15 cool facts about the short-French

The site offers a collection of facts about the French, which will be interesting even to those who in addition to "Mercy" in French - boom-boom!



1. The act of the British Parliament on the mandatory use of English in state courts was written in French.

2. In French «assiette» - this dish, and mood state. Presumably, an erroneous translation of the French expression was the cause of phraseologism "at ease».

3. In most European languages ​​the names of numerals 20 to 90 are formed in the normal way - in tune with the basic numbers from 2 to 9. However, in the French names of some of the numbers have a strange logic. Thus, the number 70 pronounced 'soixante-dix', which translates as "sixty-ten", 80 - 'quatre-vingts' («four twenty"), and 90 - 'quatre-vingt-dix' («four twenty ten »).

4. In 1969, his novel of the French writer Georges Perec «La disparition». One of the key features of the novel was that there was not a single letter e - the most consumed letter in French. By the same principle - without the letter e - book has been translated into English, German and Italian. In 2005, the novel was translated in Russian Valery Kislov called "Fade". In this variant can not be found on the letter, since she is the most common in the Russian language.

5. French was the official language of England for over 600 years.





6. The longest sentence in the French language consists of 823 words, and is contained in the novel by Victor Hugo, "Les Miserables».

7. The word "vodka" in the French language has a double writing: Russian vodka is written as «vodka», a Polish «wodka».

8. During the Patriotic War of 1812 in the night Russian soldiers often took their officers for the enemy because of the habits of those speak French.

9. Translated from the French "Hermitage" means "place of solitude».

10. The emblem of the UK there is an inscription in French ("God and my right») «Dieu et mon droit».





11. version of the French language, which is spoken in the province of Quebec, so different from the literature of the French language that the people of France are not always able to understand it.

12. The word "souffle" and "breather" comes from a French word «souffle» (exhale, the breath).

13. New Zealander Nigel Richards in 2007 won several world championships in Scrabble. In 2015, he excelled at the World Cup for Scrabble in French, it is completely without owning them. Richards just learned French Dictionary for two months.

14. Mikhail Kalatozov film "The Cranes Are Flying" won the "Palme d'Or" at Cannes. But for the festival movie title translated as «Quand passent les cigognes», which means "When the storks fly." The fact that the literal translation of «Les grues volent» because of the ambiguity of each word would mean also "Prostitutes steal».

15. The word "cap" came into Russian from the French by a German or Polish. Later, the opposite has happened borrowing, and now in addition to the French word «chapeau» within the meaning of any headgear has a trace «chapka», referring only to the fur cap with ear flaps Russian sample.

via factroom.ru