The French Journey

The following excerpt is from a book called Jean de Florette by Marcel Pagnol. I have recommended this book in my booklist, accessed from the menu above, from where you can go ahead and order it if you feel brave enough to tackle the whole thing. Reading in French is one of the best ways to see how the language works, in your own time, and a great story helps it all move along nicely.

This post will guide you through the passage, highlighting a few general facts about how French literature is written.

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Soudain, la figure du Papet se pencha au bord de la barre, et chuchota.
« Bouge plus ! J’ai entendu du bruit…
- Où ? Continue Reading

EDIT: This post is now available as a free download – see the sidebar >>>

This is simple, very similar to English but there are some differences.

- A French sentence is called a phrase and it is made up of words that form a meaning; it always starts with a majuscule and ends with a point.

There are four kinds of sentence:
- Those that finish with a point and express a fact are called phrases déclaratives,
- Those ending with a point d’interrogation (?) that ask a question are phrases interrogatives,
- Those ending with a point d’exclamation (!) that express emotion or feeling: phrases exclamatives,
- Those ending with a point, or a point d’exclamation that express an order are phrases injonctives.

- When denying or negating a fact, French uses a phrase négative which can be recognised by the use of words like “ne (n’)… pas, plus, jamais, guère…” (not, no more, never, hardly).
When using sentence builders like the semi-colon (point-virgule ; ), the colon (deux-points : ), the exclamation and question marks (!?) and also speech marks (guillemets « ») or brackets/parentheses (paranthèses ( ) ) you must remember to place a space before and after the mark.

(EDIT: in the case of parantheses, we mean a space before and after the pair, not individually – (comme ça) )

Il a dit : « Bonjour ; je ne veux pas vous déranger ! Mais, bonjour ! Vous comprenez ? »

Finally, in French, like in British English, and opposite to American English, the point/full-stop/period goes outside the speech marks, unless the quotation originally contained a point or the quotation is complete. There are no spaces before point (.), virgule (,), trait d’union (-), points de suspension (…), paranthèse fermante ( ) ) or the crochet fermant ( ] ) but there is a space after all of those except the trait d’union.

Hopefully this post contains all the information required for correct French punctuation, further information can be found (in French) from the recommended French site http://www.la-ponctuation.com/

Happy punctuating!