Hacker News Reader

Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

> Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough.

I mean, if you get the pronunciation wrong, you're going to have a terrible time and I speak from experience trying to get a bottle of water in France and not having realized that I had the pronunciation so badly wrong they thought I was a Brit trying to find the bathroom (l'eau [~low] vs. loo).

View on HN

Technically what you want is a bouteille d'eau. If you're asking for l'eau, you're asking for all of the water, not some of it. Depending on how accommodating the French speaker is, you may just get stonewalled for butchering the language.

Lest anybody accuse me of trafficking in stereotypes about the French, this is a real example from my life.

I actually said "je voudrais acheter une bouteille de l'eau", but pronounced so badly they thought I wanted the loo.

It took a second person demonstrating the proper pronunciation of "bouteille d'eau" for me to actually get said bottle of water, despite much pointing at the object in question.

My Spanish teacher told once me that when she was working in a hotel in London someone asked her where the 'ladies' were.

She took it upon herself to walk through the hotel bar & restaurant searching out a group of mature, well-spoken women.

Interestingly, the loo is a Water Closet.

Are you correcting GP's 'bathroom'? Americans call the public facilities (e.g. in a restaurant) that or 'washroom', despite there (typically!) being no bathing or washing devices.

Fwiw, like 'toilet', 'loo' can be either the room/facility or the... 'appliance' itself.

I think they mean that in French, they call the bathroom WC.

Are you joking? I've seen the abbreviation in France, de temps en temps, but never spelt out, it being obviously not French. WC is an English term.

No, I meant etymologically. l'eau is apparently a real hypothesis for the loo. I shouldn't expect anyone to figure out word origin on the spot in a restaurant situation, especially if it's less likely than other hypotheses. But I encourage you to integrate etymology as a method in language learning and as its own effort.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com