But thank you for adding this English idiom, Susanna.I know — I like your X’s! More to come later…Chou is first a cabbage, but if we had ‘petit’ it becomes a pastry. Always funny for me to read that French is a cool language.

That’s why I gave this mini grammatical lesson. Both Left and Gauche don’t have a R, while Right and Droite do have an R. Since I’m direction-challenged, it has been very helpful to me!I think the X is a remnant from Latin. I had forgotten about this series of irregular plurals. We have some English nouns that take and X ending also, but all of them have Latin roots.Words starting with an X exist, but expressions using X are another story. Besides the seven French irregular plurals, one of my English teachers gave us this small tip: Left in English is Gauche in French and Right is Droite. Je sais le travail qu’il y a derrière.

Je ne la connaissais pas lorsque je vivais en France. I remember many little rhymes from childhood to cue me into correct spelling, even though the eXceptions to those rules often got me into trouble. CHOU: CABBAGE.

CAILLOU: PEBBLE. Apprendre une autre langue n’est jamais un acquis. Tu dis, tu dis que tu m'aimes Tant pis, c'est pas mon problème Tu dis, que tu n'aimes que moi Tant pis, moi je ne t'aime pas Almost there, Marilyn. Français [modifier le wikicode] Étymologie [modifier le wikicode] Juxtaposition dans une phrase à but mnémotechnique des mots chou, joujou, bijou, genou, caillou, hibou et pou se terminant par « -ou » dont le pluriel est « -oux », faisant exception à la règle voulant que les mots finissant par « -ou » aient comme pluriel « -ous ». Thank you in any case for your visit. That’s a good one. un hibou, des hiboux. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! But I started scrounging for X idioms in English — Xerxes? Even for native speakers! Maybe it does.Ha! Les enfants français apprennent-ils encore ces pluriels irréguliers par cœur?Promise, I’m returning to the French Idioms series tomorrow!So, underneath the different covers of language, we tend to learn/teach things the same way. Chou hibou genou caillou, a song by Dorothée on Spotify. See you! He masters the French language like a French native and finds a solution to any problem like an American. This process is automatic. A great way to remember these. After them, I use dictionary very seldom. Right, Curt. Merci, thank you, for letting me off the hook with this suggestion.The majority of French nouns mark their plural with the letter S, matching the English most common way. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. It’s in the idioms dictionary online. In my home I have about 1500 books in French.Bravo! When it’s your mother tongue this is more ordinary. My both children learnt French in French school in Helsinki. We are almost at the end of the challenge but it gave me an idea for my blog. […] 4 Bijou, Caillou, Chou, Genou, Hibou, Joujou, Pou: a Twist to a Month of French Idioms From A to Z […]Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. I was at a loss and almost took one of these “x” plurals for my “X” post, but I really cheated and used “eXpresso” instead It is fun to learn with patterns and phrases. My husband learned a lot of rhymes and “poems” when learning French when he was young… Lisa, co-host AtoZ 2015, @ Thank you, Lisa. We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. JOUJOU: TOY (a small toy, or a babyish way to name a toy) POU: LICE .