The Student Room Group

word count in french

just wondering whether say j'ai is counted as one word or two? coz that makes a lot of difference and otherwise my essay will be seriously over the word limit...
Well in England we tend to count each word where there is a space, so j'ai would be a single word; but according to some French posters on TSR they count j'ai as two words. I guess you'd have to ask your director of studies what your university's policy is.
Reply 2
OMG i didnt think of that
:|
i just use the word count on microsoft word, surely thats alright?
Depends what you're talking about.

For A-level exams, certainly the policy is to count words as being separated by spaces. So j'ai is one word. (Exception is that "il y a", "il y aura", "il y avait", etc. only count as one word each. So "il va y avoir" is two words. Bizarre rule, but still...)
Reply 4
oh sheeeeeeesh kebabs
so technically speaking, i have to count my 1500word essay myself? Because wordcount isnt gonna know that il y a is one word :|
this is so ****
I dont have the attention span to READ OVER my essay, let alone count the number of words
CRAP
:cool: lol
Just cut out a few sentences to be on the safe side...
I know this isn't helpful in your case, but it's of anecdotal interest: the French don't seem to count words for computer-written essays, they measure everything in pages. As do the Italians, I gather. This confused me utterly, but apparently they all know a priori that they're talking about Times New Roman, 12 point, 1.5 spaced, or something, with default margins... Daft if you ask me. I'm more of a Palatino man.
Reply 7
For GCSE and A level, j'ai would have counted as two words for my boards, OCR and EdExcel respectively, however at degree level, when I had this problem a few weeks back and asked one of my lecturers, she said that there was no official policy and recommended using the word default wordcount function. Hope this helps.
Reply 8
generalebriety, that rule is surprising.. weird. i would have thought words like that in French would be the same as words like 'it's' and 'couldn't' in English.. one word? good job i don't have to word count my essays!
Reply 9
generalebriety
Depends what you're talking about.

For A-level exams, certainly the policy is to count words as being separated by spaces. So j'ai is one word. (Exception is that "il y a", "il y aura", "il y avait", etc. only count as one word each. So "il va y avoir" is two words. Bizarre rule, but still...)


So how many words would "il n’y a guère" be?
scaryhair
So how many words would "il n’y a guère" be?

I'd guess three.
I had to do an assessed piece of French work in 70 words (-+10%) so between 63 and 77. She specifically told us to be careful of word count and that things like "qu'on" and "j'ai" are two words.
Reply 12
For all my assessments, things like j'ai and s'il count as one word. Much like how in English, words like can't and don't are also one word.
So for gcse would i l ya be three words or one?
Original post by revisingallday
So for gcse would i l ya be three words or one?


I've always counted it as 3 tbh, never heard anything about it being just one word :dontknow:

For words like j'ai and qu'on, I always counted them as one word

Hope this helps :h:

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