# Couple of questions for native French speakers

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couple-of-questions-for-native-french-speakers/228146>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 8, 2004, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couple-of-questions-for-native-french-speakers/228146 "2004-02-08T18:21:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![DarrenS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/977dab/32.png) [@DarrenS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DarrenS)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couple-of-questions-for-native-french-speakers/228146/1 "2004-02-08T18:21:05Z")

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I consider myself fluent in written & spoken French, but this really requires the ear of a native speaker.

1. If you wanted to say “I have a long tongue”, in theory it’d be “j’ai une longue langue” (or “langue longue” - ‘long’ being one of those adjectives that can go before or after depending on what you want to emphasize) - but this sounds weird to my ears, with the alliteration.

2. Similary, in England there’s a childish insult for people with glasses - “four eyes”. Logically this would be “quatre yeux” - but that too sounds weird to me. My brain keeps wanting to put a _liaison_ between the words - phonetically, “quatre-zyeux”.

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**Author:** ![Asteroide](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@Asteroide](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asteroide)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2004, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/couple-of-questions-for-native-french-speakers/228146/2 "2004-02-08T21:09:09Z")

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1. ‘long tongue’ is worse than you think - you’d tend to use ‘la’ - _j’ai la langue longue_. To avoid the clumsiness of the phrase I’d probably add something in like _j’ai la langue plutôt longue_. I don’t know if this helps…

2. ‘Four eyes’ is generally translated as _bigleux_ (4 yeux wouldn’t be a recognisable expression). As for the liaison, this is a common mistake even amongst native speakers - you’re so used to saying _deux yeux_ that your brain adds the liaison with other numbers, even when you know it shouldn’t be there !