Christiaanj,
I think your post's contribution to the cause of the French language awareness of the non-francophone audience is welcome.
The common good is more important than the individual's so a thorough and thoughtful reading of my post which would have helped, if you're interested in avoiding making invalid assumptions, and saving time and bandwidth, of a preamble and unnecessary explanation of "l'avion" genre to me, is of a lesser importance.
Hm.... maybe a while back, your anglophone friends were also picking on, and/or having fun, to the use of a "feminine" name, to call a masculine object, resulting in the "le Concorde".... ... makes me think of the beautiful "Caravelle"...
Of course, I appreciate your honest reinforcing of the "il vient pas" translation, and agree with "ca viens ou pas? ...." regarding which, I would have been in agreement with Takata's take.... which is still bemusing me.
Originally Posted by
ChristiaanJ
Sorry, airtren, but you obviously don't live in France.
You should have SOME doubts....
In French it's "un avion", so an aircraft is "il".
I've had regular problems explaining this to anglophone firends...
"Why do the French refer to a Concorde as "he" or "it", rather than "she" ?"
That said, you may have a valid point... "il vient ou pas" is more likely to refer to the captain than to the response of the aircraft. I would have expected "ça vient ou pas ?" in the latter case (still too colloquial to translate unequivoqually without the full context)
Spagiola,
You pointed out some aspects that I have not thought about before, but now, when I think about them, switched to French language, make a lot of sense... thanks.
Originally Posted by
spagiola
2 h 11 min 06
PNF: (…) il vient ou pas
There's been some discussion as to whether "il" refers to the captain or the aircraft (Avion is masculine in French, so from a purely grammatical sense "il" could be l'avion.)
...
So my conclusion is that "il" refers to the captain, and not the aircraft.