“la parole exportée”

photo credit: erix!

It is no mystery that we learn our language in childhood and become citizens of our countries thanks to the institution of primary schools. It is therefore essential to ensure that children are exposed to a diversity of situations, and taught about life as it is, and not just their immediate surroundings.

I am saddened to read this article. But I’m not overly surprised. Of course, a child doesn’t learn his or her mother tongue by reading dictionaries, but partly by looking up those secret words that they’ve never seen or heard before. The vast majority of children are now brought up in at least semi-urban conditions, and despite their teachers’ efforts are increasingly removed from Nature. It’s a pity that the adults who are in charge of producing such tools of knowledge as dictionaries are so keen to sever the flimsy links that still connect them to Nature. We are not being esoteric or excessively nostalgic here: some of the words culled are not just the catkin shown above, but also acorn, buttercup, heron, almond, marzipan, ash, beetroot, porpoise, gooseberry, raven, carnation, blackberry, tulip, porridge, etc. Was blackberry replaced by its capitalized version?

The author’s argument has to do with the important link between language and imagination. But there are ‘down-to-earth’ implications too. We know that science teachers are also having a hard time maintaining children’s interest in and curiosity for life sciences.

To me, the future looks pretty grim and rather puzzling: At a time when so much is made of environmental protection and conservation, how are our children and grand-children to understand anything about it, and name the components of that environment, if it is turned into a remote, undescribable concept instead of remaining part of their reality, if only in imagination?

As I was wandering around Gare de l’Est taking photos today, my eye was drawn to this sign… what can this mean?

Usually, when a new place is going to open, the sign reads:

SOON! a new restaurant will open here!

Or something to that effect, something full of optimism, in order to entice you to come back and test it. Please come back, we’ll be here, no matter what.

Not this one:

The word “prévisible” (foreseeable or maybe better still, expected) conjures up all sorts of question marks:

A restaurant may open in this location this winter provided that:

• We get the location (they seemed to have it)
• We don’t get bankrupt (difficult to believe with this company, but given the economic context, who knows?)
• Work finishes on time (it looked pretty well advanced to me, the furniture was there)
• We don’t change our minds (for whatever reason)
• We don’t have to postpone it till Spring, Summer…
• and so on…

Such a cautious announcement is unusual. Or is it a new advertising style? Who knows?

photo credit: J.P. Esperança

About a year ago – already! – I posted about the Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus, to be found here: http://www.visualthesaurus.com/.

I’m not a frequent user of thesauri myself, although upon Joanna Young’s advice at Confident Writing, I did get the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, which I promise will not sit on my shelves picking up the dust. But I like the Visual Thesaurus for at least one feature, the Word of the Day, which I receive by e-mail.

Due to e-mail overload (and work overload) I don’t have the time to read every definition every day, but I check every word that I don’t know.

Many English words are derived from Latin or Greek. But even more interesting are French loaners: among recent deliveries were ‘de rigueur’, ‘chaine longue’, ‘galosh’, ‘mise en scène’, ‘outré’, ‘déjà vu’, ‘vol-au-vent’, and plenty more.  Believe it or not, I even check those, because when borrowing a word, foreigners have this tendency sometimes to provide it with a slightly or a totally different meaning.

Every person having their quirks and idiosyncrasies, I find great pleasure in using the phrase ‘raison d’être’ whenever I can. I love the sound of it, and the ‘foreign-ness’ of it in English. You could say I can be a bit of a snob!

French is obviously not the only language that provides loaners to the English language, but as every historian of languages will tell you, many French words have crept into the English language over the centuries. A historical truth that should come as a solace to those on this (European) side of the Atlantic who are endlessly complaining that the French language is becoming contaminated by too many English words.

It’s a fact that languages seem to have lives of their own, beyond any attempts made at protecting them from foreign (and therefore bad) interference. Even though translators have a duty to maintain high linguistic standards, there is no denying that this is very much context-dependent: at a recent conference, I interpreted a presentation made by a French expert about the Internet, communications, etc. Apart from the little words ‘le’, ‘la’, ‘les’, that were in French, the rest of his speech was a sea of English nouns and verbs. He did make an effort at times to use the ‘proper’ French words, but you could tell that this was a real effort. And there was no haughtiness about it. He was simply speaking his usual language: a mixture of French and English.

Interpreting at IT conferences is very interesting in this respect, as you witness the whole spectrum of people’s backgrounds, involvement in state-of-the-art technology, early adopters or followers, in the language they use. So, what can you do about it? Should we turn into ayatollahs of languages, or go with the tide?