Of all of my students, this is the one on whom my work habits rubbed off.
Déteindre sur: to rub off on. Ton pull à déteint sur ma chemise–il ne fallait pas les mettre ensemble au lavage. (Collins French-English Dictionary) Why ensemble and not ensembles, I have no clue…
"Je suis féru(e) de langues" is about language learning, study tips and travelling. Join my community!
JCDL 2020 Workshop on Biomedical Natural Language Processing
Criminal Curiosities
Biomedical natural language processing
but other things that fascinate me, too
Adventures in natural history collections
FAMILY LIFE IN A FRENCH COUNTRY VILLAGE
PC Chairs Blog
A site about history and life
Random commentary on teaching English as a foreign language
Université Paris-Centrale, Spring 2017
living and loving language
THE DRIVELLINGS OF TWATTERSLEY FROMAGE
Exploring and venting about quantitative issues
Zipf's Law 
*il ne fallait pas* …Thank you I didn’t have that and I will be using it today in some way a I force myself forward in my quest to rid the hot potatoes from my mouth 🥔 👄
LikeLike
Il faut, il fallait, il a fallu, il faudra, il faudrait and the subj. qu’il faille . Such an ubiquitous verb, you need to know all tenses after 1 week in France …
LikeLiked by 2 people
Whatevs as we say in England. I’m trying, really I’m trying!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can’t believe you . If you want to learn conjugations you take yourself and an old school grammar book with all the conjugations together and you study by heart ( soon you find similarities and frames) . Then you imagine yourself in situations of life when you need to use the future of this verb, the conditional of this other, at every person, and you train for a few minutes until it comes at once . That’s what I did with Spanish and Portuguese and it works, if you act as a good pupil . Within one month I could use and conjugate any verb at any tense when I was living there . So I know you are a woman, but even with this handicap you should not need more than a year … 😜
LikeLiked by 1 person
Haha! I couldn’t help but laugh (with apologies to my fair sex) at that last remark. Actually, I am not as bad as I claim to be … my issue comes when I open my mouth to actually speak. Writing it is quite good these days but speaking I get so tongue-tied. However, breakthrough at the market last week. My favourite stall is back after their holiday and I enquired carefully if they felt rested and had had a good break. He shook my hand heartily and said he understood every word I had said for the first time since I arrived in Grenoble 8 months ago!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah ! you see it may come, even while speaking after a few decades . Tell me one thing : how on earth is the feminine sex “fair”?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Probably Victorian male irony, I imagine. Or even earlier … I have a feeling Shakespeare may have used the expression. If it was he then you can guarantee he was being ironic and that Queen Bess (Elizabeth 1st) missed it intentionally. There’s was a wonderfully jousting relationship.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fair in this sense means delicate and pretty not equitable 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah right . Pretty and delicate are fine for me, damoiselle Fiona .
LikeLiked by 1 person
Teaching English is as thorny as teaching French. Fair is a very fair example of why!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was joking, I know “My fair Lady”, fair haired, pretty and unfair of course .
LikeLiked by 1 person
Professor Higgins … now there was a man who got more than he bargained for 😉
LikeLiked by 2 people
Your surprise is surprising . Ensemble, together, is an adverb, how could it take a plural form ?
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s not about the word–it’s about the student (me)…
LikeLike
I don’t really understand your response . I thought you were clueless about “ensemble” not being spelt “ensembles” . “Des ensembles” do exist but in this case “un ensemble” is a noun and not an adverb like in “On y va tous ensemble”.
LikeLike