Me: Okay, subject-verb-object, nice and familiar.
The French Language: Oui! Except of course for les pronouns.
Me: Oh, like « je te vois »? A subject-object-verb special case, no problem.
French: I knew it would be pas de problème pour toi!
Me: So what about indirect objects then? Do they just go at the end?
French: Bien sûr, as in « je le donne aux enfants ».
Me: And I assume the same is true when they're pronouns, for clarity.
French: Mais non, you have guessed wrong, mon amie! It nestles itself just aprés the subject, as in « je te le donne ».
Me: Well that seems a bit confusing, but as long as it's subject-indirect-direct-verb I guess that's at least consistent. How do you handle both the pronouns being third-person, as in "I give it to him"?
French: Ah, one conjugates! « Je le lui donne ».
Me: Okay. It's pretty fucked that « lui » only shows up in this one form but I guess I can deal with it as a disambiguator. So presumably that means "I give it to her" would be « je la lui donne »?
French: Oh, non, it is the same as before. No « la ».
Me: Wait. Do you mean to tell me that « le » in « je me lui donne » is actually the direct object?
French: I suppose I do.
Me: And so this one particular form is inexplicably subject-direct-indirect-verb, unlike every other way of structuring this sentenct?
French: Désolée, but it seems that that is so.
Me: Okay. Jesus. Wait. Doesn't this mean there's ambiguity? How do you say "I'm giving her to you?"
French: Ah... "Je te la donne". But this is perhaps un peu ambiguous I admit.
Me: And if you flip it? How do you say "I'm giving her to you"?
French: Oh, this I can answer facilement! « Je te donne à elle »!
Me: No. No. You absolutely cannot come up with this convoluted inconsistent mess of a word order system only to WHOLLY ABANDON IT once you hit the ambiguity that was always latent! You could have been using « à » with the indirect pronoun the entire time! It would have been sensible. It would have be been consistent. But no! You had to go and fuck it up completely! I am going to INVADE your GODFORSAKEN COUNTRY and BRÛLE L'ACADÉMIE AU F U C K I N G SOL!
Me: Okay, so there's a conjugation for third person, one for second person singular and familiar, one for second person plural or formal, one for first person singular, and one for first person plural.
French: Oui, on adore our verb forms!
Me: Wait. What was that form you just used? « On adore »!
French: C'est the other first person plural form, of course!
Me: Why. Why do you need two.
French: Pourquoi non? This one is casual, it is terse. You should be joyeuse to have one fewer conjugation to memorize!
Me: Okay, so it just conjugates like third person then? « On est content » and all that?
French: « On est contents », but you are in the right quartier.
Me: Oh no, bitch, you can't just gloss over that. « Contents »? Plural?
French: Oui, because you are speaking as "we", if you will pardon the pun.
Me: So you don't conjugate the verb but you do conjugate the adjective?
French: Exactement!
Me: Fuck off. Fuck right off. I am going to destroy you. I am going to go back in time and alter history so that Occitan wins instead, and damn the consequences!
