CHAT: Perceiving French (was Re: Introducing Paul Burgess

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> "exp=E9rience" is French too ;))) .
But doesn't it mean also "experiment", which would also fit here?

> "chaque deuxi=E8me mot". I always find it strange that foreigners abuse the
> word "second". In French it means "second and last", and thus normally can only
> be applied when you refer to two entities only.
Interestingly, "other" (one of whose meanings is the exact equivalent of
Fr. "second") used to be the general ordinal for 2 in English; when
we borrowed "second" as the general ordinal, "other" was relegated to
situations where there are only two.

Furthermore, your remarks about "foreigners" do not apply solely to
non-francophone foreigners; in Quebec, I am told, an "article d'occasion"
is called "un article de seconde main" (calquing English "second-hand")!

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
"In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."
        --Brian K. Reid

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