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My French is coming on but still not great so could someone help me with the spelling of the sign outside our door please. Should it be...

1. Chambres d'hotes (with the little hat over the o as I can't do it on the keyboard)

2. Chambre d'hotes (ditto) or

3. Chambres d'hote (again, with the little hat)

I have seen all three on this site and I think it should be no. 1 but I'm not 100% sure and I don't want to amuse the village any more than we already have. If it makes any difference we have four rooms to let. All witty replies readily accepted.

Cheers

Brian
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Hi,

As you will have more than one guest (sorry Coco, the word hôtes means both guests and owners, and as I understand it, in this context it refers to the guests - though there's no grammatical rule which makes it so).

Chambres d'Hôtes.

(you get the ô on a PC by making sure num lock is on and then pressing the ALT key, tapping 147 on the numeric keypad, and then releasing the ALT key. Thus:- éâäàåçêëèïîÄÅÉæ and so on, are the ALT series from 130 upwards. Try for yourselves.

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8 chambre d'hôtes between Dinan and Dol have it in the 3 different spellings.

We have last months GDF (35) magazine and as ever, it will be written a few times in the book and lo and behold, the 3 different spellings.

The main dossier, has it in the 3 different spellings.

So put it down how you want, the public will get the meaning.

Us, well we have Chambre d'hôtes and on a couple out in the country, we have simply Chambres with a large GDF logo.

We are rather lucky here, the rules governing the 22 & 35 departments concerning road signs, is that one can only have 3 signs, we have 6, as we live slap bang on the limit of the 35 & 22 and very handy it is too, as can have 3 in each !!

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As you will have more than one guest (sorry Coco, the word hôtes means both guests and owners, and as I understand it, in this context it refers to the guests - though there's no grammatical rule which makes it so).


I'm absolutely sure you're correct on this Ian.  HOWEVER, following on from the thread about veggie food, one could leave oneself wide open to awkward guests if you take this view!  If the picky guest wants separate meals and you quote the meaning of table d'hotes as "sharing the host's meal", how are you going to EASILY then explain that chambres d'hotes, refers to the guests' rooms.  They could argue that if CdH mean "guests' rooms", then "table d'hotes" means guests' meals and therefore demand a choice

Pedantic I know but for those that don't know the context, it keeps it simple to give d'hotes the same meaning for these purposes.

Anyway, Macker, as you were originally concerned about not causing too much amusement amongst your neighbours it seems that you will be fairly safe with any of them, you're not making a great bloomer with any of them!  After all, in the UK we say Bed and breakfast, although grammatically I suppose we should say beds and breakfasts!!!

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Sorry Quillan,

You said:-

It's Chambres d'hôtes according to GDF which translates to room of hosts.

Agreed that GdF calls it Chambres d'Hôtes.

However, even if they were to have translated it, as your punctuation implies, I'd not trust them to get it right.

Check in Larousse. There are two meanings for the word hôte, both valid. "Guest" and "Host".

BUT in the context of CdH it means "guests". I promise.

 

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Hi Coco,

Oh !£"$^$^^&%$&^&£"!"¬!¬! to you!!

Yes indeed you're quite right. However, on reading the rules about Tables d'hôtes, they perfectly clearly mean that guests are joining the "family meal", and that therefore in THIS context Table d'Hôtes" means the "hosts' table" (note my carefully pedantic apostrophe).

However, the rooms are clearly "guest rooms". So once again "we 'ave ze Frrench parradocks"

It's all our fault for insisting on using different words for guest and host.

 

 

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