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CHAT: Perceiving French (was Re: Introducing Paul Burgess

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Thursday, March 13, 2003, 14:30
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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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>