Since the dawn of time, people who make spelling mistakes have always been stigmatized. Nobody will ever judge you if you’re really bad at math as an adult, you can just say it’s not your thing. On the other hand, being bad in spelling, grammar and conjugation directly makes you look like the village idiot (yes, it’s super unfair). However, there are many mistakes in French that we make all the time without even knowing it. To remedy this favoritism, here is the list of French mistakes that should be allowed. Afterwards, if you can avoid the horrible French mistakes that tear your ears out, we’ll be grateful.
1. Climb up
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“Gneugneu is a pleonasm. Yes, we understood, but it’s not a big deal. Let’s imagine that I’m in the basement: if I go upstairs, that means I’m going upstairs and not downstairs. I know this argument makes no sense, but I would like to be left alone. And the next one who says “Bah you’re not going to go downstairs mdrrrrrr” I challenge him to a duel.
2. THE Covid
Since the appearance of the virus, everyone said THE Covid. And then, just to annoy the world, the French Academy decided that Covid would be a feminine name since it would mean “disease caused by the corona virus”. However, we say a cold and no one comes to annoy us. After all, do we really need to listen to the opinion of 30 old people including good old Finkielkraut? I do not think so.
3. Suddenly
Normally, “du coup” should only be used in the proper sense of the word as in the sentence “A fist hit him and he fell stunned from the blow”. Without really knowing why, these two words have become an adverb used as a synonym for “therefore” or “then”. For the French Academy, it is unthinkable to make the language evolve and to accept this expression, it would therefore be necessary to say “therefore” or “therefore”. But it’s way too long. Let’s allow “du coup” as an adverb and our lives will only be more beautiful.
4. “After” + subjunctive
Everyone hates this grammar rule because it doesn’t really make sense. We say “before she ate” and that seems quite normal but, be careful, we say “after he ate” because “after” is always followed by a verb in the indicative and not in the subjunctive. Result, we prefer to say “after lunch” to avoid using a super ugly turn of phrase and it’s very sad.
5. Match all colors by number
When a color is used as an adjective, it often agrees in gender and number. The problem is that this is not true for colors which were common nouns before being adjectives. This is the case of a chestnut, an orange… On the other hand, the adjective rose agrees in number whereas this word comes from the flower. It makes absolutely no sense, you have to choose: you give all the colors or you don’t give any.
6. In the end
According to the website of the French Academy, “We make the adjective Final a noun in construction Finally, grammatically faulty, which spreads without anything justifying it. A bit passive-aggressive, no? It is time to calm down and accept that the French language is evolving.
7. So Much For Me / In Time For Me
The debate has been going on for years. Apparently, you have to write “au temps pour moi” because that would be the original spelling, but now “pour moi” is accepted too. In truth, we don’t give a damn and it’s time to stop bothering us with this unbearable expression.
8. Agreements of the past participle with the auxiliary avoir
No matter how hard I try, I don’t understand this rule. Obviously, in a classic subject+verb+object sentence, I mean that the past participle behind the auxiliary avoir never agrees. So why would you want to grant it as soon as you change the words of place in the sentence? No, frankly, I would prefer that we never agree the past participle with this damn auxiliary.
9. Forget the negatives
In speaking, it is accepted that we forget the negations to have a more fluid language. When the sentence remains perfectly understandable, forgetting the negations has also become accepted in writing (in a chill context of course, think of putting the negations in your cover letter). However, some people continue to note this voluntary “forgetting” in all the SMS. Leave us alone damn it!
10. You out of my sight
The verb “horssir”, from the third group, should appear in dictionaries in 2021.