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Post by Etaoin Shrdlu on Sept 1, 2024 0:18:11 GMT
Spanish haber muerto "to have died" reminds me too much of the jocular/childish French avoir mouru for me to take it seriously. It's something I've noticed with Spanish: constructions that in the other Romance languages I'm familiar with would be considered faulty are standard in Spanish. Even when there's no direct equivalent in the others, sometimes you can still see (or at least I can imagine) its faulty roots. Mistakes becoming the norm is one of the basic ways languages change over time, and I'm not saying Spanish is special in that regard, but I don't know, it's like Spanish yields easily to the temptation of natural enough mistakes, when its siblings at least try to put up a fight. Another example that comes to mind is quiénes/quienes, the plurals of the interrogative and relative pronouns respectively. Can you imagines writing quis in French? Mistakes becoming the norm is THE basic way languages change, in terms of their structure. (Obviously new vocabulary is acquired in various ways, but even there mistakes play a role.) As someone whose native language isn't a Romance one, it seems no odder to me that quién should have a plural than that adjectives have various forms. I had never heard avoir mouru, and even after looking it up, I'm not sure I get it. Can you give an example of it being used in a jocular fashion? It seems a tad inappropriate. Though it may be inexplicable, the way some people say holibobs for holidays, or zum Bleistift for zum Beispiel in German, presumably in a jocular manner, and others want to strangle them for it. |
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kizolk
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Post by kizolk on Sept 1, 2024 9:47:27 GMT
Aziz isn't used in French, but I suspect quite a few non-Arabophones would know what the feminine aziza means due to Daniel Balavoine's hit song L'Aziza. (In a rather typical Balavoine fashion, the chorus is great and the verses rather bad.) The song has a double meaning: the "dear one" stands both for his wife, a Moroccan Jew, and Arab people (whether they live "here or over there" as said in the chorus). The song was released in 1985, when the RN (then known as the Front National) was starting to get popular; before 1982, it was nearly non-existent, electorally.
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Post by kizolk on Sept 1, 2024 10:18:06 GMT
Mistakes becoming the norm is THE basic way languages change, in terms of their structure. (Obviously new vocabulary is acquired in various ways, but even there mistakes play a role.) Of course! As someone whose native language isn't a Romance one, it seems no odder to me that quién should have a plural than that adjectives have various forms. I can definitely see that. I'm being a bit unfair to Spanish because those features and expressions seem so weird to me mostly in comparison with other Romance languages I'm familiar with, as opposed to being intrinsically weird. In particular, the fact that they break the Portuguese-to-French continuum, in a sense, makes them stand out: usually, you would expect a feature to be either present or absent from all three languages, or go only one way (most usually either present or absent in both Portuguese and Spanish, and the opposite in French). I had never heard avoir mouru, and even after looking it up, I'm not sure I get it. Can you give an example of it being used in a jocular fashion? The faulty conjugation makes it jocular: the only correct form (in standard French; I wouldn't be surprised if it were correct in some regional variety for instance) is "il est mort", not "il a mouru". And you can kind of understand the need for that form: "mort" in "il est mort" could be construed as a predicate adjective, which makes sentences like "il est mort l'année dernière" possibly awkward. Avoir mouru seems like a better choice for the present perfect/passé composé: it uses avoir instead of être like most verbs do, and mouru is how the past participle would look like if it weren't irregular (courir > couru). An example of jocular use could be for instance if you're telling your friends you were exposed to an egregiously bad song and say "j'ai mouru". That's a figurative use of the verb mourir itself which adds to the jocularity of the sentence, but you could use avoir mouru in its literal sense and still make a joke e.g. if you were parodying a poorly written student paper: "Napoléon a mouru en 1821" etc. |
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Post by Pacifica on Sept 1, 2024 20:45:03 GMT
if you were parodying a poorly written student paper: "Napoléon a mouru en 1821" ROFL |
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Post by Etaoin Shrdlu on Sept 2, 2024 20:37:34 GMT
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Post by terentiusfaber on Sept 2, 2024 20:39:45 GMT
Gaelic : Fuair sé bás = He got death
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Post by kizolk on Sept 3, 2024 4:19:17 GMT
Many good ones, but "mais por fora que cotovelo de caminhoneiro" (more of an outsider than a trucker’s elbow) is fun. I also quite like "você está viajando na maionese" (you’re travelling in the mayonnaise). Reminiscent of "pédaler dans la semoule/choucroute" (to pedal in semoline/sauerkraut), which can have a similar meaning to the Brazilian expression but more generally means something like "to go nowhere fast". Gaelic : Fuair sé bás = He got death Nice and simple. |
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Post by kizolk on Sept 10, 2024 18:15:15 GMT
Spanish a lo mejor and French au pire have a strange relationship. They seem to have opposite meanings, with the Spanish one meaning (or at least seeming to mean) "at best", and the French one meaning "at worst", but they both have idiomatic uses: a lo mejor = maybe, and au pire = ... well, "maybe" isn't the best translation possible, but it's not bad. The catch is that it often is more like "maybe I (or other pronoun) can (do something)". In some contexts, it might be best to translate it as "how about...?", or "if you want".
I think this usage is rather new, and I've seen older people mock it a few times because, unlike what its denotation suggests, it's often used when considering a desirable outcome: a best case rather than a worst case scenario. It's colloquial, when the Spanish one doesn't seem to be; in any case, the antiphrastic nature of the French one makes it sound more slangy to my ears than its Spanish counterpart.
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Post by Pacifica on Sept 10, 2024 20:08:10 GMT
The catch is that it often is more like "maybe I (or other pronoun) can (do something)". In some contexts, it might be best to translate it as "how about...?", or "if you want". I think this usage is rather new, and I've seen older people mock it a few times because, unlike what its denotation suggests, it's often used when considering a desirable outcome: a best case rather than a worst case scenario. I'm not sure I've ever heard it used that way. I would say I'm an older person, except that if you meant older than you, I'm not. To me it only means "at worst", "if worse come to worst", "if push comes to shove", that kind of thing. |
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Post by Pacifica on Sept 10, 2024 20:14:29 GMT
Well, the way I use it it does denote a desirable outcome of sorts... but the point is that a not-ideal but not-so-catastrophic thing is the worst that can happen. Like "If we can't meet today, we'll meet tomorrow or au pire the day after tomorrow" = "even if we can't meet quite as soon as we'd like, the worst that can happen is that we meet the day after tomorrow."
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Post by kizolk on Sept 11, 2024 4:09:55 GMT
The meaning you mention is probably still prevalent, and it's not always easy to distinguish between the two but the one I mention is a thing here. I wondered if it could be a French usage. In a way it's a very diluted version of the regular meaning. For instance, say someone had to give you their opinion on something but they're still not sure and you tell them "Au pire on en reparle plus tard". Or say you have to go on a trip with someone, and it turns out you won't have time to eat before leaving, and you say "Au pire on mange là-bas". You're not really considering alternatives or worst-case scenarios. Maybe you could say that in that sense "au pire" only introduces a suggested course of action, no matter what has already happened or what could happen. I would say I'm an older person "Older person" is vague, but I still find it peculiar that you would call yourself that. Not young =/= old or "older" in my book! |
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Post by Pacifica on Sept 11, 2024 8:04:55 GMT
wondered if it could be a French usage. In a way it's a very diluted version of the regular meaning. For instance, say someone had to give you their opinion on something but they're still not sure and you tell them "Au pire on en reparle plus tard". Or say you have to go on a trip with someone, and it turns out you won't have time to eat before leaving, and you say "Au pire on mange là-bas". That kind of weakened use feels normal enough to me. It's just that, to my mind, something like "if no better option is available" is always kind of implied* and I wouldn't say it's really equivalent to a suggestion like "how about" or qu'est-ce que tu dirais de. *Though I understand people aren't necessarily thinking consciously in those terms. |
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Post by Pacifica on Sept 11, 2024 8:07:17 GMT
"Older person" is vague, but I still find it peculiar that you would call yourself that. Not young =/= old or "older" in my book! I was being a little tongue-in-cheek but to a 15- or 18-year-old, say, I may be an "older" person. It's not only technically true ("older" is a comparative term and I'm older than them) but true to a considerable extent (unlike, say, someone who was one or two years older). |
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Post by Pacifica on Sept 11, 2024 8:13:38 GMT
to a 15- or 18-year-old, say, I may be an "older" person Such people have a pesky habit of calling me vous and madame, after all.  |
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Post by kizolk on Sept 11, 2024 10:20:58 GMT
It's just that, to my mind, something like "if no better option is available" is always kind of implied I think I agree. I guess the strangeness I perceive comes from the fact that while the least bad option and the best option might refer to the same thing factually, they are conceptually pretty different, and this weakened use of "au pire" erases that distinction. |
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