Either World Domination or Something About Bananas: Difference between revisions

*** And another: "à cette heure" means "at that time", while "à sept heures" means "at seven o'clock". These sound identical and can cause confusion: "On se voit à six heures? — A cette heure? D'accord — Non, à six heures! — J'ai bien dit ça!" ("Shall we meet at six? — At that time? OK. — [mishearing that as "At seven? OK"] No, at six! — That's what I said!") This can be avoided by using extra words: "à sept heures du matin/du soir" ("at seven a.m./p.m.") and "à cette heure-là" ("at that time").

*** And [http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/hotel.asp here's an apocryphal example] where French homophones caused embarrassment at the United Nations.

*** It gets even worse when you consider that, like the difference between British English and American English, Canadian French has its own variations that differ from the French spoken in France. A notable example is the informal term "gosses," which means "children" in Europe but "testicles" in Canada.

*** Another example from Canadian French is the first time someone learning French, and thus learning about the nasal-''n'' at the end of words orders a "poutine", and forgets the ''e'' in "-ine" means the ''n'' is not nasal, so they'll use a nasal-n...which inevitably comes out sounding like they ordered a ''putain'', a prostitute.