THE WAR IN LYON

Donna Evleth wrote:

From: "Bill Bonde { Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"

Organization: Our legacy is not the lives we lived but the lives we leave to
those who come after us.
Newsgroups: alt.activism.death-penalty,soc.retirement,rec.travel.europe
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:12:30 +0000
Subject: THE WAR IN LYON



Earl Evleth wrote:

On 13/12/08 19:24, in article , "Bill Bonde {
Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
wrote:

"Ville-lers le Bell", he would look at you confused because
he would have to have heard something like "Ville-lee-aye le Bell"
to understand what you were saying.

It amazes me how far you go to attack me.

Informing you, important if you take a taxi.

Maybe French needs a phonetic orthography.

We English speakers need it, too. I can think of a place name in the United
States that is not pronounced phonetically: Tucson, in Arizona.

I'm not sure that place names follow any specific rules. In the
case of "Tucson", it seems to mostly be that a consonant is not
pronounced. I don't know why.



One of the errors of English speaks is their really gross
mispronunciations. I treated this years ago in the following
amusing post.

THE WAR IN LYON

One of the difficulties of high school French is that it is quickly
forgotten and probably never really learned. Two years of the
stuff at the age of 16-17 evaporates by the time one is 40 or 50.
The most difficult part of the language is that even familiar words are not
pronounced the same. The Europeans` pronunciation of the alphabet from Ah
to Zed is already different than the American (A as in hey, to Z as in Zee).

About 30% of French vocabulary uses the same words as in English, but the
pronunciations are different .

I suspect this is due to it being French and not English.

One can say this the other way around. Consider Versailles, in France,
pronounced Ver-sigh. Consider Versailles in Missouri in the United States,
pronounced Ver-sales.
Or Beaulieu in southern France, pronounced Bow-lyu in French, Bewley in
English.

So if I'm looking at "Versailles" and I don't know how to say it
already, how do I get "ver-sigh"? I see as far as "Ver-sai". What I
don't see is what rule drops off the last bit, the "lles".




Nation. In American English it is pronounced
as "nay-shun" and in French as 'nah-see-own". More or less!

English has historical or etymological spelling, by and large. This
makes pronunciation insanely difficult. The French is probably
easier. Of course the French thing is how the word boundaries work.

Notice how you didn't address this? Apparently the reason that
French can't just be respelled by dropping all those letters off is
that they are sometimes attached to the following word. Also, I
suspect, dialect speech may or may not include them.



One of the most common errors English speakers make is when they jump into
a cab and mutter " Guerre de Lyon " when they want to go to Lyon train
station in Paris; The driver usually understands since he or she has
encountered it thousands of times;

Which is only fair because the person saying it has probably never
encountered it said correctly: "I want to go to il treno, der Zug,
the bloody TRAIN!"



The French ear wants to hear "Gare"
(train station) which rhymes with the English word "bar", not " guerre "
(war) which rhymes with "bear".

Why would someone say "gare" to rhyme with "bear"?

Because if pronounced in the English way, gare would rhyme with "bare",
"care" "dare", "fare", "hare", "mare", "pare", "rare", "scare" "share",
"spare", "stare" and "ware".

It escapes me why I'd use the peculiar pronunciation of the English
"aCe" in another language. I'm not going to default to creating a
diphthong out of a single letter, first of all. I'm most likely to
start by using vowels as in standard Spanish. But most languages
seem to use 'a' pretty much like as in 'father'.

Russian is interesting because the stress is so important, and it
isn't usually marked in the orthography. If the word has an 'o' and
it is stressed, it is said 'oh'. If it is one before the stress, it
is 'ah', if it is after, schwa. The letter 'a' does this too
although it isn't sounded as 'oh' but 'ah' when stressed. So
spelling is fun. Add in the soft and hard consonants which are
phonemic and you've got even more fun! And the nouns are declined
in six cases with affixed endings. German only has four cases. Of
course wait for it in Finnish, I think it's 15 or 16. Yikes.


The above subject popped into my head because of the Gare de Austerlitz and
the habit of Europeans to name train stations after famous victorious
battles in history. Napoleon, a war criminal, from a few centuries ago
ctually won a battle at Austerlitz which the French have not forgotten.
The bottom line battle of his career, however, was at Waterloo. He lost.

His little thing in MockBa wasn't too successful either. Tolstoy
even wrote a novel.



There is no Waterloo station in Paris, or elsewhere in France. To find this
train station one will have to go to London, where they still crow about
the job they did on Napoleon. Note, however the Brits have no train station
named after the battle at Yorktown (which they lost to the French, with
some minor help from the Americans). On the other hand, the Paris
Gare du Nord

Is that final 'd' pronounced or not? The 'r' would be, I think.

The 'r' yes, the 'd' no.

I thought that it was mostly you dropped the last 't' or 'd' or 'r'
and sometimes 'l'. If you didn't drop that, then there's an 'e' at
the end that isn't said.




--
"I'm sorry, too, Dmitri... I'm very sorry... *All right*, you're
sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well... I am as sorry as
you are, Dmitri! Don't say that you're more sorry than I am,
because I'm capable of being just as sorry as you are... So we're
both sorry, all right?... All right." Peter Sellers, "Dr
Strangelove", 1964.

Donna Evleth wrote:

From: "Bill Bonde { Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"

Organization: Our legacy is not the lives we lived but the lives we leave to
those who come after us.
Newsgroups: alt.activism.death-penalty,soc.retirement,rec.travel.europe
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:02:13 +0000
Subject: THE WAR IN LYON



Magda wrote:

On Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:21:23 +0000, in rec.travel.europe, "Bill Bonde {
Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
arranged some electrons, so they looked like
this:

... I'm surprised that France has any train stations.

I'm surprised that you know what France is.

Is this the pro-French group?

No, it's just not anti-French.

Is there an anti-French group?



--
"Question, two men starving to death decide to eat their hair like

spaghetti. Is that funny?"

"Hmmm, well, it depends on if by funny you want to make people

laugh."

-+Eddie Izzard and Joanna Lumley, "The Cat's Meow"

Earl Evleth wrote:

On 14/12/08 0:21, in article , "Bill Bonde {
Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
wrote:

I'm surprised that France has any train stations.

A funny guy. France has the best rail system in Europe, and it
brought into service the TGV.

You see, the joke there is that if France names its train stations
after battles that the French won, they wouldn't have any names to
name the stations. "Le Dien Biên Phu station" doesn't have much of
a ring to it.


Paris alone has Gare du Nord, Gare du L'Est, Gare de Lyon,
and the Gare Montparnasse. The Gare d'Austerlitz is mostly
decommissioned, and the Gare d'Orleon converted into a museum.

There you go.



What is true is that a number of local train stations have
been closed down since the trains no longer stop there.

I think that's a rational budgetary move.



Local lines largely run on diesel locomotives but some
lines have been completely taken out of service.

Why not electric?



France made the error of become too dependent on
large truck transport and the SNCF has neglected
its freight services. Per ton, the energy use
in shipping is higher with truck than by trains

I think it was five times more energy efficient to use metal wheels
on metal rails vs rubber on asphalt.



although the cheapest form of goods transport in
France is still the functioning barge river and
canal traffic. The canal system build centuries
ago still functions. The question is one of
rapidity, nobody ships apples by barge,
a truck can make it from a remote area of
France to the Parisian markets in less than
24 hours. Theoretically the freight trains can too
but don't.

It's a common problem. Quick freight and people would be a good
mix. I'll let Earl ride with the cows though.


--
"Question, two men starving to death decide to eat their hair like

spaghetti. Is that funny?"

"Hmmm, well, it depends on if by funny you want to make people

laugh."

-+Eddie Izzard and Joanna Lumley, "The Cat's Meow"

"Bill Bonde { Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
wrote in
:



Donna Evleth wrote:

From: "Bill Bonde { Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of
November )"
Organization: Our legacy is not the lives we lived but the lives we
leave to those who come after us.
Newsgroups:
alt.activism.death-penalty,soc.retirement,rec.travel.europe Date:
Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:02:13 +0000 Subject: THE WAR IN LYON



Magda wrote:

On Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:21:23 +0000, in rec.travel.europe, "Bill
Bonde { Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
arranged some electrons, so they
looked like this:

... I'm surprised that France has any train stations.

I'm surprised that you know what France is.

Is this the pro-French group?

No, it's just not anti-French.

Is there an anti-French group?


The Republican Party.

Mitchell Holman wrote:

"Bill Bonde { Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
wrote in
:



Donna Evleth wrote:

From: "Bill Bonde { Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of
November )"
Organization: Our legacy is not the lives we lived but the lives we
leave to those who come after us.
Newsgroups:
alt.activism.death-penalty,soc.retirement,rec.travel.europe Date:
Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:02:13 +0000 Subject: THE WAR IN LYON



Magda wrote:

On Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:21:23 +0000, in rec.travel.europe, "Bill
Bonde { Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
arranged some electrons, so they
looked like this:

... I'm surprised that France has any train stations.

I'm surprised that you know what France is.

Is this the pro-French group?

No, it's just not anti-French.

Is there an anti-French group?

The Republican Party.

Republicans can deal with Sarko.



--
"Question, two men starving to death decide to eat their hair like

spaghetti. Is that funny?"

"Hmmm, well, it depends on if by funny you want to make people

laugh."

-+Eddie Izzard and Joanna Lumley, "The Cat's Meow"

On 14/12/08 21:31, in article , "Bill Bonde {
Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
wrote:

Is there an anti-French group?


Definitely, http://www.****france.com/

This is definitely very anti-French.

A similarly named www.****usa.com/
is a porno web site. I am not aware
of any French based anti-American web site
which is equivalent to www.****france.com/

I looked around once a couple of years
ago when the American anti-French feeling
had produced "victory fries" in the halls
of Congress.

Currently, the election of Obama has reduced
any anti-American feeling to a new low,
after reach new highs with Bush.

On 14/12/08 21:39, in article , "Bill Bonde {
Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
wrote:
I'm surprised that France has any train stations.

A funny guy. France has the best rail system in Europe, and it
brought into service the TGV.

You see, the joke there is that if France names its train stations
after battles that the French won, they wouldn't have any names to
name the stations. "Le Dien Biên Phu station" doesn't have much of
a ring to it.

Most stations are not named after won battles, just regionally named.
Marseille has its Saint-Charles central station.

The US avoids this naming, but it has its won and lost battles too.


Paris alone has Gare du Nord, Gare du L'Est, Gare de Lyon,
and the Gare Montparnasse. The Gare d'Austerlitz is mostly
decommissioned, and the Gare d'Orleon converted into a museum.

There you go.

Actually I have not been to the latter. The art period is one have
have seen prior to that museum being created.



What is true is that a number of local train stations have
been closed down since the trains no longer stop there.

I think that's a rational budgetary move.

That is why they did it. If you have a station at which
only a couple of people a day use, you discontinue it.

Local lines largely run on diesel locomotives but some
lines have been completely taken out of service.

Why not electric?

Stringing the line is expensive.



It's a common problem. Quick freight and people would be a good
mix. I'll let Earl ride with the cows though.

When I was employed by the state, I had a upper level position
for which I could take first class on the train. However,
the gap in prices was that lst class cost 50% more than
2nd class. That use to be true on planes too, even
in the USA in the 50s and part of the 60s. Now the gap
between lst and tourist class in air travel is close
to a factor of 10.

On 14/12/08 19:35, in article , "Bill Bonde {
Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
wrote:

Is that final 'd' pronounced or not? The 'r' would be, I think.

The 'r' yes, the 'd' no.

I thought that it was mostly you dropped the last 't' or 'd' or 'r'
and sometimes 'l'. If you didn't drop that, then there's an 'e' at
the end that isn't said.

There are no good general pronunciation rules in French.
Sometimes in spoken speech letters are added that are not
there.

A common expression "au revoir", sometimes people
will add a slightly spoke, ah at the end like

"au revoir-ah"

the "r" is always spoken.

The "r" in "bon jour" is always employed.

"bon joura" might be compressed with followed by "tous"
since the written form is "bon jour à tous"

here is a sloppy example of spoken French

CHEB KHALED est moi j aime tou chanson de cheb khaled car y a une belle voi
est je passe un grand bon joura tou qui aime cheb khaled est je le passe mon
www.aljadide.com/m/cheb-khaled.htm

The run together word, "bonjoura", gets 7000 google hits.

A greeting like in "Bonjoura tous", good day to everybody.

The thing is that it is easily understood. in English you
you have a phrase like "Whatcha doin" that will confuse
a person learning English.

On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:08:39 +0100, Earl Evleth
wrote:

On 14/12/08 21:39, in article , "Bill Bonde {
Remember, Remember, to Vote on the 5th of November )"
wrote:
I'm surprised that France has any train stations.

A funny guy. France has the best rail system in Europe, and it
brought into service the TGV.

You see, the joke there is that if France names its train stations
after battles that the French won, they wouldn't have any names to
name the stations. "Le Dien Biên Phu station" doesn't have much of
a ring to it.

Most stations are not named after won battles, just regionally named.
Marseille has its Saint-Charles central station.

That's because the French never won any.


The US avoids this naming, but it has its won and lost battles too.

None you ever participated in draft dodger.



Paris alone has Gare du Nord, Gare du L'Est, Gare de Lyon,
and the Gare Montparnasse. The Gare d'Austerlitz is mostly
decommissioned, and the Gare d'Orleon converted into a museum.

There you go.

Actually I have not been to the latter. The art period is one have
have seen prior to that museum being created.



What is true is that a number of local train stations have
been closed down since the trains no longer stop there.

I think that's a rational budgetary move.

That is why they did it. If you have a station at which
only a couple of people a day use, you discontinue it.

Local lines largely run on diesel locomotives but some
lines have been completely taken out of service.

Why not electric?

Stringing the line is expensive.



It's a common problem. Quick freight and people would be a good
mix. I'll let Earl ride with the cows though.

When I was employed by the state, I had a upper level position
for which I could take first class on the train. However,
the gap in prices was that lst class cost 50% more than
2nd class. That use to be true on planes too, even
in the USA in the 50s and part of the 60s. Now the gap
between lst and tourist class in air travel is close
to a factor of 10.

"John Kulp" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:08:39 +0100, Earl Evleth
wrote:

Most stations are not named after won battles, just regionally named.
Marseille has its Saint-Charles central station.

That's because the French never won any.


Really - have you heard of the Napoleonic Wars or WW1 ?

Hint do a google search for battles of Wagram, Lubeck, Marne, Verdun etc

Keith