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In French, it means "beginning." The English meaning of the word exists only when in the plural form: [faire] ses débuts [sur scène] (to make one's débuts on the stage). The English meaning and usage also extends to sports to denote a player who is making their first appearance for a team or at an event. décolletage a low-cut neckline ...
Note that the word in French has retained the general meaning: e.g. château in French means "castle" and chef means "chief". In fact, loanwords from French generally have a more restricted or specialised meaning than in the original language, e.g. legume (in Fr. légume means "vegetable"), gateau (in Fr. gâteau means "cake").
A lingua franca (/ ˌ l ɪ ŋ ɡ w ə ˈ f r æ ŋ k ə /; lit. ' Frankish tongue '; for plurals see § Usage notes), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect ...
Using French as an example, one says je vois (I see), but nous voyons (we see). The verb voir (to see) changes from vois in the first person singular to voyons in the plural. In everyday English, this often happens in the third person (she sees, they see), but not in other grammatical persons, except with the verb to be.
French has three articles: definite, indefinite, and partitive. The difference between the definite and indefinite articles is similar to that in English (definite: the; indefinite: a, an), except that the indefinite article has a plural form (similar to some, though English normally does not use an article before indefinite plural nouns). The ...
A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is an official language in 27 countries, as well as one of the most geographically widespread languages in the world, with about 50 countries and territories having it as a de jure or de facto official, administrative, or cultural language. [4]
Many English words and calques have also been integrated in Quebec French, although less than in France. In Quebec, borrowed English words tend to have the same meaning as the English word. In France, they often have a very different meaning; for example 'le smoking' for 'tuxedo'.
A cliché (UK: / ˈ k l iː ʃ eɪ / or US: / k l iː ˈ ʃ eɪ /; French:) is a saying, idea, or element of an artistic work that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning, novelty, or figurative or artistic power, even to the point of now being bland or uninteresting. [1]