Re : uneditable [OT]
Re : uneditable [OT]
- Subject: Re : uneditable [OT]
- From: Francis Nugent Dixon <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 14:44:31 +0200
Hi from Beautiful Brittany,
I thought I would wade in on this very OT subject, and give my
2 cents (2 pence, deux centièmes) worth !
Yes, the official word for 100th of a Euro is "centième" (Sigh !!!)
After 45 years in France, and often correcting my native French
children in their spoken and written French, I think I can add a
few comments to this subject.
French is a beautiful language, I love it to bits, having learnt it
around the age of 25, and having read, page by page, during
a period of 3 years, the complete Larousse dictionary.
The only problem with the French language is that it is "Under
Attack" by a dynamic, evolving English language. I have often
laughed at the idea of a group of learned fuddie-duddies, after
much discussion, defining the words that will now "enter" the
French language, and publishing an official list every year.
In English, there are few rules about introducing new words.
You can "bus" to work every day, by transforming a noun into
a verb, and if it appeals, then it will be used, and enter the
dictionaries a short time later. In France, you can take the word
"tuner" and invent "syntoniseur" which nobody in their right mind
will use, and this keeps the learned gentlemen in charge of
defining "what will be accepted as official French", busy every year.
(By the way, they can also give up on the word "walkman" !!!)
I mostly agree with Yvan about what he said, except the word
"métro" which is in fact an "apocope" (suppression of phonemes
or syllables, for convenience). I can think of dozens of examples
of "apocopes" in French, so the French are willing to allow their
language to evolve, but for "new" words, the results are nothing
short of catastrophic. They easily accepted the word "pizza" from
the Italians, but refuse the term "Hot-Dog" in English.
And, Marion, you can't add 5 cents . It HAS to be 2 (Joke !!!)
Each language has its own "power", and nobody will dare to
doubt the beauty of the Latin languages like French and Italian.
In order to protect the French language , an official body was
set up. Nobody protects the English language, which is why it
has changed so much over the past century.
The only language I know which is safe from external interference
is Latin :>)
But the English language itself is under attack from foreign lands.
Let us not forget about the Americans who have busied themselves
in the total destruction of the English language over the past 200 years.
Winston Churchill said once. "Great Britain and the United States
are two great countries, separated only by their common language"
And to close my rant, if I ever had to explain the functions of a
four-stroke engine, I would always choose English. If I had to
explain to a girl how much I loved her, it would always be in
French.
And I never used the word "AppleScript" once ………
"A la fin de l'envoi, je touche !" (which I consider "untranslatable")
-Francis
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