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Ten good language resolutions for 2022

2022-01-05T07:13:16.889Z


Should we say "late" or "on the job"? "Well" or "well"? In 2022, don't make these mistakes anymore!


You never know which shape is the right one?

Would you like to stop committing those little everyday mistakes that annoy you and make you look like a fool?

Your resolution of 2022: avoid these mistakes so common and so easy to correct.

Le Figaro looks

back on these ten faults that we no longer want to read or hear this year.

He's supposed to come by tonight

"Sensible" or "supposed"?

They are pronounced the same and thus mislead us.

But these two adjectives have very different meanings.

As the French Academy indicates: "Censé comes to us from the Latin

censere

," to evaluate the fortune and the rank ", then" to list, to judge ".

In French, it rather means "to be supposed" and indicates an obligation.

“Sensible”, on the other hand, comes from the Latin

sentio

, which means both “to feel through the senses” and “to feel through the intelligence”.

To be "sane" therefore means to have all your head, to be reasoned.

So we will say "he is supposed to come by tonight", "it is not sensible to have run such a risk."

"Well" for "well"

"Well!

You still haven't moved? ”

.

This sentence does not shock you?

Bad news, we will have to change this bad habit.

Indeed, we should write here

"well"

and not

"well"

.

We must not confuse here the interjection

"eh"

and the coordinating conjunction

"and"

: one is used to express astonishment, which is the case in the phrase

"well"

, the other is used to coordinate words of the same nature or two propositions, as in the sentence

"he understood and will no longer make the mistake"

.

This is the novel that I am talking to you

“Hey, this is the novel I told you about”.

This is a sentence that we no longer want to hear.

We have, in fact, an unfortunate tendency to replace all the relative pronouns by this little "that", very practical but often false.

“Que” is a relative pronoun which fulfills the function of direct object complement in the relative.

We will thus say "the novel that he wrote" but "the novel about which I spoke to you", "of which" then fulfilling the function of additional indirect object.

If the doubt remains, it suffices to replace the relative pronoun by its antecedent: "he wrote a novel" but "I spoke to you about a novel".

Learn "late" or "on the job"

"Did he get married late"

or

"he got married on the job"

?

You never know which proposition to choose?

These two sentences certainly do not have the same meaning.

The first means that the groom is no longer very young and got married late, the second indicates that the spouses were standing on a small mound to exchange their vows, which is more original.

On the other hand, we will say that he

"learned on the job"

, which means

"by dint of experience"

in a colloquial language.

The French Academy indicates that "this use derives from the familiar meaning of masonry heap:

" place where one cuts the stones to be built, then where one builds the wall "

.

“Barrier” or “barrier” gestures?

Wash your hands regularly, wear a surgical mask inside, ventilate the rooms… Constantly hammered on the television and radio, we know these

“barrier gestures”

well .

And yet, we are still hesitant about how to spell this famous expression.

According to the Académie Française, the rule is as follows:

"When there is identity between the two elements, the two take the plural mark."

.

“Gesture”

and

“barrier”

constitute two distinct elements, each carrying their own identity: one could say that these gestures are barriers.

Conversely, it will be necessary to speak of

“cult films”

because these films are not

“cults”

but are the subject of it.

Immediately + name

"As soon as day broke, he left for Paris"

. As romantic as this sentence may seem, it is nevertheless incorrect:

"immediately"

cannot be used directly with a noun or a nominal group. Indeed, this little word is an adverb, and not a preposition, which can be used alone or in the locutions

"immediately after"

or

"as soon as"

. We can therefore say

"He left immediately"

,

"Immediately after daybreak, he left"

or even

"As soon as the day had risen, he left"

. The Académie Française underlines that there is an exception to this rule:

"This round is indeed considered acceptable only if this name is followed by a past participle"

.

One could say:

"As soon as the new year arrived, he swore that he would no longer make the mistake."

Did she "get" or "get" scolded?

This fault starts from a good intention: that of showing that, docile, we noticed the pronominal form which implies a gender agreement… But in the sentence "she was scolded", missed.

The rule of the French Academy is simple, laconic, easy to remember:

"When it is followed by an infinitive, the past participle made is always invariable"

.

And this even with a pronominal verb, even with a direct object complement placed before the auxiliary have.

We will say:

"she had her hand caught in the bag"

or

"the gardens that she had landscaped"

.

"Ordinary" people, "banal" compliments?

It was hammered at us when we were children:

"a horse, horses"

,

"a jar, jars"

etc. But should we say

"banal people"

or

"banal"

? The answer seems to be obvious, we wouldn't think of saying

"ordinary people"

. We must therefore say

"banals"

, like

"finals"

for example. Why? This is a historical reason given to us by the Académie française:

"the plural masculine, ordinarily banal (banal compliments), is banal when this adjective belongs to the vocabulary of feudalism and qualifies what was made available to all by means of the payment of a royalty to the lord (of banal mills) "

.

Enough to start this year more scholarly.

"The question is answered"

"The question is quickly answered"

.

Perhaps this sentence seems familiar to you, but we cannot say that a question

"is answered"

: the verb

"to respond"

is constructed with two object complements, a direct and an indirect, and sometimes only an indirect object complement.

We can say

“I answered that to someone”

or more simply and with less precision

“I answered to someone”

.

Thus, we answer

“to a question”

and not directly

“a question”

and the verb to answer cannot in any case be constructed in the passive voice.

To be to love

"I'm not very cheesy, I prefer desserts"

.

If that assertion sounds utterly absurd to you, good news, you are on the right track.

Indeed, it is very unlikely that the person who speaks

"either"

or

"is not"

a cheese, but it is much more that she

"likes"

or

"does not like"

cheese.

This fault undoubtedly comes from an abbreviated form of the expression

"to be amateur of"

.

Thus, we will rather say

"I do not like cheese too much"

or, in a pinch,

"I am not a big fan of cheese"

.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2022-01-05

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