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The irony is, I'm french, and I tried to "englishify" "en masse", thinking it made sense.
by sametmax 9y ago
The irony is, I'm french, and I tried to "englishify" "en masse", thinking it made sense.
- logfromblammo 9y agoEnglish is already partly French, thanks to the Normans. You can usually drop individual French words straight in without a problem, and sometimes short idiomatic phrases. Trying to translate will just shed any idiomatic character. En masse is already idiomatically associated with groups of people, whereas "in mass" makes us think in terms of kilograms. How many tons of people are leaving Facebook now? As another example, if you translated tete a tete into "head to head", those actually have slightly different meanings in English. Tete a tete translates idiomatically to "one on one", a private meeting of the minds, while "head to head" is a direct--usually public--confrontation or encounter, as one might find in a sporting match.
- sametmax 9y agoVoila, I learned the fact du jour. This makes my day, or my joie de vivre if I may say. Do I do it right ?
- logfromblammo 9y agoYes. Those are all meaningful to native Anglophones. Those who learned English as a secondary language might have some trouble, though. You could think of English as a contest between other languages, to see which one can get the biggest share of the etymology. French is one of the leaders. A lot of the core words come from Norman, but modern terms, particularly those drawn from cuisine and fashion, have made it in as well.
- fsfsf 9y agoThese little facts give life a certain je ne sais quoi
- fsfsf 9y agoI speak Spanish (native) and Italian (fluent) on top of English (best language). I found French class hard growing up. Until I realized that this "latin" language had as much in common with English as it did my two romanance language.