Talk:French

Number
While you can say "the French" to refer to people from France, I don't think you can say "a French" to refer to a single French person. Anyone have a reference or example? -- Paul G 17:31, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, my dictionary does not mention this definition. I have looked at the history of the article and it reveals it is User:Ensjo who have done this change. Perhaps he can explain why ? Koxinga 18:40, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * I can. It's accurate for early Modern English. It's considered nonstandard now. Ditto Chineses. — LlywelynII  04:28, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Freeman?
"Le mot 'franc' signifie 'homme libre'." I read this sentence in "Easy French Reader" by R. de Roussy de Sales published by NTC, 1985. Does being French means being 'free'?
 * No. — LlywelynII  04:28, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Walloons
Wallonia has its own version of French Walloon. GerardM 09:07, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * So? — LlywelynII  04:28, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Hindi spelling
Hmm so which of these two are right? Are the virama and candrabindu optional in Devanagari or just Hindi's use of it? Here are how the two spellings work:
 * फानिसिस
 * pa aa na i ra i ra
 * फ़्राँसीसी
 * fa virama ra aa candrabindu sa ii sa ii

The 2nd one looks more correct to me based on the virama and "fa" rather than "pa". I can't guess on the "i" vs "ii". I don't know whether the dot under the "fa/pa" is optional either. &mdash; Hippietrail 02:51, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I (=128.104.220.225 = User:Lethe) think that Yann's version is correct, and the old version was not. Except for candrabindu, which i have fixed, according to the Hindi Talk page, q.v.
 * I am absolutely certain that फ़्राँसीसी is the right spelling. Beside the fact that I speak fluently hindi, I got this from the Dictionnaire Hindi-Français de Federica Boschetti, Editions du Mark. Yann 19:34, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I just wanted to mention Google hits for the various spellings. For our old spelling there are a few hits but all seem to be mirrors of the Wiktionary article. The spelling with candrabindu gets no hits. The spelling with just bindu gets 281 hits on real Hindi pages. &mdash; Hippietrail 00:59, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

about "French" the adjective
I removed "Speaker of a language of French (for example French Canadian)" because that comes under "of or pertaining to the French language", and "speaker" is a noun anyway.

French language
Seems to be an invalid redirect, but WhatLinksHere shows it still in use? --Connel MacKenzie 17:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Romanian language redirects to Romanian language, but even that just looks like a wikipedia article. I think there are some regular entries with the "X language" format, but I can't think of what they are off the top of my head. — [ ric ] opiaterein — 18:57, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * There are quite a few entries with the name "X language" that should not exist. I expect that the readon they do is that the various ISO user box templates invoke the category, so people have created them to make the links blue.  A permanent fix would necessitate that the various userboxen are adjusted not to link to the language in this way. --EncycloPetey 00:54, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

RFV-failed sense: citation
This sense has just failed RFV after a year, but since there was one citation I reproduce it here:
 * 1) (informal) risqué, racy, bawdy.

French
"(informal) risqué, racy, bawdy." Not sure the given citation backs it up. Equinox ◑ 18:22, 7 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems to be the same sort of thing as French letters, it sounds plausible although I don't know if I've ever heard it outside set phrases. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:16, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Failed RFV. Equinox ◑ 00:37, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Is the noun "French" actually countable as stated?
No sense seems amenable to singular usage. Equinox ◑ 00:21, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * It was in early Modern English. — LlywelynII  04:28, 15 April 2020 (UTC)