{"id":24987,"date":"2016-10-25T05:30:11","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T03:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=24987"},"modified":"2016-10-22T00:28:40","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T22:28:40","slug":"mea-culpa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/mea-culpa\/","title":{"rendered":"Mea culpa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did you catch it? My mistake last week<\/a>? Non?<\/strong> Well, I’m glad! But I’m also sorry if I misled anyone. Halloween of course is le 31 octobre<\/strong> (October 31) which is still a week away! I was either so excited for\u00a0les d\u00e9guisements et les bonbons<\/strong> (costumes and candy) or I was simply not paying attention to the calendar! I’ll let you decide.<\/p>\n

\"Gisant

Gisant de Jean sans Peur (funeral sculpture of John the Fearless) ^<\/p><\/div>In any case, this extra week until Halloween gives me a perfect opportunity to continue the frightful fun.<\/p>\n

First, how did you do with the song last week? Were you able to make out the characters attending the bal masqu\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(the costume party) ? The first two should be easy even with the French pronunciation: Superman and Spiderman. From there it gets a little trickier; let’s break it down:<\/p>\n

\"Columbine

Colombine et Arlequin^^<\/p><\/div>Jos\u00e9phine (la femme de Napoleon <\/strong>\/ the wife of Napoleon<\/em>)
\nColombine (Colombine and Arlequin (Harlequin)<\/em>, <\/em>are characters from an early form of Italian theater<\/a> where masked actors played roles representative of common stock characters of the day like the noble, the peasant, the maid, and the clown )
\nDracula (le vampire <\/strong>\/ vampire)
\nD’Artagnan (he of three Musketeers fame)
\nCendrillon (is the French name for Cinderlla)
\nJules C\u00e9sar (eternal frenemy* of our friends Asterix and Obelix<\/a>)
\nArlequin (Harlequin)
\nNapol\u00e9on (Napoleon)
\nB\u00e9cassine (B\u00e9cassine est une personnage de BD c\u00e9l\u00e8bre <\/strong>\/ a famous comic book character<\/em> from the Bretagne<\/a><\/strong> \/ Brittany <\/em>region, first appearing in the early 1900s and still popping up from time to time today. The French singer Chantal Goya had a hit in the early 1980s that you can view here to see B\u00e9cassine in action<\/a>.)
\nCasanova (the famous seducer of woman)
\nMarylin (one assumes Monroe, but this one is not obvious from the lyrics)<\/p>\n

All the talk of fear got me wondering about the difference between the French words: la peur, l’angoisse, et la frayeur**. <\/strong>Like their English counterparts – fear, anxiety\/dread, and fright – the differences between these words can be subtle. This great quote from Freud in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle <\/em>(1920) sums it up nicely I think:
\n

On consid\u00e8re g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement les mots frayeur, peur, angoisse comme des synonymes.<\/strong>
\nOne generally considers the words fright, fear, and anxiety as synonyms.<\/em>
\nEn quoi on a tort***, car rien n’est plus facile que de les diff\u00e9\u00adrencier, lorsqu’on les consid\u00e8re dans leurs rapports avec un danger.<\/strong>
\nThat is a mistake, for nothing is easier than to tell them apart when you consider them in relation to a danger.<\/em>
\nL’angoisse est un \u00e9tat**** qu’on peut caract\u00e9riser comme un \u00e9tat d’at\u00adtente de danger, de pr\u00e9paration au danger, connu ou inconnu ;<\/strong>
\nAnxiety is a state (of being) that can be characterized as a state of awaiting danger, of preparation for danger, known or unknown;<\/em>
\nla peur sup\u00adpose un objet d\u00e9termin\u00e9 en pr\u00e9sence duquel on \u00e9prouve ce sentiment;<\/strong>
\nfear presupposes a specific object in the presence of which one experiences the feeling;<\/em>
\nquant \u00e0 la frayeur, elle repr\u00e9\u00adsente un \u00e9tat que provoque un danger actuel, auquel on n’\u00e9tait pas pr\u00e9par\u00e9 : ce qui la caract\u00e9rise principalement, c’est la surprise.<\/strong>
\nas for fright, it represents a state brought on by a real and present danger, for which one was not prepared: the principal characteristic of a fright is the surprise.<\/em><\/div><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* French doesn’t have a word for ‘frenemy’. The nearest equivalents I can find are “meilleur ennemi<\/em>” and “faux ami<\/em>” which seem to sit – meaning “best enemy” and “false friend” respectively – on either side of the more convivial “frenemy” which means more of “someone you love to hate” or “that you despise but with grudging respect”.<\/p>\n

** You can add ‘la frousse’<\/em> to the list too, if you like. ‘avoir la frousse’ <\/em>is a common familiar expression that means essentially the same as ‘avoir peur’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

*** The exprssion ‘avoir tort’<\/em> means ‘to be wrong’ as in ‘Pierre a tort. Paris n’est pas plus grande que New York.<\/em>‘ (Peter is wrong. Paris is not bigger than New York.)<\/p>\n

**** Like in English, ‘\u00e9tat’ <\/em>(state) can refer to an actual state (like New Hampshire or California), to an emotional state (like fear), and to the condition of a thing (‘l\u2019\u00e9tat de la voiture’ \/ <\/em>‘the condition of the car’ . . . Est-elle neuve? Vieille? Propre? Sale? \/ <\/em>Is it new? Old? Clean? Dirty?)<\/p>\n

Photo credits<\/p>\n

^By Claus de Werve, Jean de la Huerta (1443-1455) et Antoine Le Moiturier (1466-1470) (Yelkrokoyade) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

^^By Malene Thyssen (Own work) [GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/) or CC BY-SA 2.5 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Did you catch it? My mistake last week? Non? Well, I’m glad! But I’m also sorry if I misled anyone. Halloween of course is le 31 octobre (October 31) which is still a week away! I was either so excited for\u00a0les d\u00e9guisements et les bonbons (costumes and candy) or I was simply not paying attention…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":25012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,6,108,13],"tags":[2149,284,11656,346,357,432,12514],"class_list":["post-24987","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-grammar","category-music","category-vocabulary","tag-france","tag-free-french-lessons","tag-french-blog","tag-french-grammar","tag-french-language","tag-french-vocabulary","tag-vocabulaire-francais"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t