This page lists known problems associated with the text in the Gnomeville comic stories and liberties taken with the language to make it readable.

Episode 1

• No errata as such, but a note that a native speaker is unlikely to say “Le total?” to find out how much they need to pay. This was known when I wrote this, but I thought it would be ok in the context.
• Something only commented on when getting Episode 4 proofread is that the adjective “brave” usually goes before the noun. Some authors will sometimes put it after the noun, possibly for poetic reasons. According to l’Académie Française and some educational resources, the meaning is “well-behaved” when before the noun and “courageous” after the noun. This does not appear to be how native speakers typically use the adjective.

Episode 2

• Page 6: people are more likely to say “les créatures de Fantasia” than “les créatures de la Fantasia”. For “le mage de la Fantasia” it is less clear, since people will say “le président de la France”, since it is a post at a particular time, and there are various other subtleties associated with this rule. No wonder most of my francophone readers didn’t comment on this.
• Page 12: “On voyage à la Place des Roses” is problematic depending on how you interpret the sentence. Place des Roses is a remote place in Fantasia, rather than just a square in a town, so it can be said. The word “voyage” is also potentially problematic, but I have seen many examples of saying “voyage en bus de Paris à la Haye” or similar. Nevertheless, note that a native speaker has said that this sentence is not good French.
• On the same page: “dans la direction de la Jungle des Pythons” should probably be “en direction de la Jungle des Pythons” (discovered during Episode 3’s proofread), although perhaps it flows better using “dans”, given the sentence starts with “En route…”.
• While “aéroplanes” isn’t incorrect (page 17), it is rarely used compared to its replacement, “avion”.

Episode 3

• One native speaker was not too happy with the use of “désire” in the contexts I have used it, since it mostly has a sexual connotation, much like in English. However, I have seen it used for desiring cigarettes etc. Obviously as we add more vocabulary to the comic, other options will become available that are more typical of French writing and speech.
• “Crétin” on page 23 is missing its acute accent.
• I’ve had numerous discussions regarding the use of the construction “dîne de” to mean “dine on”. It occurs in my generally very good corpus-based Oxford-Hachette French-English dictionary (dîne d’une soupe). Historically, this was used, and there are examples from 18th and 19th century where it was used poetically as a metaphor. But native speakers tend not to say that they dine on something. Nevertheless, I have seen some modern occurrences, for example, “La veille au soir, on dîne des sucres lents en bonne quantité” was in the newspaper “Ouest-France” in an article entitled “Un marathon, ça se prépare !”. The sentence “il dîne de nectar” in the comic should probably have been “il dîne du nectar”, but either way it is unlikely to be said by a native speaker.