🇫🇷👂Honest Spelling: forest

Bonjour bonjour !

How's your learning going? Feel free to share any questions or feedback by replying to this email.

Back to the Chamonix story - after playing like a kid in the wooden shack, it was time to come home.

So I made my way out of the forest.

Do you know how to say "a forest" in French?

Proper Spelling: une forêt
Honest Spelling: u-n-fo-ré

Notice the little hat ^ on top of the letter 'e'. What's it for?

Well, in terms of pronunciation... not much. When on top of the letter 'e', it makes it sound like 'è'... and sometimes 'é' 🤷.

The actual purpose of that accent is to say, "Hey, just so you know, back in the day, a loooong time ago, there was an 'S' right after me! Cool, right? K, have a great day!"

Seriously.

"Forêt" used to be spelled "forest".

So why do you still have the S in English?

Because English borrowed a ton of words from French at a time when it still had the 'S', and no â ê ô û accent. English is not as fond of fancy diacritics as French, and it kept the S:

• une forêt / a forest
• une requête / a request
• le mât / the mast
• intérêt / interest
• une bête / a beast
• une fête / a feast
• un château / a castle
• etc...

Note: until March 15th, I'm reworking a few things behind the scenes so I can write more article-lessons and help you learn better. In the meantime, I won't be able to release new workshops. However I'm still here and will be extra responsive to your questions. If you've already worked through all the existing workshops and want more before then, do reply and let me know.

And in case you missed it, you'll find Ear Training Workshop #033 in the list linked above.

As always, merci for your interest in my language.
Valentin