A question for French (and French-speaking) forum members

[Mischief Maker]

I'm working on a book where the main character is an American visiting Paris who's still learning French and gets swept up in adventure. A major turning point in the story is where everyone is trying to access a French smartphone and they know the password, but it doesn't work when they type it in. While this is going on the man character is corrected on a word he misspelled in French then gets the idea that maybe the password on the phone has a similar misspelling and is correct.

My question: are there any common spelling errors in the French language that even native speakers get wrong sometimes? Like how in English we have messy rules like "I before E except after C." The person who misspelled the password on his phone is supposed to be a criminal who could have a poor education.

Thanks in advance!

[Xyga]

You know it's actually quite difficult to think of some in particular because there are so many.
Also to guess what woud fit in the plot...any particular theme/ field in mind?

Here's a list I've found: (correct in black, wrong in red) http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A ... _courantes

[Lyv]

For a general rule, most of the words with a double consonant (the same letter twice in a row) are prone to spelling mistakes, especially those where it occurs several times in the same word, like "occurrence" or "attraper".

Most of the tricky rules are grammatical though, so probably hard to use for a password.

[Xyga]

I've noticed autocorrect and search engine suggestions often select the wrong spelling first.

For instance if there's a silent letter somewhere like the d in 'cauchemard' (nightmare) it's the wrong spelling 'cauchemar' that will come out first.

But yeah, even people with decent language skills will struggle with double consonants here and there.

EDIT: what about 'tonnerre' (thunder) ?

[guigui]

Does your killer guy like beer ? If yes, he could have chosen the 1664 beer brand for password, 4 numbers for a mobile phone sounds good.
But 1664 is often pronounced as "seize cent soixante quatre" instead of "mille six cent soixante quatre" (like in "sixteen hundred sixty four" instead of "one thousand six hundreds and sixty four").
So he could have (intentionnaly or not) typed his password as 1610064.

Any other year prior to Y2K works too !

(btw Xyga, "cauchemar" is the correct spelling, weird langage)

[Xyga]

Yeah see, I've swapped them without even noticing. So many useless little crappy details like that, it's almost like our language was reformed purposedly to lose people.

Happens in the same fashion with 'entretien' and 'entretient' maybe 1/2 the time (wild guess, but you know it's really bad!)

And the one that irritates me the most is maybe 'tort' written 'tord'. ><

[Mischief Maker]

Also to guess what woud fit in the plot...any particular theme/ field in mind?

Well there's the rub, once I had the words I was planning to build a scene around the main character writing this down.

It's supposed to be an educational book for early French students. I write the plot, my coauthor translates into simple French. The more educational I can make this the better, but my coauthor was stumped when I floated the idea of a shared spelling error between the main character and the phone's password this morning.

The general idea I have in mind is the main character is on the run from criminals because he has this smartphone by mistake and the chase starts out with him eluding them by jumping between trains at random in the Paris subway. So maybe he's writing a text telling someone where he is and the word he uses has something to do with the metro or the name of a station. The password can be anything, preferably a noun.

Is there a really basic spelling rule you can think of from early education?

[Lyv]

Is there a really basic spelling rule you can think of from early education?

The "on" sound, which is spelled "on" in most cases, but "om" when before "b" or "p" (with a few exceptions).
Examples: "conte" (tale) and "compte" (account).

[Mischief Maker]

Is there a really basic spelling rule you can think of from early education?

The "on" sound, which is spelled "on" in most cases, but "om" when before "b" or "p" (with a few exceptions).
Examples: "conte" (tale) and "compte" (account).

Perfect! That's exactly what I was looking for! Thanks so much!

[guigui]

The same goes with "en" : usually en, except before m, p or b. Some really bad chosen exemples :

Enterrer (to bury)
Enculer (well, I guess this is to fuck)
Emporter (to bring)
Emmerder (to piss someone/thing off)

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Honestly, the biggest stumbling block I know in French generally is having to remember if a word is masculin vs féminin, because there's a ton of words out there that are weird that way.

Hm... I'm struggling to think of a 'commonly misspelled' word off the top of my head akin to what you'd see in English. Lyv's suggestion to go with homophones is a good one since that, and singular vs plural homophones could reasonably trip up even a francophone if they only heard the password verbally.

Dessus and dessous are another possibility. They're technically not a homophone, but if you're talking to someone who's speaking very quickly (hello rural Québec!) and they don't stress the "ou" sound enough, it could be quite possible to confuse which they meant.

[guigui]

Honestly, the biggest stumbling block I know in French generally is having to remember if a word is masculin vs féminin, because there's a ton of words out there that are weird that way.

Hm... I'm struggling to think of a 'commonly misspelled' word off the top of my head akin to what you'd see in English. Lyv's suggestion to go with homophones is a good one since that, and singular vs plural homophones could reasonably trip up even a francophone if they only heard the password verbally.

Dessus and dessous are another possibility. They're technically not a homophone, but if you're talking to someone who's speaking very quickly (hello rural Québec!) and they don't stress the "ou" sound enough, it could be quite possible to confuse which they meant.

Those are indeed common faults by non native speaker. The whole give a masculine or feminine type to everything is always funny.
However, I think MM's killer is a native speaker (the detective is the American guy), so there's very few chance he makes those mistakes.

[Xyga]

Imagine the killer was in fact from Québec and used a password that doesn't exist in euro-French, no one in Paris would have been able to help the American guy.