I discovered yesterday that French equivalents of ‘to go shopping’ or ‘to do the shopping’ are faire des courses or faire les commissions, which also mean ‘to run errands’. These expressions were new to me because when in French I’ve either stayed with families or in hotels and have never had to do or talk about such activities.
According to Reverso (to go) shopping (for food/groceries) is (faire) les courses, but shopping as a leisure activity is le shopping. In English you might say, ‘I am doing the shopping’ = I am shopping for food/groceries, but ‘I love shopping’ might refer to the leisure aspect of the activity. Do you make this distinction?
Related expressions include:
- partir faire les magasins = to go on a shopping expedition/trip
- les courses alimentaires = food shopping
- liste des courses = shopping list
- achat en ligne = online shopping
- centre commercial = shopping arcade / precinct / centre / mall
- sac/panier à provisions = shopping bag/basket
- caddie (m) = shopping trolley / cart
- faire du lèche-vitrines = to go window shopping
- faire ses cadeaux de Noël = to do one’s Christmas shopping
One way to practise languages you’re learning is to use them to write shopping lists. I usually write mine in Welsh.
This is a message on postcard sent in by a visitor to Omniglot, who thinks the writing might be in Gujarati. Can anyone decipher it?
In French if you want to talk about movement in general you use bouger, but for moving house you use déménager. The other day a friend pointed out that the root of déménager is ménage (housework, housekeeping, household, married couple), as in ménage à trois, from the Old French manage, from manoir (manor, country house), from the Latin manere (manner, fashion, way).
Déménager can also mean to leave, get lost, clear out, to be crazy, and related words include:
- emménager = to move in (to a house)
- un deménageur = furniture mover
- un deménagement = removal, moving
- déménager à la cloche de bois = to sneak off in the middle of the night
- Ça déménage ! = It’s great/brilliant!
As well as déménager, there are a few other French words for movement:
- bouger, remuer = to move (general)
- évoluer = to move (events, politics)
- circuler = to move, circulate (traffic); move along (get out of the way)
- avancer = to move (vehicle), advance, move along/forward
- voyager = to move about (from place to place), travel
- se déplacer = to move about (in a room or house)
- s’éloigner, s’en aller = to move off
- se pousser = to move over
Sources: Reverso, french.about.com, Wiktionary
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
Yesterday a friend asked me about the origins of the words today and tomorrow, and whether the to- part of them was orginally the. You sometimes come across expressions like ‘on the morrow’, and words appear with hypens in older texts: to-day and to-morrow.
According to the OED, today comes from the Old English tó dæg – the dæg part means day and the tó part means “at/in/during (a time), or on (a day). Tomorrow comes from to morȝen or to morwen – the morrow part means morning.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, today comes from the Old English todæge or to dæge (on (the) day), and Tomorrow comes from the middle English to morewe, from the Old English to morgenne (on (the) morrow), with morgenne being the dative of morgen (morning). They were written as two words until 16th century, then hypenated until the early 20th century.
In German (der) Morgen means morning, and morgen means tomorrow, and tomorrow morning is morgen früh or morgen vormittag, not morgen Morgen!
In French the word for today, aujourd’hui, comes from the expression au jour d’hui (on the day of today) – hui comes from the Latin hŏdĭē (today), a contraction of hŏc diē (this day). The Italian word for today, oggi, comes from the same root, and the expression al giorno d’oggi (nowadays, these days, today) has the same structure as aujourd’hui, though hasn’t replaced oggi as aujourd’hui has replaced hui in French. The Spanish and Portuguese words for today, hoy and hoje, also come from the same root and are used without embellishment. The Romanian word for today, astăzi, comes from a different root though – the Latin ista die (that day).
Sources: Wiktionnaire, Wikizionario, Wikcionario, Wikcionário & Wikționar.
February 24th,2012
English,
Etymology,
French,
German,
Italian,
Language,
Latin,
Romanian,
Spanish,
Words and phrases |
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I came across an interesting article about the relative importance of Mandarin and English in South East Asia today. It talks about children from Malaysia being sent to school in Singapore because their parents want them to be fluent in English – schools in Malaysia teach in Malay, while those in Singapore teach in English. The parents believe that the standard of English used in Malaysia has declined significantly since the 1980s, when Malay had become the main language used in Malay schools, and they think the fluency in English is important for the children’s future.
Meanwhile in Singapore Mandarin is becoming increasingly important as more and more business is done with China. However English remains an important language. The article suggests that while both Mandarin and English are useful, English is a dominant position in terms of culture (music, movies, etc).
In Vietnam there is apparently a resistance to learning Mandarin and many people prefer to learn English and do business with the USA.
Here’s a recording of a story in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it was spoken?
A friend asked me to investigate the expression more haste, less speed as it doesn’t seem to make sense. I’ve always interpreted as meaning you should do something more hastily and less quickly, which seems illogical to me.
The OED defines haste as:
1. Urgency or impetuosity of movement resulting in or tending to swiftness or rapidity; quickness, speed, expedition (properly of voluntary action).
2. Such quickness of action as excludes due consideration or reflection; hurry, precipitancy, want of deliberation, rashness.
The primary meaning of speed is given as:
Quickness in moving or making progress from one place to another, usually as the result of special exertion; celerity, swiftness; also, power or rate of progress.
So both words are related to swiftness, but haste can also indicate imeptuousness. There are a number of other meanings of speed though, which are now obsolete:
1. abundance; 2. power, might; 3. Success, prosperity, good fortune; profit, advancement, furtherance.
I suspect that the speed part of ‘more haste, less speed’ might be using speed in the sense of success, good fortune, etc. That would make more sense.
Then again, maybe the saying means that if you doing something hastily, you will also do it more slowly. So maybe it’s encouraging you to slow down, take your time and do it better.
How do you interpret this expression? Do you know any simliar ones?
I went to two talks by David Crystal at Bangor University yesterday – one was entitled “By Hook or by Crook” and the other was on Shakespeare’s English, focusing particularly on original pronunciation (OP) – a reconstruction of the way people spoke in Shakepeare’s day. Both talks were fascinating and full of information and anecdotes.
In the first David explained how he finds interesting linguistics tidbits wherever he goes, and that when he’s at a loose end, he’ll go wandering in search of them. For example, on a visit to Stratford-upon-Avon, he also went to Snitterfield, a small village nearby where Shakepeare’s grandfather lived. He discovered that the snitter in Snitterfield comes from snyten, an old word for snipe, from the Old English sníte. So he wondered whether there were any snipe around and asked a local, who said that he’d seen a wisp of snipe recently.
The word wisp caught David’s attention, and this set him thinking about where collective nouns like this come from. He discovered that the first known appearance in writing of a lot of them is in lists compiled in monastries in the medieval period. He thought that the monks might have come up with some of these collective nouns as a game – the sort of thing that still happens.
As he was describing some of the linguistic tangents he pursues, I realised that I often do something similar and write about them here. Although I haven’t written any books yet – David has written over 100.
The second talk gave examples of how some passages in Shakespeare work better in OP. Some rhymes and jokes, for example, only work in OP. He gave lots of examples, which I don’t remember, unfortunately.
I’ve noticed in novels and other things in American English that I’ve read recently that people talk about ‘visiting with’ friends or other people, in the sense of spending time with them. In British English you might visit a place with a friend, but you don’t usually visit with a friend in the American sense.
I just put “visit with” into Google.co.uk and the first site in the results is one entitled “Places To Visit With The Family UK”. In Google.com though, one of the first results is a story about someone who can “visit with his grandchildren while out on bail”. I would use see in place of visit with in this context.
To me at least, going to visit somewhere or someone sounds like a relatively formal activity – you might visit someone in hospital or prison, or visit relatives, especially if they live quite a way away, but you would go to see your friends.
In American (or other flavours of) English is there a differences in meaning between going to visit someone and visiting with someone?
Do other languages distinguish different types of visit?
