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On October 13 2020 03:10 GreenHorizons wrote: Does France still have a ministry for coming up with new French words for tech so they don't adopt whatever the rest of the world calls something?
Are you talking about the Academie Francaise? It's not a ministry but an institution gathering all the greatest writers and "hommes de lettres", and it has been there since 1635. It's made french a remarkably stable - and rich - language.
I have no idea. I just remember hearing it on some random video like a decade+ ago because they didn't want to use terms like LCD or whatever.
On October 13 2020 04:04 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On October 13 2020 03:10 GreenHorizons wrote: Does France still have a ministry for coming up with new French words for tech so they don't adopt whatever the rest of the world calls something?
Are you talking about the Academie Francaise? It's not a ministry but an institution gathering all the greatest writers and "hommes de lettres", and it has been there since 1635. It's made french a remarkably stable - and rich - language.
I have no idea. I just remember hearing it on some random video like a decade+ ago because they didn't want to use terms like LCD or whatever.
Are you sure this wasn't about Quebec?
I don't know if there are institutions but Quebec is kind of famous for having words that are not really useful to replace the standard english words that we'd use in french.
On October 12 2020 15:25 Mohdoo wrote: I hope this doesn’t come across the wrong way: my experience talking with Europeans indicate that French people are the most proud/nationalist of their country when compared to other European countries. Is that considered true? Unique experience of mine? Haven’t spent any time in Europe, just talked to Europeans who immigrated here or here on business. They just seem to think France is absolutely amazing in a way other Europeans either don’t or don’t say as openly. Not criticizing or something, just curious how Europeans feel
Well... yes and no. You don't see french flags everywhere, only at the town hall mostly, and we don't openly display our love of France. On the contrary, we bitch a lot, complain all day that the country is shit. We mostly all agree that Italy is marvelously beautiful, that GB is full of fog, rain and grass, that Spain has nice beaches and cool bars/tapas, Germany awesome beers etc. However, deep down, there is probably that feeling that France is superior. It showed the most when my generals discussed openly during an French all hands meeting in Nato that we didn't have to provide 100% of our manning, because it fucking costed money, and because 70% of the french would already do more work than 100% of the germans, spanish, italians and others... I was pretty bummed. It is true that the french soldiers in Nato have a reputation of working very seriously and being good at their job, but that's mostly on us having a full-blown army and a rigorous selection process. They didn't have to be so bitchy about it though.
So : regular people don't really have that feeling and despise a lot of things (mostly everything xD), or only deep down, but the top brass, my god... We wouldn't trade France for anything else mostly, though :-D
About the académie française, I'll just link something that should give you a good laugh : meet Jean-Jacques from an Académie secret meeting ;-)
My experience from spending roughly a year in France when I was in uni and kind of trying to stay in contact with people and the country, France has a sort of Janus faced attitude to national pride. On the one hand, there's always a lot of internal revolt and self-criticism about almost anything, while at the same time there's a lot of intense pride.
Tbf that's true for a lot of countries but I think what sets France apart is how universal the French perceive their culture to be. Obviously Germans can be quite arrogant and think we're the country of Dichter und Denker but it's more in a strange philosophical way. French nationalism with its staunch Republicanism is very directly political about it. You see it even in modern politics when you see how Macron conceives of France internationally.
On October 13 2020 05:00 Nouar wrote:About the académie française, I'll just link something that should give you a good laugh : meet Jean-Jacques from an Académie secret meeting ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgnxYiQesig
I cracked up at "pressing". "Shampooing" I can definitely relate to.
Strangely enough, that seems to be happening in a lot of languages. German does the same. The two examples i can immediately come up with are "Handy" and the wonderful word from the gaming scene, "damage dealer". Now, a damage dealer is clearly someone who does damage. In the english speaking gaming community, these are simply called dps. For inexplicable reasons, they are called "damage dealers" in the german speaking gaming community. And because this is a long word, it is abbreviated to "dd". And multiple of those are "dds".
With regards to the word "handy", i have no fucking idea where this word comes from. As far as i know, it only exists in German. It means cellphone.
Actually i remember times when english speaking community was using both terms DD (damage dealer) for characters/skills meant to do damage and DPS (damage per scond) for abilities/skills dealing damage overtime. It was certainly the case in Lineage II community. I think the missusage was popularized by WoW, at some point people playing WoW started to refer to all damge sources as DPS and due to this game popularity it stuck.
With regards to the word "handy", i have no fucking idea where this word comes from. As far as i know, it only exists in German. It means cellphone.
I haven't heart "hand" words for mobile phones elsewhere, but it makes sense, hand=hand in both languages. That is sounds like a borrowed word from English is funny, though.
The German word "vorspiel" actually has a Norwegian meaning which has nothing to do with the German original meanings of the word, which are usually foreplay in a musical or sexual sense. A "vorspiel" in Norway, even including the casual verb "å fårse", usually means to gather somewhere to start drinking cheaper beverage before going out or continuing to a bigger party. This usually happens at someone's home, at a hotel rooms or some times outside.
In Spain, I can't come up with any "burrowed" words which are not words in English, but they are very fond of changing the typing and pronunciation in bizarre ways: Football=Fútbol Tweet=Tuit
On October 19 2020 04:03 Simberto wrote: Strangely enough, that seems to be happening in a lot of languages. German does the same. The two examples i can immediately come up with are "Handy" and the wonderful word from the gaming scene, "damage dealer". Now, a damage dealer is clearly someone who does damage. In the english speaking gaming community, these are simply called dps. For inexplicable reasons, they are called "damage dealers" in the german speaking gaming community. And because this is a long word, it is abbreviated to "dd". And multiple of those are "dds".
With regards to the word "handy", i have no fucking idea where this word comes from. As far as i know, it only exists in German. It means cellphone.
People use the word Handy here in Canada if someone is good at fixing a lot of different things, and if they do it for work they would be a Handyman.
I know that usage in English. I also know "handy" as in "useful". But, as i said, in German it is a noun meaning cellphone.
What really grinds my gears are the cognates that mean opposite things.
Off the top of my head, in Romanian condescending (condescendent) means respectful/nice, pathetic (patetic) means enthusiastic/passionate and infatuated (infatuat) means narcissistic/self-absorbed.
Missing words are one that annoys me a lot. In french we have "inconvénient" that means an inconvenience, but there is no adjective for convenient or inconvenient. You can say "it's an inconvenience" instead of "it's inconvenient", so that's fine, but you can never really say "it's convenient", you can only say it's practical or timely... that's a really useful expression that we just don't have.
On October 19 2020 04:03 Simberto wrote: Strangely enough, that seems to be happening in a lot of languages. German does the same. The two examples i can immediately come up with are "Handy" and the wonderful word from the gaming scene, "damage dealer". Now, a damage dealer is clearly someone who does damage. In the english speaking gaming community, these are simply called dps. For inexplicable reasons, they are called "damage dealers" in the german speaking gaming community. And because this is a long word, it is abbreviated to "dd". And multiple of those are "dds".
With regards to the word "handy", i have no fucking idea where this word comes from. As far as i know, it only exists in German. It means cellphone.
People use the word Handy here in Canada if someone is good at fixing a lot of different things, and if they do it for work they would be a Handyman.
I know that usage in English. I also know "handy" as in "useful". But, as i said, in German it is a noun meaning cellphone.
Either it comes from "hand" or because a cellphone is a very practical thing, therefore "handy"
The damage dealer thing is IMO pretty international and was always DD/ tank / heal trinity. DPS was always just used for damage meters / comparability. A new thing I learned recently was "DJ" for dungeon (comes from the French speaking players I think). I always used "Ini" for instanced content before
On October 19 2020 06:15 Nebuchad wrote: Missing words are one that annoys me a lot. In french we have "inconvénient" that means an inconvenience, but there is no adjective for convenient or inconvenient. You can say "it's an inconvenience" instead of "it's inconvenient", so that's fine, but you can never really say "it's convenient", you can only say it's practical or timely... that's a really useful expression that we just don't have.
Yeah, my logical 8yo mind invented words that do not exist... You may know of "être débraillé", which a mother uses often when her child has the shirt half-out of the pants etc... But surprinsigly, "se rebrailler" does not exist. (préfix dé- means it's undone, re mean you do it again).
For inconvénient, you cannot really use it in the same type of sentences as in English since it's a noun in French, it's... inconvenient.
Btw what is going on in France in regard to the attack on that teacher, it somehow seems to have gone from a domestic terror issue to a global culture war and shitposting contest. Does Macron really have a plan for some sort of long-term deradicalisation because at this point it just seems like scoring political points with tweets.
On October 29 2020 10:48 Nyxisto wrote: Btw what is going on in France in regard to the attack on that teacher, it somehow seems to have gone from a domestic terror issue to a global culture war and shitposting contest. Does Macron really have a plan for some sort of long-term deradicalisation because at this point it just seems like scoring political points with tweets.
There appears to be a lot of targeting of the left, with terms like "islamoleftism" that were reserved to the far right corners until recently and are now used openly by several people in Macron's admin. It is similar to what cultural marxism does for America, and it implicates entire sociological fields, intersectionality, feminism, all of this is there to help the islamists. Some figures of the media going with it too.
There are echoes of the traditional neoliberal strategy of weakening the left as much as possible in order to then be the only realistic alternative to the far right, so I can't say I'm personally surprised by this strategical approach. I don't know that it's going to be as effective as they want, though. I might be naive but it seems a bit too silly to really be taken seriously in France.
On top of that, if it's effective, it would lead voters to go for Marine Le Pen rather than Macron, which seems counterproductive too? I don't really know how they plan for this to work.
EPT
