Nasals. Fucking nasals.
Civilised languages have vowels and consonants. And then there is fucking French. Well, ok, there is Portuguese, too, which is another hell of a language, as far as pronunciation goes, but at least I can understand written Portuguese without having ever studied it.
Besides, Portuguese, if I'm not mistaken, has only one nasal, French has a whole variety of them, and the slightest mistake in pronouncing them makes the difference between drinking a glass of wine or... of wind!

Can you pronounce "Le Bois-d'Oingt"? Never mind, you'll stop after "bois". And there are people who have to use this name every day, since it's the name of a village in the Azergues valley, not far from Lyon. I pray I'll never have to go there. 

It's the kind of words only francophone natives can pronounce. And even for them it must not be so easy, if nasals are pronounced in different ways by people of the North of France, of the South, or by Canadians. Unfortunately I don't have enough experience to describe the differences, otherwise I would try to reproduce them, it would be fun.

But if you are a foreigner, you are supposed to pronounce them in correct, Académie French. Well, yes, darling, I do love you, but, believe me, I can't really tell the difference between "à vingt-deux heures" ("at 10 p.m.") and "avant deux heures" ("before two"). I'm doing the effort to speak your language as best as I can, you please do the effort to understand me if that same language gets in the way.

The worst are numbers. I'll open another chapter on this subject, but there is something to say about numbers here. How can you tell if you are going to pay something 5.000 ("cinq mille") or 100.000 ("cent mille") euros? Well, by logic. There's no other way. Oh, yes, a native can, of course, catch the slight difference in the two nasals, but for a foreigner sometimes it might be a source of embarrassement. Let's say you're a journalist and you're interviewing someone, who says: "It was horrible, a carnage! ... thousand dead!". Add to this the emotion of the moment, what are you going to write? 5.000 or 100.000? Either way it's a carnage, of course. Well, if you are wrong you can always say that Twin Towers victims in a few days fell from 20.000 to less than 3.000, so what's the matter after all?

I have already told you why you should never tell a French person that you want to "baiser" them if what you mean is that you want to kiss them, and unless you want to kiss their hand or feet.
The situation gets even more complicated if you have the bad idea of using the noun meaning "kiss". That is, one of the different nouns meaning the act of kissing. Let's see the different choices:

- "baiser". Yes, it's back, and this time it's not a verb. It actually means "kiss", in its most primitive, sexual form. What is universally known as French kiss. You wouldn't give a "baiser" to your dog, unless you are into animal sex. And I'm not sure he/she would appreciate;

- "bisou". It's the tender, innocent kiss, the one you can give to anyone, your mother as well as your boyfriend, and, yes, it shouldn't raise protests from your dog. But some people say kissing an animal is not very hygienic;

- "bise". It's the most hypocritical, most French way of kissing. You meet someone you have never seen in your whole life, you have no idea if he/she is a nun or a serial killer, and you are supposed to "lui faire la bise". Utterly disgusting. I always try a more civilised handshake, but that's the best way of risking offending the person you have just been introduced to. Actually, the word has also a more useful and interesting meaning: if you are telling A that in the next few days you are going to see or hear from B, A might say: "fais-lui la bise de ma part", which is a bit more intimate than just "say hello to them" (which can be translated as "dis-lui bonjour de ma part")

---

Did you think French people are so proud that they don't use foreign - and, especially, English - words? Think better (Sorry, only for people who can read French. But it's worth it).

---

You are reading a French text. You find the expression "sans doute". You look at your dictionary, and find that "sans" means "without" and "doute" means "doubt". You then conclude that "sans doute" means "undoubtedly". Well, you're undoubtedly wrong. In France 2+2 may be something different than 4. And you will discover, if you have a good teacher or someone who cares to explain it to you, that "sans doute" means "probably", or even "perhaps". So, how do you say "undoubtedly"? "Sans aucun doute" or "sans nul doute". Ooooooohhhh.

---

To be continued...

Since you are aware I'm not a native English speaker, you tend to forgive my language mistakes. And I think I usually manage to make you understand me, even if my English is not perfect. 

But there are mistakes that need some explanation.

Probably, I would make a lot less of them if I didn't speak French. Sometimes I'm trapped by false friends not originated by Italian but by French.

For example, once, in this blog, I used the verb "to report" when I wanted to say "to postpone", because that's one of the meanings of "reporter" in French. I remember reading it afterwards and telling myself I had to change it, but I never found that post again.

A few days ago I happened to make two mistakes of this kind in one post. Luckily, an Italian friend of mine, who is a scholar in American literature, saw them and helped me correct them. One was "assist" when I meant "attend" (from French "assister") and the other was "librarian" instead of "bookshop owner" (from Italian "libraio" and/or French "libraire").

You can better understand my confusion if you have some knowledge of Italian and French. Italian tends to keep the original meaning of Latin words, whereas in French they often shift to different meanings. Take the sex/love terminology. That's a real mess, at least for an Italian. "To kiss" in Italian is "baciare". In ancient French, "baciare" was "baiser", a meaning it keeps in expressions such as "baiser la main" (to kiss someone's hand). But, in everyday use, its meaning is a bit less poetic, although you might rightfully contend it remains quite romantic, at least in some specific situations. It means "to fuck". And I don't mean just "have sex" or "make love". It is actually the most used (as far as I know) of the various obscene ways of saying it. A friend told me about a German friend of his who once wanted to tell a French girl that he had nothing that was less than honourable in his mind, and that he only wanted to kiss her. He said: "Je veux seulement te baiser", which actually means: "I only want to fuck you". He must have been really puzzled when her hand hit him and she ran away.

So, how do you say "to kiss" in French today? "Embrasser", which originally meant "to hug". Just as "abbracciare" means "to hug" in Italian. But "kiss" (the noun) remains "baiser". And now don't ask me how they say "to hug". I'm not going to hug anyone who speaks like that.

And to counterbalance things a little, here is a post about British English seen from an American point of view (thanks to filkerdave )