Au plus, de plus?

[Chancer]

The following is an extract from a document where there is a differentiation between au plus and de plus, am I right in thinking that "au plus" means at the most and "de plus" means more than in this context?

habitations individuelles isolées ou jumelées à un étage sur rez-de-chaussée, au plus;

habitations individuelles à rez-de-chaussée groupées en bande.

Toutefois, sont également classées en première famille les habitations individuelles à un étage sur rez-de-chaussée, groupées en bande, lorsque les structures de chaque habitation concourant à la stabilité du bâtiment sont indépendantes de celles de l'habitation contiguë.

2° Deuxième famille:

habitations individuelles isolées ou jumelées de plus d'un étage sur rez-de-chaussée;

[NormanH]

I would say so yes

[idun]

Sounds right to me too.

It is a pesky word 'plus'. Depending on how it is said, it can mean 'more' or 'none'. Well that is a very general way of describing it, but it used to confuse me a lot.

[mint]

Id, do you mean whether you pronounce the "s" or not?

We had a good half hour recently in our French class to help us determine when we sound the "s" and when we don't!

[Chancer]

Yes it was one lesson I learnt early on, in a restaurant and wanting one more drink with my meal I said "ploose de beer sill voose plate" and she said "deja fait!" and promptly took away my glass [:(]

[idun]

ie at the bakers and you ask for une flute........ and they say 'plu', it means no more left and a lazy way of saying it...... but that is just how people speak. Plussss usually means more.

 

Which is contrary to what Chancer has said, but I'm not contradicting him either......... just telling you how it is where I lived. Picardie has become in my mind a place that is rather different to any France I know of or could even begin to imagine, so what they say or do there, could well be quite unique!![Www]

[mint]

Yes, Id, I thought what he said was contrary to my understanding as well.

However, as I have never visited his part of France, it may well be that that is what they say up there.

I do find, generally, that the further north the people come from, the quicker they speak....or, at least that's how it comes across to me.

I can understand southerners much better, even when their accent is quite thick, but that could just be that I am more used to them as I have only ever lived in the south (ish) part of France.

[Chancer]

I think that you are both right and I said plu, it was 7 years ago and the memory is hazy, not helped by everyones lazy speech around here as I rarely hear the "s" pronounced.

So I have learnt another lesson today [:)] it would otherwise take me years for the penny to finally drop that I am saying things wrong, I implore everyone I know to correct my speech as I a sure it is at best like a petit négre and at worst incomprehensible but no-one ever does [:(]

Oh to make friends with a pedant!

[idun]

Hmmmm, my french is, what? it is as it is now. I still learn new words, but I'm fluent in 'my' french. Like a child, I understand just about everything that is said, it is just my speech is of a different order.........lower order???[blink]  Remember I was there a very long time with no gift for languages, including english.[Www]

My friends  pick me up on something from time to time, but not very often. And then we'd be somewhere and they'd have invited a friend who would corrigé me all the time. Always always a ruined evening and I never wanted to see these people again, ever.

And maybe I drove these people mad, I know that that has been known. However, even if my french is tordu, it is still fluent and I suppose; confident too. So at a dinner I'm telling a tale, an amusing tale and every few words I hear a voice correcting me, stopping me and correcting me. I don't want it and don't need it. It's  rude and being 'clever' and I cannot be doing with them. And even when they say they are trying to help, they are not. There is a time and place and a big group at a dinner is not the time or place to do this.

Take care what you wish for. In another 5 or ten years time, this wish make come back to bite you.

 

[Chancer]

No honestly Idun i really wish people would be like those you have encountered, I wouldnt even mind if they did it with méchancité or if the whole group did it, I am quite capable of putting a stop to it if it became tiresome, its just that my French is not improving very much, worse the errors that I make are becoming ingrained and its hard to change when I do learn the absence of my ways (is that the phrase in english?)

Worse still my good friends are now having the pi55 taken out of them by others for talking to me in petit negre, the way I talk to them, I understand why they do it, its a form of pidgin but if only these nasty souls that take the mick out of them would correct me instead, clearly they would take pleasure from it.

I am corrected when I speak English now, or plutot Franglais far more than I am ever corrected in French.

I hope one day to be in the situation of saying "you know what Idun was right!" but for the moment its not right for me if you see what I want to say.

[mint]

Chance, a word of encouragement:  you just think you are not improving but I bet you are really.

Progress is never in a straight line and, yes, sometimes you might even feel you are going backwards.  Then, suddenly, it all starts getting better again.  I know, I've been there![:P]

Oh and BTW, the expression is "learn the error of my ways"[:D]

I have many friends and a whole group of French women at Keep Fit who correct me all the time.  They don't do it with any nastiness; it's just a sort of joke with them, as much as to say, don't you come up with some funny expressions.

I might have to keep on trying a certain sentence or expression until I get it right because they'd wait laughing until I do!

If you like reading, then do try and do some reading frequently.  I find there's nothing like reading to improve vocabulary and learn nice, short phrases that I can use on unsuspecting French people and observe the effect to see if they understand them, find them amusing, surprising, etc.

[Chancer]

I read 50/50 French and English books now, its been quite good recently with all the election pamphlets, it has got really nasty and personal this time round, last time well I would not have been able to understand them at all (so I have made progress) but they never even made it to my letterbox, it took a lot of concerted campaigning to get them to agree that it wasnt acceptable to leave me out of the distribution of all the info and junk mail because its the only dwelling in the road, its a long walk and anyway it doesnt matter he's a foreigner.

I would be happy if just one of the women in the keep fit classes would talk to me, even acknowledge my existence let alone correct me but after 2 years I accept it isnt going to happen, its not because I am a miserable so and so, I always try to engage people in conversation but after a couple of years of being rebuffed well to continue could be construed as harassment [:(]

I never lose optimism though and a couple of weeks ago not one but two strangers actually engaged me in conversation, big deal you may say but it is honestly the first time in 7 years, something that I had taken for granted all my life gave me such pleasure. Its only when you no longer have something that you miss it so. 

One was a skipper of a racing yacht at the regatta an Bretagne, the other was a 3rd or 4th year medical student at the eye hospital (he was there as a patient) half french half portuguese he noticed my petit negre speech and initially thought that I was from la france profonde, I was flattered to have been taken as a native albeit a halfwit one! We chatted for a couple of hours whilst waiting, he is a great voyageur like me and speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese and English, we now stay in touch by E_mail and I will be going kayaking with him in the summer.

Tonight another funny thing happened due to my speech (I think) I went to a séance of fosse en apnée (free dive training in a 15 meter deep pool) I was paired up with a binome (buddy) and after a while I realised that throughout our conversation which concerned the exercises he was not speaking one word to me but using gestures and hand signals, it wasnt a problem as divers have to do that under water and sometimes you are with another nationality and you have to get by with hand signals but it was just weird for me to be speaking French to him and him to reply in sign language, I began to wonder if he was deaf/mute but he did say one thing to me one time only!

[mint]

Goodness, Chance, what an unfriendly lot you have up there!

Come and live down here.....

Everyone engages you in conversation, so much so that they'll keep on talking to you even when you can't keep up and even when you continue to stop them and request them to repeat themselves, LOL!

I LOVE living here so much [:D]

[ericd]

Hey Lads and Lasses....I see you struggling.

In these examples, lets assume that the s is pronounced...

Mettez moi une biere en plus svp (add one beer to my order recently given) ... this is also valid if the waiter brings an additional beer that you had not ordered.....Il y a une biere en plus ( une biere de trop)

Il n'y en a plu....there aren't any left

Il fera beau demain, en plus, ll n'y aura pas de vent.

Hope this makes sense....it's late, I am in Istanbul  for work and I am tired xxxxx

[mint]

Eric, how nice of you to take time to sort out out pluses and minuses![:D]

Have a good sleep and wake up to some Turkish sunshine tomorrow!

I promise you I should know this stuff as we had nearly a whole lesson fairly recently on just this subject.

Only complication with pronouncing the s is when the plus comes in front of a vowel and then you pronounce it anyway, whether there is no more or whether there is some more![:D]

Heavens, you French don't half make it complicated for everyone else![:P]

 

[ericd]

[quote user="sweet 17"]

Eric, how nice of you to take time to sort out out pluses and minuses![:D]

[/quote]

Always glad to help people in distress Sweet.

[quote user="sweet 17"]

Heavens, you French don't half make it complicated for everyone else![:P]

[/quote]

Strange....never had any problem with it....[:D]

Thanks for the weather wishes.It has been great this week. Heading home at lunch time to what I believe to be grey skies......