more in the past than now—at least here en los EEUU. It's also possible that "hit a brace" may have had some very literal meaning. For example, the two-winged "biplanes" flown in world war I were supported by a structure of struts and braces. In a "dogfight", where two planes battled in the air trying to shoot each other down, one plane might have shot out a brace supporting the wing of the other plane. So the enemy might have "hit a brace" shooting at the other plane.
See part 2 of 5
|
Language pair: Spanish; English
|
|
Mark S.
July 17, 2005
# Msgs: 9
Latest: July 20, 2005
|
Muskaan 23, I can help you
bonjour Muskaan
Je t'ai déjà envoyé un message mais apparemment tu ne l'as pas encore lu.
Je t'aiderai à améliorer ton français avec plaisir.And you see i really need to learn Hindi and i'll be thankful if you teach me. J'aimerais savoir parleer le hindi et écrire et lire le devanagari.
IF YOU SEE MY MESSAGES, PLEASE ANSWER ME.
It'll be one month that i'm looking for someone like you who can help me.
Si jamais tu réponds, i propose that you write in hindi and then translate into english and when i'll answer you, i'll write in french and translato into english so tha you'll understand what i'll be saying. I think that like that we'll progress slowly but surely and we'll come at a point that we'll be able to converse both in french and hindi.
Je suis sur le net deux fois par semaine: lundi et jeudi. Quelquefois le dimanche aussi. I'm on the internet two days a week; on monday and thursday and sometimes on sunday.
J'attends de te lire avec impatience. Merci
I'm waiting to read you eagerly. Thanks
|
Language pair: French; English
|
|
Hermine
July 17, 2005
# Msgs: 5
Latest: August 1, 2005
|
Re:i don't get french tenses
Hi Rachel,
I sincerely doubt that you're stupid, but that doesn't mean I should expect you to follow me if I try to give you some kind of Noam Chomsky definition of "infinitive". Not everyone needs to be a grammar guru like me. Contrary to what most kids on the schoolyards seem to think, not having information about something is not at all the same thing as being dumb.
Anyway, that said, here, in layperson's terms, is what an infinitive is.
An infinitive, in English, is the "to - " form of the verb. We use it with 'going' to form the future (I'm going to stop, I'm going to write, I'm going to dream, etc.) We often use the infinitive when a verb is the object of a verb (that is, the answer to the question, "what is being (verb)-ed (whatever the verb happens to be)
Examples:
I want a dog (What do I want? a dog -- dog is the object of the verb want)
I want to go (What do I want? to go -- to go is the object of the verb want, and since I'm using a verb as the object of a verb -- the: what it is that I want--, I use the infinitive, the " to - " form.
In French, they don't use "to" to form an infinitive. Instead, the use an -ir or an -er, usually at the ending. There are exceptions, like etre and aprendre.
Warning: Don't try to translate into French word-by-word. The French don't always use their infinitives the same way we do. You're much better off learning to say the phrases correctly, and not worrying so much about the grammar for now. My French isn't great, and I can't exactly come up with a good example of that precisely, but perhaps you'll see the sort of thing that I mean if I show you a related problem:
Say I wanted to say, "This is going to be helpful" A word-by-word translation would be,
Ç'est allant etre utile. But in French, that's just not how they say it. They say, This goes to be helpful: Ça va etre utile. This may help you see why people from other countries phrase things so strangely when they're learning to speak English. You'll make a lot of mistakes like that as you learn French, but don't worry about it. It's all part of the learning process, and gives you a lot of great opportunities to laugh at yourself. Au revoir!
Reply to message # 56115
i don't get french tenses Rachel
Can anyone explain in really simple words what the infinative is and how you translate it, because i'm kinda dumb
Language pair: English; French
Category: Vocabulary/Translations
Post date: July 15, 2005
|
Language pair: English; French
|
|
Mark S.
July 16, 2005
# Msgs: 1
|
air force: vocabulary )2)
here there are some more words i need:
-wing man.
-spot landing
-windmill speed.
-trim
-propeller shaft
Thanx again!
|
Language pair: Spanish; English
|
|
american version
July 16, 2005
# Msgs: 9
Latest: July 20, 2005
|
air force:vocabulary
Does anybody know what these expressions mean?
If u can provide the spanish for them, i´d be really grateful, if not at least the meaning.
-hit a brace.
-fourth classman
-to be a seat of the pants.
-right face (this one could be sth like "vista derecha"?)
-stall.
-skids.
-slips.
-Flight, atention( could FLIGHT here mean COMPAÑíA?)
-to buzz the field.
-crankshaft.
-crankshaft journal.
ok, thanx.
Look forward to ur answers.
|
Language pair: English; Spanish
|
|
american version
July 16, 2005
# Msgs: 1
|
