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> “Joie de vivre” is indeed translatable into English, and the translation is just “joie de vivre”. I’m a native English speaker and I’ve never heard of the ex
by awb 5y ago
> “Joie de vivre” is indeed translatable into English, and the translation is just “joie de vivre”.
I’m a native English speaker and I’ve never heard of the expression “Joie de vivre”, so I don’t understand how “Joie de vivre” is the English translation of “Joie de vivre”.
- School-Cotton 5y agoWell, that’s unsurprising; nobody can know every expression in any language, even their native one. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/joie%20de%20vivre https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/joie%20de%20vivre
- awb 5y agoSurprising to me. I’m an avid reader of books and news and movie watcher and I’ve never heard this phrase once. I also took 3 years of French, went to a 4 year college and I’ve reviewed lists of foreign phrases commonly used in English with my kids, all while somehow dodging this phrase for ~40 years!
- throwaway98700k 5y agoIt’s as common as je ne sais quoi or deja vu or ennui. This one’s on you. Here’s a helpful list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_French_expressions_in_English https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_French_expressio...
- irrational 5y agoWell, I’m 50 and I’ve heard it before. Maybe you just need to live for 10 more years ;-) https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Joie+de+vivre&submit.x=0&submit.y=0 https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Joie+de+vivr...
- awb 5y agoOr maybe I needed to be born 10 years earlier :)
- dmitriid 5y agoI've seen it once or twice in a book (and I needed to look up its meaning/translation). And it's possible Stephen Fry used it once (possibly on QI). It's one of those weird specific words that you use to show that you're smarter than you are (this doesn't apply to Stephen Fry of course :D )
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ithkuil 5y agoYeah, it's such a cliché. Using too many foreign words is such a faux pas, it reveals the bourgeois character of the speaker. No no no, a real connoisseur of the English language won't have such a lassaiz-faire attitude and accept just any fancy word du jour. That would be so gauche indeed. Au contraire I'm blasé at such attempts. The real English entrepreneurial avant-garde clique has so many choices a la carte, so much joi de vivere in this je ne sais qua of a deja vu. Touché
- awb 5y agoHaha! I followed you until you went pure French.
- chrismcb 5y agoHe never went "pure French"
- awb 5y agoDepends on your perspective I guess. I see your point that they’re all phrases in the English dictionary. From a French perspective though it’s mixed French/English until the end which would be entirely French.
- ithkuil 5y agoThe escalation toward "pure french" was intended as an attempt to mirror https://luminusdadon.wordpress.com/2006/05/04/how-english-becomes-german/amp/ https://luminusdadon.wordpress.com/2006/05/04/how-english-be...
- awb 5y agoI remember that from a long time ago. It’s fun to read the last sentence first and have it be unreadable. Then read from the beginning and it’s perfectly readable.
- 5y ago
- irrational 5y agohttps://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Joie+de+vivre&submit.x=0&submit.y=0 https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Joie+de+vivr... It has been estimated that English has more than a million words, what percentage do you think you actually know?
- awb 5y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-44569277 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44569277 > Typically native speakers know 15,000 to 20,000 word families - or lemmas - in their first language. Sounds about right to me.