Mr.Tea said:
It should be "Soupe à l'oignon". It's hard to explain why, but prepositions are weird like that, just like english when I learned it. And your 'literal' translation is more like "soup made of/made with onions".
Actually, yes, that's how I was taught. This was more of a difficulty recalling because I didn't take French beyond High School, which was 10 years ago. I knew what it was back then, I swear! >_>
Mr.Tea said:
"Ne pas" means "Do not", not "no" or "without"; You should've said "Pas d'oignons" (No onions) or "Sans oignons" (Without onions).
Which begs the question: Why order onion soup If you don't want onions?? That strikes me as much more odd than your little linguistic fumbles.
What everyone else said, as described in my narrative. I'm sure if I managed "ne pas d'oignons", they'd probably get the idea. But they clearly didn't understand my pronounciation of "oignon"... or maybe they were used to people using a different word. Or weren't used to tourists trying to special order at all. To this day, I'm still not sure what I did wrong with that. I just scraped off the onions in the end.
