“Harumphingly” & other English words I learned recently

New English words I learned recently. Learning a language is a continuous experience. Everyday I’m surprised! Like:

Insofar sounds very formal, right? I’d be happy to find a moment in a conversation when I could use it, alone or with “insofar as”, which in French is “dans la mesure de”.

Lackadaisical is apathetic but sound so silly, right? I DO wonder what is the color of it. Is it casual or nonchalant, is it lazy? Blithe, blasé? Can lackadaisical be voluntary, sarcastic? Cool?

Trespass is a common word but I really can remember it, each time I have to check.

Call time is maybe “ladies and gentlement we close the store!”, but it’s also “to say stop”, right? To announce the end.

Onus as a law word, but also obligation, responsability. Is it common?

Make do for “be content with what is available”. In French we say “faire avec” : to make with.

To doll up, oh I love this one so much! We have great verbs for this one. Bichonner is when you doll up a friend, you help her. Se pomponner is based on the noun “pompon” (yes the decorative fluffy ball). It’s something like “to pompon myself”.

Tryingness (The state or condition of being trying (arduous, difficult to endure) sounds difficult to use.

To scatter, disperser, éparpiller, with all the rest : across, on, over.

Harumphingly was amazing to discover. Harumph is maybe the way French say “Pfff”. And I wonder if I could say I’m an harumpher.

Snug, I wonder how come it could mean “warm cumfortable” AND “tight-fitting”. So “a dress fits very snug” can be something to say? To fit snugly? I love the “form fitting” color of it though. We say “épouser à merveille” for this marvellous dress : “It spouses you at marvel”, somthing like that.

So there’s that gives “alors voilà” (so there). Urban Dic says : “A phrase said after describing something strange, awkward, ironic, hilarious, crazy, or otherwise profound.” Good!

To go halfsies.

Thanks for reading!

Sea/Snow/Sky and their French friends

I opened a book about Proust and found this : “Le temps n’est pas passé sur le hall du Grand Hôtel de Cabourg au bout duquel on voit, par la porte-fenêtre, la mer”.

“Time has not passed on the hall of the Grand Hotel of Cabourg after which one sees, through the French door, the sea”.

Obviously, the author made a tracking shot for the eye, from the hall to the large window then the sea…

In French, “la mer” arrives deliciously at the end of the phrase, opening it to the vast sky. As you know, words have a genre in French, the sea is a she…

I said to myself that “la mer” sounds opened and grand and clear, a bit unlike “the sea”, which brakes a lot with its “S” – “Sea” sounds to me like a solid string.

Then I thought about the snow. Snow sounds GREAT for fallen, thick snow. But when it flies from the sky in magic light meandering flakes, I prefer the French one : La neige !

“Sky” is great for the sky. It sounds big and clear. The French word is “le ciel“… it’s more pale…

Pépite is greater than nugget. L’Or is brighter than gold. But wood is good, it’s sounds like wood. We say “bois“, alright. Some other words are cool in both languages : l’acier (steel), both are solid and almost blazing, right?

 

Of course, this means nothing. I touch here the infinite, fractal and subtle differences between your native language and the learned one. I can get the words, but I can’t really get their radioactivity, or tiny ones, through movies and conversations.

What do I see on this picture? Curtains/Rideaux. Plates/Assiettes. Clouds/Nuages. Candles/Bougies.

Candle makes me see the flame. Bougie makes me feel the wax. Ahhh it’s complicated!!

 

Thanks for reading!

(and sorry for my bad English)

 

Cloche – French idioms with “bell”

Here are a few bell French idioms :

Déménager à la cloche de bois (“to move at the wooden bell”) is to go out without paying. To do a moonlight flit.

Etre sous cloche (“to be under a bell”) is to be preserved, protected, with a negative sound to it. To be put under a cover.

Quelle cloche ! (“what a bell !”) : what a numpty, what an idiot!

Se taper la cloche (“to help myself with the bell”) is to have a real feast.

Avoir un autre son de cloche (“to have another bell sound”) is to get another story, another version of it.

Se faire sonner les cloches (“to have my bells rung”) is to get a good telling off.

 

So a cloche is a bell, but also an idiot (as a name and an adjective), and also a dome (a bell cover).

A bell tower is named “un clocher” (say : “closhey”), which is often used to say a village. If someone is attached to his village, il est attaché à son clocher (his bell tower).

The verb “clocher” (it could be “to bell”) means it’s not quite right. Il y a quelque chose qui cloche : something is wrong.

Un clochard is a tramp, a homeless person.

Avoir un esprit de clocher (“to have a bell tower spirit”) is when you want to stay with the opinions of a group.

 

Voilà ! Have fun!

Words : Friends/Enemies?

Words : Friends/Enemies? This subject covers many disciplines and would need a few books to study, so, let’s say it’s a pack of seeds for a conversation.

We all meet this idea that words are reductive. They are put on things like stickers, making them simpler than they are.

It’s this idea that when you “labeled” at thing, it become true, then it’s fixed, and cages are not far.

It happens all the time, even on the lowest levels, like “Is this good or bad?”. It’s much more complicated, probably…

Words prevent things and events to be seen as complex, changing, moving and trying.

When you learn another language, you keep noticing weird things, like the fact that a word in one language never completely fit a word in the other one. Each word is charged culturally, and I own a 400 pages book only on this subject!

Travail in French is not exactly Work or Labor (proof is you have two words where only languages have one – Arbeit, in German). Labor contains a part of suffering and difficulties, right? Etc…

Now let’s have fun with Frontière : Frontier, Border, Bounday. Oh well…

Knowing this, I wrote this article because…

I watched my cat, who was watching me. I was asking myself (like many of us) :

What does she think? – and what does she think, since she does not use words in her head?

 

Hmm we blog, we talk, we email, we text, we share our day at dinner time : words are huge. Our thoughts are made of words!

Then I went to this area : Words are friends. They are powerful and pleasant tools, and there’s nothing better in life that a good conversation on a balcony with your best friend you have (with a glass of wine, of course). Words become, then, vessels for intelligence, sparkling ideas : friendly tools we use as virtuosos. Time flies.

…knowing that they are tricky and labeling

Find your good partner, talk about this : “Are words our enemies or our friends?”.

I’ll ask Wittgenstein, waiting for you answer in the comments.

Thank you! Thanks for reading!

Vial & Stoop : Types of black holes in language

I’m French and I write in English – I make mistakes and I discover new words everyday.

When I read an article or a short story, I understand what happens, and I admit I don’t translate anymore.

But, well, I always meet new insects, which are really puzzling at times…

Today I met “Vial“. Never seen this word but I guessed. A little bottle. In French we call this “une fiole”, which I find funny. Same structure : vial/fiole. OK.

“Stoop” was trickier. First, it’s a noun AND a verb. A doorstep (“perron”, in French), and also “to bend”.

There, here am I questioning English Gods : why do you have to stoop, if you have to bend or even to bow?? Can stoop be replaced by to crouch or to squat?

Worse : as a metaphor or a figurative sense, to demean, to do something “below one’s status, standards, or morals”. “S’abaisser à”.

OK, but also to slant (to stoop a bottle of wine?) – then what is to lean? – to catch a prey for an eagle (“the bird stooped and seized a salmon” – un piqué), to submit (“stooped by death” or “this people does not stoop to Rome”) – even to degrade?

 

Thus, when you read “not your language”, you see holes. Little ones can be filled by contexts, other ones make you make a face, pick a dictionary, and go travel in language, in an awe, for twenty minutes. You should try French while I study the word “slew” (4 nouns, 7 verbs, pfff…).

 

At the end, I found : Stoop : “a vessel for holding liquids; a flagon”. Come on!

Hmmm. Fetch me a stoop of liquor, please. Two new words and I’m done. Back to bed. With my book!

Thanks for reading!

French Insults beginning with a “P”

French Insults beginning with a “P”? Why P? Why not?

Well, all letters are used for insults, as you can guess, but we French love the P ones. You just have to make it flap & whip, right?

 

• Porc ! (pig), for those who did dirty things. You have to insist on P, OKey?
• Peau de Vache ! (skin of a cow) for cow, or bitch (a spiteful person)
• Pignouf ! : dimwit, slob
• Plouc ! : rube
• Pouffiasse ! : floozy – this one is pretty mean and strong
• Pourriture ! (filth) : filthy so-and-so, louse

 

Some sounds vintage, like “pochard” (drunkard), or extra-mean, like “pute borgne” (blind whore)

 

We often add “espèce de” before one. It’s like when, in English, you say

• Ne touche pas à ça espèce de petit morveux !
• Don’t touch that you snotty-nosed little kid!

 

Thanks for reading!

More ? :

https://fr.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Cat%C3%A9gorie:Insultes_en_fran%C3%A7ais

 

 

When the pleasure is in the comparison

ONE

I just watched Seven Samurai (Japan, black & white, 1954), then The Magnificent Seven (1960).

It’s a big pleasure watching both, but each time it’s very different. Kurosawa’s movie looks very odd, because of the culture, the language and the well known Japanese actors’ intensity. The US one is much more easy and comfortable, with stars (Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner…).

But there’s a “side-pleasure” : you compare. The stories the paces, the ends, the bad guys, the fights…

TWO

Traveling! Tourists have many ways of being tourists : in a group, alone, moving around and visiting, or staying in one city (choose Paris, OK?) and walk “going whichever way the wind blows” (we say “le nez au vent” – nose in the wind).

It’s beautiful or not, deceiving or marvelous, you take pictures or you chat with your spouse. But you have to admit :

The pleasure, again, is in the comparisons game.

THREE

There’s a game I love : learning another language. It’s absolutely full of delights. Culturally. Translating. Discovering idioms. Trying to find out where translated words don’t really fit, match the other language. Finding similar words… or traitors (a library (bibliothèque) is NOT a librairie (bookstore) in France…).

It is, constantly, a game of comparisons.

FOUR

I strongly think that a big part of our inner life is linked to the world with the concept of Analogy. We endlessly get informations with our senses (about places, culture, and people, everything we meet) and then we braincompute them with what-we-already-know with analogy.

Then, we compare. Then, we decide.

This decision can be : run away, explore, smile, talk, anything.

OUTRO

Where else does it happen to you? Where could you trigger a “game of comparisons”? How is it an enrichment? Where is the effort? What about memories? Analogy with them?

Thanks for reading!

 

A Red Dress and other desires : Dispositif ou Agencement?

Well this is a conversation subject for drunk overthinking friends, let’s go :

Deleuze says that a woman doesn’t desire a red dress, but the whole arrangement she makes of it in her mind : a date, the dress, a man, a summer evening, a dance maybe, a dinner…

A little boy desires a baseball bat, but also a system of what could be around : friends, summer afternoons, running, winning…

The French word he uses for that is “agencement“, which I find translated as “arrangement“. But there’s a problem : “arrangement” is also a French word, therefore I feel a bit disappointed here. It’s colored : un arrangement is a way things are placed, but it’s also a deal.

Our “agencement” means arrangement, but more in a layout process.

A red dress for a date/a baseball bat can dance in an arrangement, a system made of many things (dancing, eating, man’s eyes, walking in a summer night street…), maybe we can consider it’s a layout, a deal? What about a new splendid bat?

My problem is the radioactivity of words. They are like bees here…

If a French arrangement is an English arrangement…
if a French agencement is also an English arrangement…

…how do I explain agencement to you? It’s an arrangement but it’s not a deal. It’s something you find already placed (by destiny, or another person?). We say that an appartment is perfectly “agencé” : it’s not about the furniture, but about the map, the drawing. This big window is on the sunny side, waow, great!

Agencement is about space. Things oriented and placed in space.

The red dress, and the bat, they are all imagined moving in a special space… This is desire!

It’s colored : things in space, how they are placed, a layout. Passive voice, maybe.

If we want to talk about something prepared, it’s more an arrangement (under the form of a deal), we call this un dispositif.

Dang! A new word! Dispositif is often translated by Apparatus, but it’s wrong. I think an apparatus, in English, is a thing, a device, a machine. It is, in French, but it’s also “the name we could make from the verb to dispose”. A metaphorical apparatus, in a way. Effectiveness is coloring it.

It’s not a disposal (which means a destruction, an elimination), though we say une disposition, in French (I’m sure it makes sense, right?). It’s a positioning, voilà : a placement.

Here we are : Agencement means Arrangement, but also a Positioning.

Not positioning each little part of the agencement : it’s clearly about positioning the whole system. Things “linked” (how) to each other.

Agencement is more like that : a map of how things are and play together. The purpose is to say “It’s there, it’s like that, it’s what we have, what was prepared”.

Dispositif is the same, but it sounds more like something decided, wanted. The purpose is to say “This is what we placed and how, to be effective”.

 

Mhh where’s the red dress, here?

Thanks for following & reading!

 

“Button monday with tuesday” and other French Daily Idioms

These are very common French idioms. Have fun!

• “Pas des masses” : not some masses (no much).
• “D’un trait (ou d’une traite)” : in a drop (in one go)
• “Rattraper le coup” : to catch the deal (patch it up)
• “C’était couru” : it was run (foregone conclusion)
• “C’est l’idée qu’on s’en fait” : it’s the idea that one makes (that’s the idea)
• “Boutonner lundi avec mardi” : to button monday with tuesday (button the wrong hole)
• “Avoir des atomes crochus” : to have hooked atoms (to have a lot in common)
• “Donner du fil à retordre à quelqu’un” : to give somebody some yarn to twist again (to give somebody a hard time)
• “Il y a anguille sous roche” : there’s eel under rock (there’s something fishy going on)
• “Faut c’qu’y faut” (pronounce “foskifo”) : must what must (we needed this). For example to warm up a coffee in a microwave you need at least one minute, faut c’qu’y faut.
• “Quand le chat n’est pas là les souris dansent” : when the cat’s away, mice… dance!

Have a nice day!

JP

Daily French idioms

I was good at school, I mean, with English lessons. But as an adult, as I began to… speak with people, apart from plenty of little mistakes I scattered everywhere and of course the usual lack of vocabulary, it was OK. But… not that OK : Idioms. These were hard.

Same when you learn French, I suppose. There are plenty of books about these, and some are really funny. In this article, I found things we say daily. The most common ones…

Pile-poil! : exactly, dead on time!

Et rebelote! : once more, and yet again, another run and all over again.

J’ai la dalle (I have the slab) means you’re starving.

Au pif (at the nose) or à vue de nez (at sight of the nose) : at the guess, around.

C’est n’importe quoi (that’s whatever) : that’s rubbish.

Il me prend la tête (He takes my head) means he drives you crazy. On French Tinder you’ll seek a relationship “sans prise de tête” (without head taking)!

J’en ai marre means I’m fed up. “Marre” means nothing, we just say it. Someone about to explode will simply scream : MARRE !

Je suis crevé (I’m flat) means you’re exhausted, of course.

Faire la grasse matinée (to make the fat morning) is to sleep in. We often cut it : “Ce matin, grasse mat !”.

Jeter un coup d’œil (to throw a stroke of eye) is to take a quick look.

Faire le pont (to make the bridge) is a French sport : it means you take off the day(s) between a day without work and the weekend, for example.

Occupe-toi de tes oignons (take care of your own onions), for mind your own business.

En faire tout un fromage (to make a whole cheese out of it) is to make a fuss (what the hell is a fuss??).

Je suis en train de manger (I am in the action of eating) is our common way to say your “Be + ing” -> I’m eating. We say “je suis en train de” one million times a day.

Je te tiens au courant (I hold you to the current) : I keep you up to date.

Oh la vache ! (Oh the cow!) means you’re impressed : Oh my God!

 

Bah, there’s a Wiki about these : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:French_idioms

• “Fleas & Cooks” : Some French Idioms explained
• French idioms to say “It was easy!”
• Do you have a cow? – “La rate au court bouillon” & a few other French idioms
• “A little bike in the coffee pot” : idioms about craziness

 

Le pochon et la chocolatine (OK French is a mess)

Don’t learn French, it’s… complicated. And there are so many letters we don’t pronounce, you’ll never get it!

For example, for “water”, we write “eau”, which are three vowels, right? But we pronounce it “o”. That’s right.

OK.

This little cake is like a croissant with another shape, with one or two chocolate bars in it, it’s delicious (try it with coffee) and very common. We call it “un pain au chocolat” (a bread with chocolate, which does NOT make sense).

But in the North of France (where I live), you HAVE to say “un PETIT pain au chocolat”, petit meaning “small” (and this is useless and stupid, I know).

We make fun of these silly French in the South West, using “une chocolatine”, hahaha. Just imagine that, they are wrong, that’s all. Right?

Some people in Belgium say “une couque”, and others in the east “un croissant au chocolat”. We roll eyes, that’s all.

OK.

For the sachet, we say sachet in the North. Some French say “un sac” (a bag), some others “une poche” (a pocket – which we find ridiculous) and others “un pochon” (that’s ridiculous, silly, come on, shut up).

Voilà. Visit us, it’s funny! And the food’s good.

Thanks for reading!

 

“Fleas & Cooks” : Some French Idioms explained

Secoue-toi les puces !

“Shake your fleas!”, we say to someone who needs to wake up and act. It’s hard to find the English one. “To give somebody hell” is too hard – for this we say : “Passer un savon” (to pass a soap). “Shake things up a bit!” is maybe OK.

 

Couper l’herbe sous le pied

“He cut the grass under my feet!”. Means… To pull the rug out from under, cut off the legs, deprive.

 

Prendre quelqu’un de vitesse

“To take someone with speed” : outpace (devancer), overtake (dépasser), get a jump on (prendre de l’avance, commencer plus tôt). You got the point…

 

Cuisine

• Cuisiner quelqu’un : “To cook someone” is our “To grill someone”. Well, it’s France!
• Un dur à cuire : “A hard to cook” is a hard nut, a tough cookie.
• Vas te faire cuire un œuf! : “Go cook an egg!” is our “Get lost!”, or “Go jump in a lake!” (do you use it really?).
• C’est du tout cuit : “It’s some all cooked” : It’s all done!

 

Fourmis

Fourmis are insects (ants), and we make plenty with them :

J’ai des fourmis dans les jambes (I have ants in my legs) : pins & needles…

Fourmiller : to swarm, to teem : to be present in large numbers, to move in large numbers. Interesting to say that we use this verb for flat, “on the ground” events, there’s “crawl” into it. Bees can not fourmiller in France! We have pulluler (to pullulate), grouiller (to bustle with, when it’s busy teeming), and we don’t have any “to mill around”. Lovely!

Un fourmillement (you could say “an antment”), therefore, is a welter, jumble, clutter, but also “the fact that one has pins and needles in one arm”, for example.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

French idioms to say “It was easy!”

I realized we have in France many ways to say “It’s easy!”? Piece of cake? Yes. Kind of.

Here are a few :

• C’est un jeu d’enfant : child’s game
• C’est du gâteau : it’s some cake
• C’est du nougat : …
• Facile comme bonjour : easy like hello
• Comme sur des roulettes : like on little wheels
• Les doigts dans le nez : fingers in the nose
• Comme qui rigole : like who laughs
• Bête comme chou : stupid like cabbage (more like “dead easy”)
• En moins de deux : in less than two (fast and easy)

 

I found English ones on the web – it’s a lark, a cinch, a snap, a pushover or easy as pie (which one do you use?) – but also other countries’. And they are funny!

• In Spain : it’s like sew and sing
• In Netherland : it’s a little egg
• In Belgium : it’s sliced bread
• In Romania : it’s a flower on ear

 

Awweeee!

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day!

 

(say/don’t say), and other ESLesque things

The French are always obsessed with words, finding “the right way” to say something. All my life I heard about spurts of fear in France, about how English was parasitizing a supposed “purity of French”. Most of people don’t worry that much, though.

People have common sense, and we smile when some “rules” tried to make us say “courriel” instead of email, or “baladeur” (could be “stroller”) instead of walkman. The French Academy has a web page about it, “dire/ne pas dire” (say/don’t say) :

http://www.academie-francaise.fr/dire-ne-pas-dire/neologismes-anglicismes

When I began to talk with Americans I was constantly sorry because I knew I was on a slippery ground with “the correct word”, and I have always been surprised by the way sweet people answered to me that it was OK, that they were understanding me, and I was told that American English was constantly swallowing and inventing new words. People are constantly coming to the USA, from the whole planet, with their mistakes, their accents, their words, their willing.

Learning a language has a reversible quality : it makes you think about your own language, your tongue (in French, the word langue means tongue and also language).

It’s better : it brings back some taste to your own language. For example with idioms :

• “A Well Seasoned French”, or how to be an ESL is a source of poetry
• “A little bike in the coffee pot” : idioms about craziness
• Do you have a cow? – “La rate au court bouillon” & a few other French idioms
• “Merde !” is not exactly your “Shit!”
• Good Old French Idioms about farting

 

And when there’s two words in English for one in French (coupable in French means guilty, but also culprit). Words’ sense don’t plug to each other well, they are charged in radioactivity. The last example I found is the French “Romanesque“.

At first, it means “novelistic” or “fictional”, but it also means “romantic”, it’s charged with events, chivalry, romance, life like in a movie, and a smile. All this in one!

Writing this blog in English is a constant source of fun, just for this reason (among others).

Thanks for reading!

Have a formidable day

JP

 

 

Roland Barthes quote : “The incapacity to name is a…

“The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance.”

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

 

Do you have a cow? – “La rate au court bouillon” & a few other French idioms

On va quand même pas se mettre la rate au court-bouillon!

It’s our way to say something like “Bahh we won’t get worked up/have a cow!”. It means in French : “We won’t put our spleen in the stock”. Yes the bodily organ in the broth…

Well obviously we won’t worry to much for this…

 

On n’est pas sortis de l’auberge

We have big problems to deal with, therefore “We’re not close to be out of the inn”.

Yeah, “We’re not out of the woods yet”…

 

A la Saint-Glinglin

Well, there’s no Saint Glinglin in France (or anywhere), therefore it means : “When pigs can fly”.

Never

 

Ça mange pas de pain

For “It can’t do any harm”, we say “It doesn’t eat any bread”. Makes sense?

You can always try…

 

La confiture aux cochons

To give jam to the pigs is our “To throw pearls before swine”. Yours is better, right?

It’s useless, lost energy

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Don’t learn French, it’s a mess – Part 4 : Letters you don’t say

You have in English a few letters “you don’t say”, like the K in knife. If French, if you try to speak what your read, you’re dead.

We love useless letters. AND we sprinkled all this with difficulties.

We love the final useless S, and you have to say Paree for Paris (BUT you have to say it for the city of Reims). I know…

Forget the P and the S in Temps (time), and don’t say the C in Tabac (tobacco). Haut (up) is pronunced “Ho”.

Imagine you have to say “I want” : Je veux. OK, you say “Je ve”, that’s all.

“A knot”? Un nœud – just say “Un ne”.

PFfffff…

“Monsieur” is worse, because… Oh forget it!

Other cities? You say all the letters of Brest, but forget the final S for Orléans or Calais, OK? Metz : says “mess”. Bruxelles? Well, some say Bruxel, some others Brussel. Rahhhh!

We don’t say the M in Automne, we don’t say the P in Compter (to count), we don’t say the D in Grand or in Dernier, or the G in Long. But we have to say it if it’s féminine : Dernière, “the feminine last”…

Yes, the genre. A car in feminine. Oh hell… that’s another article, right? 🙂

Thanks for reading! Bonne nuit !

English words I struggle with

Lawmakers concerned about Trump’s mental state summoned a Yale University psychiatry professor who said : “He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.”

I understand it’s something about collapsing, but I’m not sure. It’s knitting vocabulary, right? When do you say that about a human being? Isn’t this verb a bit positive too (like unravelling a mess)?

I guess that stiff upper lip sounds UK, but I’m not sure? Do you use it in America? Does it mean composure and phlegm like in France, or is it colored with coldness? In French, “le flegme Britannique” is a way to stay calm in all circumstances, even if your house is bombed. Thus there’s an (almost) invisible smile in it.

I ask, because stiff is tough and rigid, right?

Shanty is a mystery. Is it a ruin, a small ruin, a sweet ruin? Isn’t it a little house? Is a shanty town a poor ghetto, or can it be a quiet chalet village for tourists? It’s a sailor’s song too??!

What’s the difference between ruse, trick, cunning?

I have a big problem with reckon. First, it’s a false friend, because “reconnaître” in French is “to acknowledge”. OK, it means to estimate and to consider, but also to think. In this last meaning, does it sound Southern, or do you say it in Massachusets too? Reckon on, reckon with, reckon without : do you SAY them?

To bedight : do decorate. Is it vintage? Never said? Funny?

To diminish, to dwindle : What is the difference? To peter into… When do you use this??

Colloquial and familiar…

Ohhh…

Someone told me one day that to learn a language is an infinite process. Tonight I feel terribly weak.

 

Have a nice day!

Instagram : arrowvideo

“It wasn’t a mini-tornado, these don’t exist”

As the weather is a bit stormy these days in France, some trees fell, some houses lost their roof, and you read articles in the press telling about mini-tornadoes, with an explicit picture (you can google.fr “mini tornade”).

Immediately, weather specialists stand up in furia and learnedly explain to the community that “It wasn’t a mini-tornado, these don’t exist”. You see their point : categories, how “real” tornadoes appears, etc.

As if you’d slap your little boy in the face because he plays with cars. “It’s not a car, silly, it’s a toy car!“. Bim!

There is something to notice here, a pattern we should watch closely.

At first you want to say “Breathe, buddy”. This thing looks like a mini-tornado, so why can’t people use this word? What’s the point with definitions, here? Isn’t, like a “toy car”, mini itself enough to say “not real”? What if we obey? It’s not a mini tornado. So what?

 

It’s like a cristallization of our problems with words and reality.

1. Reality is real. Your house really lost its roof, even if mini-tornadoes “don’t exist”. Words are impartation, values – and names are conferred words.
2. When we think about someone, we have a bunch of labels all ready, and the person disappears under stickers. It is convenient, but wrong.
3. We often amalgamate the word and the reality, which deprives us from intelligence. A word closes the box, letting us stuck in stupid simplicity.
4. What else?

 

“Haecceity” is about Labels on your Forehead, from where I copy paste this :

Deleuze says we are more accurately longitudes and latitudes, a group of different speeds and slownesses, an individual, a singularity, constantly inventing grapes of possibilities, a play of forces or encounters.

 

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : jenamalone

 

 

 

An Ardent Patience & Depuzzlement Processes : seeds in Chronicle 29

People underestimate kids, right?

1. Someone hears a sound, and doesn’t understand what it is about
2. Then hears it’s a voice – of unknown words
3. Then hears it’s his language, but doesn’t understand the phrases
4. Then gets the phrases, but doesn’t get what one is talking about
5. Then understands and stands up

Les enfants aux ailes de rue – Street-Winged Children.

It’s time to repost this : Some French feel-good movies to choose from

Exploring mood? Google “Best Albums 2017”. I’m on it! What are yours?

In a conversation about things and events and ideas, do you focus on the sense and the logic, or on what you feel, the specifics? That’s a real question…

Oh, both, dear : naturally. How to weave/dance? Finding invariances in the particulars…

Serenity as a sign of love.

A good friend, or your child, has a problem, an hesitation. Needs you. You then develop a big bubble of attention, a gigantic ear. You focus & try to ask questions – useless or trappy or good questions. The purpose is to help him/her to give birth to a solution – to help the depuzzlement process…

À l’aurore, armés d’une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes.

In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.

Arthur Rimbaud

Here’s a secret (or a question) :

People have different burdens, different ways to be bereaved (“deprived of loved ones”).

I remember telling a friend, in a letter, more than twenty years ago, about my difficulties with my lover, who had lost her mother at the age of 11.

“Go to the cemetery, with her”, she answered. Ohhh…

There are many types of bereavement : death, cutting bonds because of serious misconduct, friendship loss, remoteness… It creates, I’m sure, a black veil, with a crow under. Who can pinch. It’s maybe our responsibility to come close to the veil and whisper : “Let’s go to the cemetery”.

Talking about a dark past, wrong choices from people you loved, or the loss of a mother. Holding up (a little) the veil. See if there’s a sail under, ready to inflate and breathe. Or not.

Who will be the one who says : “Let’s talk about the past”? What can it bring? What if the answer is “No, never”?

Forgetting the past to move forward is like to erase maps and the knowledge on the maps.

My friend was a teacher for kids “with big problems”. She wrote me a long letter about these children who became worried – thus violent – when they began to understand that a special freedom comes from… learning. Then, she said, they go on, and calm down.

Interesting situation, when you want the balance to change but the other one doesn’t want the balance to change.

Funnier : you want to change something, but the other one wants to change another thing. Here you are both of you pushing on different doors…

Dervishes

Dervishes

 

Thanks for reading!