#hello the normans!!! you made your language the anglo-saxons' problem! chickens coming home to roost et cetera!!!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

coquelicoq · 2 years ago

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started on the french dictionary and so far i've only read the front matter and three pages of the A's and i'm already having so much fun. highlights:

the irony of the preface, which basically says, "this is an abridged edition. isn't that neat?", being at least three times longer than necessary

the list of 16 different symbols and their uses in distinguishing senses and introducing distinct usages within the same definition. because that seems like a large number of symbols, i have given myself permission not to comprehend the differences between any of them and just vibe

from the list of abbreviations:

"abusivt: abusivement (emploi très critiquable, parfois faux sens ou solécisme)" 😒 @ french lexicographers: have you heard the good news (of linguistic descriptivism)?

"recomm.: recommandation (dans recomm. off. « recommandation officielle » ; terme conforme à la loi française de 1994 sur la langue)" okay actually @ all of france: get well soon

"abdomen [-ɛn]" do you mean to tell me this vowel isn't nasalized??? sick. twisted. rebellious. can't believe la loi française de 1994 sur la langue has nothing to say about this !

"aber [abɛʀ]" this dictionary tells me when to pronounce the r in words ending in -er. my holy grail. crying and kissing its feet in gratitude

every time the definition includes a word i don't know i can just look that word up elsewhere in the same book i am currently holding!!!!

"abortif, ive adj. Qui fait avorter." told you b and v were related

"abreuver v. tr. 1. Faire boire abondamment (un animal)." this makes it sound like you're force-feeding animals water...on the previous page abondance is defined as "Grande quantité (supérieure aux besoins)" so like i'm getting the sense that you're leading a horse to water and not only making it drink but not letting it leave until it's drunk every last drop in the trough lol

"abribus [-bys] n. m. (nom déposé) Arrêt d'autobus équipé d'un abri" ok cute.

the example it gives for abruti is "Espèce d'abruti !" folks it don't get any frencher than that.

#so conflicted about france's attitude toward anglicisms in particular. like on the one hand i get it and if we were talking about any other #language i'd be like yeah the global supremacy of english & its overwriting and erasure of other languages is a big problem #but this is FRENCH. french! aka the source of the majority of the english lexicon!!!!#hello the normans!!! you made your language the anglo-saxons' problem! chickens coming home to roost et cetera!!!!#if you wanted us to keep our language to ourselves...little late for that dontcha think. ya filthy hypocrites #anyway i don't think the 1994 law says anything about pronunciation (it might idk but it's definitely not the focus)#but i just like razzing the french powers that be over...basically anything i can think of #oh you want me to pronounce this word-final n? that's rich coming from YOU #it just seems so dumb from the outside to be so focused on trying to preserve forever the workings of a highly complicated system #that's not even internally consistent at any kind of layperson-accessible scale #like you think modern french is this perfect specimen when in fact it is a LANGUAGE created by HUMANS and therefore riddled with #idiosyncrasies and vestigial remains of diachronic processes AND THAT IS WHAT MAKES IT SO BEAUTIFUL!!!!!#and that means! it must be allowed to continue to evolve! not to even mention! it's going to evolve whether you want it to or not!#because that's its nature! that's how it works! that's how humans work! that's what we need from it and it is by us & of us & for us!!#french #lexicography #lecture du dico #prescriptivism #my posts #i know i said i was going to wait to read the dictionary until after i read all my other books but i was too excited to wait #and i told a friend about my plan and after the requisite 'yeah that sounds like something you would do you kooky broad'#she was like maybe you should read one letter at a time. like in between books or something. so you don't get bored #and i thought that was pretty smart. so i've started the A's. i'm not in between books i just wanted to start immediately #the problem is this dictionary is only 900 pages long so already i'm going psh. 900 pages? i could knock that out in three months #reading only 10 pages a day. it took me longer than that to read the count of monte-cristo #oh the other part i read today was the appendix on pronunciation. which didn't tell me anything i didn't already know (mostly that #there are still a bunch of vowels i can't pronounce lol) but was still fun to read out loud because of all the times i could be like #well i KNOW i'm not pronouncing that right. it says so right here.#like when it says ne confondez pas pâte et patte ! and i'm like okay well i pronounce them the same. so. sorry #my mouth only makes one of those sounds. and they sound identical to me. my b my b

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