"Frédérique passe l'aspirateur deux fois par jour."
Translation:Frédérique vacuums twice a day.
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Unless she is a professional and full-time cleaning lady, this is called an 'obsessive–compulsive personality disorder'. Trouble de la personnalité anankastique in French according to Wikipedia.
451
I wrote Frédéric instead of Frédérique. But I suppose that would sound different, right?
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The i in Frédéric (the male name) is shorter than the one in Frédérique (the female equivalent).
Cite ? Everything I look at (e.g., Wicktionaire) has both as /fʁe.de.ʁik/.
I hear no difference on Google Translate. Even if I did, though, I wouldn't accept their robovoice as an authority. That site is useful but makes errors in translation and pronunciation a lot.
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Just from experience. If you try Google translate, you might here the difference as well.
Funny, then, that they have different IPA (phonetic) symbols. :) A lot of English-speaking students have trouble hearing these differences, but they are real and not even particularly subtle once you tune into them.
De, doux, deux, and du have four different vowel sounds. That last two don't exist at all in English.
In French, vowels are king. Students must learn to distinguish the vowels and be able to pronounce them decently enough to be understood. French drops so many consonants and runs things together so much that if you can't sort out the vowels it becomes pretty-much incomprehensible.
Also, « de fois par jour » wouldn't make any sense.
normally you accept hoover for vacuum, yet Freqerique hoovers twice a day was rejected. Please accept - it is normal UK English usage
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Normal maybe, but very colloquial and amusing to English speakers in the rest of the world. Thanks for sharing this! :-)
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Hoover is a brand of vaccuum cleaner. So saying I'm going to "Hoover" the apartment is like saying you're going to "Mr. Clean" the counter and sink. That is informal and conversational (colloquial = used in ordinary or familiar conversation; not formal or literary).
Nonsense. No one uses "Mr. Clean" like that. The British certainly use "hoover" that way, though, just as Americans use kleenex and band aid as generics and the French sometimes use frigidaire to mean frigo. The manufacturers mostly don't like this, since it weakens their trademarks, but it happens all the time.
Even Milton and Swift used "hoover" that way.
Ok, that last bit was a joke, but your claim that "hoover" isn't acceptable for literary use was odd.
I know that "hoover" is generic in the UK and Ireland, the way "kleenex" is generic in the US, but most Americans don't know that, and it sounds really funny. It should be accepted though. It may be acceptable for literary use in British publications, but it would never appear in print in the US because most would not understand it.
their English translation is incorrect- the feminine form is FredericA not Frederick (male)
Names don't translate. Both the English and French refer to someone named Frédérique.