bi lazy wrote:
hmmmm ... isn't it *le poisson* for fish and *le poison* for poison?
yep, that's it in french ... Note that if the spelling difference is subtle, the 'sounding' difference is way more noticeable ...
And we got plenty other similar ugly words for small kids that learn to talk like "cach?" (hidden, pronounced "kaashay" or something) and "cass?" (broken, pronounced "kaassay") ...
And plenty worse subtleties for kids that learn to write like "pr?t" (ready) and "pr?s" (near), which both pronounce exactly the same way. "cours" (course), "cour" (yard?), "court" (short). Not even mentionning some verbs that write differently (but sounds the same) depending on the tense and person you're using ...
Gee ... and you wonder why French are globally so poor in other languages ?
On the other side, we have wonderful expressions like
putain de bordel de merde d'enfoir? de (etc)
which can be used to produce arbitrary-long insults as demonstrated in The Matrix -- reloaded
