“les articles français me tuent”
Nobody says that in French, I’m sure. It was 20 years ago that I last studied a language with articles, and the French ones are killing me. French has only two, masculine (le), and feminine (la), so you’d think I’d be right half the time, but my luck is repellent to chance. If I flip a coin for heads, it’ll go tails.
So, I’m resigned to ordering masculine crêpes (they’re feminine) and solving problèmes in the feminine (they’re masculine). Most things ending with “e” are feminine, but that’s not true with “problème,” and therein lies the 问题, er, problem. Those damn exceptions.
Chinese is so much easier! No articles, no verb tenses, and although there is an equivalent of familiar and formal ways of saying “you,” the formal version doesn’t get used nearly as much in China as it does in France. I’m “vous”-ing (formal “you”) pretty much everyone except my friends. There’s even a way to ask someone in French if it’s okay to switch from formal to informal “you” (the verb, tutoyer).
Still, Chinese may be the language of the future — not just because of its ease of use, but also because China’s economy keeps getting bigger.
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