Transformation by addition – The strange incident of French nouns that were mutated by an adjective

 

[Dog in moonlight*]

Meaning is contextual. In the case of words, the form, position and connected modifiers define their actual significance. As an example, a hot dog can refer to a panting canine  after a long walk in the heat but is a sausage when put in a bun. In some cases, an attached adjective affects a noun to the point of creating a meaning beyond the common, isolated sense of the words. French has several expressions that go beyond the inherent significance of the word.

[Coffee and croissant]

Very common adjectives can have this effect. The word droit means right, as in the direction, in French. However, tout droit, literally “all right”, means “straight”, also the physical direction. The difference is significant if you need to understand directions using the French version of the Waze application. Likewise, in France, a déjeuner is a lunch but a petit déjeuner is not a light lunch but instead breakfast. Given that traditionally lunch is the heavy meal in Paris, the choice of one or the other word affects food expectations. Another example is the term grande école, which is not a large school but instead one of the elite colleges preparing people for leadership positions in France. UC Berkeley, with some 70,000 students, is not a grande école but the École Normale Supérieure in Paris with 2300 students is. Literal translation can be deceiving.

[Goulash]

For some reason, descriptions of women in French can be a bit obscure. For example, your beloved belle-mère, “mother-in-law” in English may not be so pretty. For that matter, your beau-père and belle-soeur, father-in-law and sister-in-law, respectively, are not always so good-looking either. The term femme forte can be used to describe your belle-mère if she is a matriarchal figure but generally is directed at any women that is noticeably overweight. Context and tact are quite important here. On a positive note, your belle-soeur may a sage-femme, which does not imply any great wisdom but merely that she is a midwife. Curiously, bonne femme food can also be prepared by not-so-good hearted women and even by men because it is simple, home-style cooking. The French language has many hidden linguistic minefields.

[3 fork roadsign]

When I tried to find similar phrases in Hebrew and English, two languages in which I have a good vocabulary, I was unable to identify any similar terms. It is possible that equivalent terms are escaping me at this moment. However, I strongly suspect the nature of the languages subtly affects its use of words. English has both an extensive vocabulary and tends to be direct and concrete, even labeling indirect terms somewhat derogatorily as euphemisms and politically correct. For example, any man that stated that he had an expanded forehead would be mocked for making an absurd attempt to avoid saying the word bald. By contrast, modern Hebrew, not biblical Hebrew, is a very young language with a relatively small lexicon, which means it has not had sufficient time for the meanings of words to evolve. The French are the exact opposite, relishing la belle phrase, the beautiful sentence, and willing to sacrifice directness and specificity for the sake of the aesthetics. It seems that the tendency in French is be obtuse creates the ideal environment for the development of abstract connections.

To paraphrase Dinah Washington, from these examples, we can see what a difference an adjective makes. In French at least, it can transform the meaning of its attached noun to the point that the connection becomes a true puzzler. On the bright side, what’s wrong with a good mystery?

* Picture captions expand the Internet to the blind. All images through Pixabay.

Language defacement

Shakespeare, among others, is famous for inventing new words, such as bedazzled and addiction. As historically interesting this process of creation is, it is less significant than the process of hijacking existing words and applying them to new contexts to the point that the original meaning becomes an historical fact in itself and an archaic use of old or dead writers. Two examples are the word gay, which used to only mean “happy”, and pryck, which was a sharp pole placed in the corner of field to mark ownership. In the last few decades, the most important driving force behind this piracy is the Internet. It is hard to remember when the words mouse, boot, cookie and worm brought up images of items on a child’s exploration of a field.

Due to its mass use, including by people who don’t actually use a desk computer, Facebook is slowly but surely shaping the connotations of countless terms, both nouns and verbs. Once, a page was clearly a solid white piece of paper (that had to be typed in my day). Nowadays, if someone writes on a page, it is probably on Facebook. English always distinguished between acquaintances and friends, but now you have to say a “personal friend” to ensure understanding of a flesh-and-blood connection. Shame used to be in the context of failing to live up to some expectation, generally in the family.  Shaming now brings up thought of malicious and ugly messages intended to make someone’s life miserable.

The verbs have really been hit by a storm. Posting meant putting a letter in the mailbox. I imagine that such an image is rather strange to anybody under 30. Similarly, liking people often assumed at least having seen them.  This is no longer true. For that matter, sharing was what children had to do with their toys when they were small (generally against their will).  Likewise, reacting required some unusual action, physical and/or verbal, to some stimulus. I doubt how much adrenalin actually flows when people react to my posts.

To clarify, I am not Don Quixote fighting the windmill. I accept, albeit not always with joy, the inevitable dynamics of language. Every generation is shaped by different forces, which forces the shapes of its languages. Granted, it makes it hard for grandparents to understand their grandchildren but that has already been difficult for many generations. Still, I suffer from nostalgia for the time when everybody understood each other, even if that was an illusion linguistically. In the meantime, I spent the weekend watching a party, i.e. attending an event of my wife’s family, pictures and video of which will not be posted in Facebook. To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, what’s next?

Number theory

Numbers have significance well beyond their quantitative meaning.  For example, the term 24/7 is universally understood to mean around the clock without mention of the units, i.e., hours and days per week. The challenge for translators and non-natives is understanding the localized meaning, which may or may exist in the culture of the person trying to understand the term. Misinterpretation can lead to confusion at best and wrong conclusions at worst.

The most obvious number issues are quantities, dates and time.  Some languages, notably English, use the decimal point to distinguish the whole numbers from the decimal and lower numbers, e.g. 5.547 percent is 5 and 547/1000 percent.  By contrast, the comma is used to divide between each three places in whole numbers, e.g. 7,890 is seven thousand and eight hundred and ninety. By contrast, the French, among others, reverse this convention such that 5.547 is five thousand, five hundred and forty-seven while 7,890 is 7 and 890/1000 percent.  What a difference a punctuation mark can make.  The date issue can be critical.  The United States is almost the sole country that places the month before the day with most other countries starting the date of the month. Thus, translators often write out the name of the month to avoid any potential confusion. Europe traditionally has used a 24-hour clock such that each hour has a specific number. For example, 12:00 and 24:00 are clearly different times.  By contrast, in the United States, while few institutions use “military time” as the 24-hour clock is referred to, most people add am or pm or morning and evening. The problem is even Americans are confused whether 12 am is midnight or noon (it is the latter). 

In some cases, each county has its own variation of important numbers.  For instance, to call for an ambulance in the United States, you dial 911 while in France it is 112, Israel 101 and Russia 02, to name just a few.  For those who still have perfect vision, in the United States, you have 20/20 vision, meaning that you can see a certain image at 20 feet while France you have 10 vision and Israel 6/6. As they say, to each his own.

The United States has some of its specific terms.  A company filing Chapter 7 or 11 is going bankrupt. 9/11 is day of mourning that will not be forgotten for many decades. Any baseball fan knows that a 300 hitter is pretty good (for those not in the know, he gets a hit 30 percent of the time) while a 500 team has the same number of wins and losses.  In colleges, any 101 course is introductory, e.g., Economics 101 is the initial course. On the financial front, most Americans file a 1040 form of some type and know that the IRS requires it if they may not know how to fill it in. For that matter, Israeli get a 106 form from their employer every year reporting their income and deductions for the entire tax year. You got to be there to understand.

Culture also has added significance to numbers but the effect is often generational. Depending on the age, people may remember Adam 12, a patrol cop show from the 1960’s, Room 222, a TV program about a school in the early 1970’s and Beverly Hills 92010 for those a bit younger.  In terms of books, 1984 is a well-known book by George Orwell. Of course, all living generations know that 007 is a spy.

If I live until 120, as they say in Hebrew, I will probably witness the appearance of num(b)erous digital terms. Some will stick while others will be forgotten as in Bug 2000. Yet, numbers are here to stay.

Dressing up the verb

English is famous (or infamous) for words having multiple meanings, some with no apparent connection with them.  A charming subgroup of such words involves articles of clothing.  These have clear, commonly understood meanings as nouns in their usual context, i.e., the items covering up a person’s birthday suit.  Yet, as verbs, they stray, to one degree or another, and take on a different persona.

An example of this is the word dress, as celebrated in one of the wonderful stories of Peggy Perish, Amelia Bedelia. In it, the literally minded maid puts a dress on a chicken instead of preparing it for cooking or eating as in the expressions dress a turkey or dress a salad.










Keeping with women’s clothing, to skirt an issue is to avoid it, not to show off its nice legs.

As any fan of the original Batman TV series knows, to sock or belt someone does not send a person to work but instead to the hospital.

To meet a man that suits you may involve a tailor or but most probably leads to a wedding as he fits your needs.

Speaking of tailors, coating the fish with breadcrumbs is not a cheap way of keeping it warm. The bread crump coat in this case just keeps the dinner tender.

To shoe someone out may sound violent but actually must done very discretely, without too much fuss, unlike being booted from a tournament, which is very unceremonious.

It is advisable to both to wear a cap when hiking and cap an appetite or temper.  Everything in moderation.

Staying in the area of the head and neck, a scarf is elegant and keeps you warm.  By contrast, scarfing down food, i.e., uncontrolled eating, can look rather disgusting and be unhealthful.

Finally, while a tie may seem extraneous in some cultures, notably Israel and Jamaica, a proper speaker ties everything together with a summary.

In that light, if clothes make the man, they also confuse him, especially if he is a foreigner.

Jeffersonian language drivers

George Carlin, a man obsessed by the search for truth, had a notable routine about the common misuse of phrases. In itself, it is quite interesting.  Among the phrases he mentions are the terms sour grapes, cop out and get a monkey off your back.  He points out that these terms have specific meanings that have been misused by public speakers. For example, a person with sour grapes is not jealous but instead rationalizes a failure. Likewise, to cop out is admit some guilt, not to find an excuse. A team cannot get a monkey off its back by stopping a losing streak since the monkey in this case is an addiction that controls its life. Nobody actually seeks to lose, rendering the expression inappropriate in the circumstances.  The full video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn9elWR13Z4.

Aside from the cleverness and information in this video, it raises a much more profound issue. Specifically, is correctness determined by a small group of educated people or, to paraphrase Carlin, the mass of idiots out there? In other words, the unspoken debate, as in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, is whether truth, linguistic in this case, is objective or subjective.

On the one hand, I would agree that poor language cannot be justified by the quantity of Google hits. As an English lecture, I insist on the non-use of but in the beginning of a sentence despite its frequent use there in journalism. Likewise, I correct effect to affect when it is used as a verb although countless native speakers don’t know the difference.  So, I support the insistence on language standards and calling a spade a spade.

Yet, when it comes to vocabulary meanings, I am not Don Quixote fighting the windmill of common use. People have always used terms as they sit fit even if the genealogy of the word did not justify such use. To take a modern example, the gay 90’s (1890’s) were happy times, supposedly, as compared to the gay 90’s (1990’s) when homosexuality became more accepted. The people of each period understood the term as they chose.  Beyond that, I even embrace the dynamics of language. Language defines each generation in terms of its thinking and technology. Cloud technology existed a half century ago but was used for creating rain as compared to today. The dynamics of language development is fascinating and legitimate even if it is driven by a bunch of “assholes” as my brother would say.

So, while I sympathize and appreciate the efforts of Carlin and others to maintain standards in a language, when it comes to lexicon, I am not in the camp of Hamilton but in that of Jefferson.  To explain, the meaning of the words is to be decided by the people, however uneducated they maybe, not by the elite, however superior they may be. Let the revolution continue, not that anybody can stop it.