![]() (A habit it picked up during the wars? - compare "Naming of Parts" poem.)īTW this Br English speaker finds 'visor' not quite right/rather vague. English is allowed to be anarthrous in these sort of telegraphic instructions - and newspaper headlines. French has 'warning' - borrowed from English - but only in the narrow sense of 'hazard light'.Įnglish 'flip' shortened from ME 'filippen' (actually longer than the French, especially if we include the 'over') - has both clipped the inflection and swallowed a syllable. I guess the 'coussin gonflable' is thereby clearer as to its precise purpose and modus operandi, whereas you have to recognise 'air bag' or indeed 'airbag' as a compound noun with a sense not guessable from its components.Įnglish has 'advertisement' - near enough as long as the French - but has clipped it to 'advert' (with a narrower meaning than the French). But the French prefers 'coussin' (costs 4 extra letters) from which English 'cushion'. ![]() But the French seems to require more suffixing: 'air bag' in this case doesn't mean a bag filled with air (cp 'shopping bag') (in fact it's rather important there's no air in it under normal circumstances) nor a bag made of air (cp 'paper bag'), but a bag _capable_ of being filled with air = 'gonflable' (costs 6 extra letters).Įnglish 'bag' from Norman from Old Norse 'baggi' (saved 2 letters by clipping the inflection) wherefrom also Old French 'bague'. Hmm? The English warning and French avertissement have the same _number_ of words. Why does the French feel more comfortable going on at length, while the English is happy being more concise Having said that, I find neither warning precise: what does flipping the visor have to do with the air bag? Am I supposed to put the visor up when the bag inflates? But I won't have time or presence-of-mind for that if I'm caught in a bag-inflating situation! And I certainly won't be reading that long CAUTION in either language. ![]() (Because English has clipped off the inflections?) Often the A-S or the Romance words have gained narrower/specialised meaning, whereas in a language with a smaller vocab you need to compound words to get the same specialisation. That's no surprise: English very often has both an Anglo-Saxon and Romance-derived word for the same or closely-related meanings. In my French-English/English-French dictionary, the English-French section is noticeably longer than the reverse. One of the more evident reasons is average word length and the need for words such as articles where English uses zero determiner.īut also, this is not just French: it’s translated French, and studies have shown that a) it is different from ‘authentic’ (for want of a better word) French, and b) it takes on average 1/3 more space than the English source text it is translated from. Filed by Victor Mair under Language attitudes." Blooming, embellishment, and bombs" (8/17/15)." 'Tis the Season: blooming in translation and in art" (4/11/17).There must be some reason why speakers of French and English behave this way. This is a phenomenon we have noticed before in different settings, so it is not a fluke. Why does the French feel more comfortable going on at length, while the English is happy being more concise - consistently so in both cases? In almost every line, the French is longer than the English - demonstrably and conspicuously so. Here are the warning labels on the sun visors in my Toyota Tacoma:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |