You may know the feeling: you’re on holiday and you’ve been walking around sightseeing all day. You’re tired, you’re hungry, and need to stop to eat. So, you pop into a little restaurant, and you feel satisfied and re-energised. Restored. And it’s no surprise really, because that’s what a restaurant’s for. Continue reading
Une bière, s’il vous plait.
Una birra, per favore.
It’s something we might think about before going on holiday: oh, I should learn a few phrases of the local language before I go! And sometimes we do just that: maybe get a phrasebook, or peruse the little section on useful phrases in the Lonely Planet guide a few times. Or we do a quick Google the night before or at the airport because we’d completely forgotten about it until then.
And then we arrive and there a few variations on what happens: either we forget about what we’ve learned, and rely on English and hand gestures; we think about using a few phrases but are terrified and rely on English and hand gestures; or, we use a few phrases here and there. And that can go a couple of different ways. Sometimes ending in English and hand gestures. Continue reading
Yesterday I used this idiom in my post, and then got wondering about it’s origin. Why would this phrase come to mean a completely different situation, and more importantly, who would put fish in a kettle in the first place? Continue reading
Yesterday, I wrote about why Great Britain is so-called, but if the Great is to distinguish it from Brittany, why not use a word more clearly related to size, like Big or Large? Why use Great when so many people assume it’s meaning in the name is to indicate how wonderful Britain is? Continue reading
I’ve been away for a few days, and found myself unexpectedly without reliable WiFi. I was in Brittany which, if you’ve never been, is a really beautiful part of France with great landscape, food, and drink. As a travel destination it’s great, but it’s also linguistically very interesting. Continue reading
…or don’t. Is there perhaps something sinister about that phrase: take a picture? I was thinking about this today as I went for a run by the river, and passed a man taking a photo. As I’m wont to do, I imagined a situation in which he complained that I got in the way of his photo, and I fired back that he could easily wait a few seconds to take his photo, whereas it would interrupt my rhythm to stop for him. I soon realised that to really win this imaginary argument I’d have to know the correct translation of take a photo in French. I thought it might be faire une photo, but checked when I got home, and found that while that’s possible, prendre une photo (basically a direct translation of to take a photo) is better. Continue reading
Have you ever thought about the similarity between the words come and become? It’s something I’ve considered from time to time, as students occasionally get them confused. It struck me again recently, when I considered the similarity between the French translations of I come (Je viens) and I become (Je deviens). Other European languages demonstrate similar, uh, similarities, though not quite so… similar. This strengthened my opinion that there might be a conceptual link between the two. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 