Day 175 (Wednesday)

I forgot to say that yesterday when I was talking to Andy we chatted about how difficult it is to learn French, especially the masculine, feminine palaver and he told me that the Academie Francaise, the people who control the language are still undecided whether the word après midi (afternoon) is male or female so I looked it up and found this…

Traditionally the word was classified as masculine during the last century, but it is recorded as also feminine in the current, ninth edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (1992). In fact, only the eighth edition (1932-35) recorded it as exclusively masculine. It was recorded as only feminine in the fourth edition (1762) and as both masculine and feminine in the seventh edition (1878). In modern everyday usage it is both feminine and masculine.

If they can’t decide this what chance do all us learners have of mastering this beautiful if infuriating language?

It was lovely and sunny again this morning but later in the afternoon some rather large white clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped but they looked really pretty.