What makes English English and French French?

(This text will be best understood if you know French at least a little).

English vs French:

1/ Same letters, different sounds vs same sounds, different letters.
English: tough, bough, cough, dough, hiccough, thorough, slough, through.
/t'ʌf/ /b'aʊ/ /k'ɔːf/ /d'oʊ/ /h'ɪkʌp/ /θ'ʌrə/ /sl'ʌf/ /θɹuː/
French: Ô, oh, ho, au, eau, haut, os.
/o/ /o/ /o/ /o/ /o/ /o/ /o/

2/ Unclear metaphor vs unclear abstract description.
English: soft shoulder (road sign)
French: accotements non stabilisés

3/ Same word, various roles, various ideas vs same word, same role, various ideas.
English: Here is my bicycle (noun). Bicycle trip (adjective). He wants to bicycle (verb).
French: Voici mon vélo (noun). Sortie à vélo (noun). Il veut aller à vélo (noun).

4/ Little inflexions, fixed word order vs many inflexions, more flexible word order
English: “Some blinding lights appeared” but not *“Appeared some blinding lights”.
French: « Des lumières aveuglantes sont apparues » but also « Sont apparues des lumières aveuglantes » or « D'aveuglantes lumières sont apparues » or « Sont apparues d'aveuglantes lumières ».

5/ Different word positions, different meanings vs different word positions, same meaning.
English: “A characteristic noble” is not “A noble characteristic”
French: « Une noble caractéristique » is only subtly different in meaning from « Une caractéristique noble » as the noun is « caractéristique » in both sentence.

6/ Stress-based topic marking vs repetition-based topic marking
English: *This* is good.
French: Ça, c'est bien.

7/ Noun modifier + noun vs imperative verb + noun
English: toothpick, lampshade, nutcracker, snowplow, hand towel, earwig, coat hanger, coin purse, spokesperson, hair band, pencil sharpener, dish washer
French: cure-dents, abat-jour, casse-noix, chasse-neige, essuie-main, perce-oreille, portemanteau, porte-monnaie, porte-parole, serre-tête, taille-crayon, lave-vaisselle

8/ ø vs « or »
English: “All men are mortal. ø Socrates is a man” (no word for it)
French: « Tous les hommes sont mortels *or* Socrate est un homme ». I have never heard of a satisfactory translation for this convenient little word that introduces the conclusive fact in a demonstration.



Credits to Claude Piron for some of the examples.

<< *or*. I have never heard of a satisfactory translation for this convenient little word that introduces the conclusive fact in a demonstration. >>

- This is very true.
Depending on the context, "or" might be rended with "meanwhile", "furthermore", "as a matter of fact", "By the way I would like to submit to your attention the fact that" etc, but AFAIK the is nothing like French "or" in any other language.

A good translation of "or" is "and yet".

Blib: «A good translation of "or" is "and yet".»



Or is it? With "and yet" a contradiction to a previous statement is usually introduced — correct me if I'm wrong. Such is one, but not the only function of French "or". Consider the following:

- « Certaines erreurs de jugement sont difficilement supportables quand leur objet vous sourit avec une expression d'accueil sans réserve. Or Berl me souriait ainsi ».
(Some misjudgements are difficult to bear when their object smiles at you in wholehearted welcome. Such, as it happens, is the way Berl used to smile at me)

- « Or quant à ce souvenir... »
(Now, back to the topic of this memory...)

- « Tous les hommes sont mortels. Or Socrate est un homme ».
This one I just can't render. The list of unsatisfactory translations includes: “All men are mortal. Socrates, as it happens, is a man”, “All men are mortal. That's exactly what Socrates is: a man”. Distant or over-the-top as they are, these aproximations partly reflect the sense of relevance, of logical relationship between the two statements that "or" conveys.


Many more nuances exist, as is exemplified by the context-dependent translations offered by Parisien. But it's getting late...

<< A good translation of "or" is "and yet". >>

-- In some cases, yes. But only in some cases...

Generally speaking, "or" is used to draw a separation line between two originally unrelated ideas, between two statements that are logically made independently from each other — for instance (just an example among countless others) the difference between objective and subjective :

"Lucie croyait être belle. Or, elle se trompait": in this case "and yet" ("she was wrong") does fine.

"Lucie croyait être belle. Or, c'était vrai": here, "indeed" or "actually" would better translate that elusive "or".

Re: the above comments on "or" in French.

This is sometimes best rendered as "well" or "now" in English.

And BTW, it's very similar to the word "ora" in Portuguese.

regards

Every language has words whose semantic perimeter is hardly matched in other languages, even the most similar ones.

Fr. "or" is a good example, but you also may think of German "eben", "schlechthin".
Without forgetting the extraordinary Italian "magari", best translated in German with "gegebenfalls", but that has no matching concept in French or English.

This makes translation jobs so exciting.