From WOTD {discussion thread: On the evolution of languages}

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 1:32 pm

Ghost wrote:Word of the Day Thursday December 21, 2006

malaise \muh-LAYZ; -LEZ\, noun: 1. A vague feeling of discomfort in the body, as at the onset of illness. 2. A general feeling of depression or unease.

The first sign of illness is a malaise no worse than influenza.
-- Steve Jones, Darwin's Ghost

Beauty is a basic pleasure. Try to imagine that you have become immune to beauty. Chances are, you would consider yourself unwell -- sunk in a physical, spiritual, or emotional malaise.
-- Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest

He fell in love with Modotti's sad beauty and her indecipherable character, and he saw in her the same vague subtle malaise that made him feel like a stranger to life.
-- Pino Cacucci, Tina Modotti: A Life

Shortly after the birth of his second child, the Prince found himself in a state of malaise and dissatisfaction with life which manifested itself as a boredom with his wife, and an interest in one of the young ladies at court.
-- Andrew Crumey, Pfitz

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Malaise comes from the French, from Old French mal, "bad, ill" + aise, "comfort, ease."

In fact, in that particular case (and, I must say, rather unusual case, both 'Old French" words kept the same spelling and the same meaning in modern French, and the combination "malaise" also exists in modern French, with exactly the same two meanings as those in English that Ghost just gave. Also, in all four of his quotes, this word should indeed be simply translated as "malaise" in French. No "faux-ami" here.

Quite unusual, really.

tollbaby · Post by **tollbaby** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 2:08 pm

Not unusual at all. Modern French has actually changed very little from older French. English, by comparison, has evolved rather drastically.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 2:29 pm

tollbaby wrote:Not unusual at all. Modern French has actually changed very little from older French. English, by comparison, has evolved rather drastically.

Well, French does evolve...

My wife teaches French in junior high school. MoliÃ¨re wrote in the middle of 16 hunderds (tha, by the way, is considered as already "Modern" French, not "Old" French, the transition was in the late 14', early 15's) and he commonly used the verb "baiser" to mean "give a kiss", what a father can quite normally do to his daughter.
But it is very awkward now, and evokes snickers from the kids she teaches, as the meaning has evolved, in the past decades, to mean quite definitely what in English is a four-letters word.

tollbaby · Post by **tollbaby** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 4:35 pm

voralfred wrote:My wife teaches French in junior high school. MoliÃ¨re wrote in the middle of 16 hunderds (tha, by the way, is considered as already "Modern" French, not "Old" French, the transition was in the late 14', early 15's) and he commonly used the verb "baiser" to mean "give a kiss", what a father can quite normally do to his daughter.
But it is very awkward now, and evokes snickers from the kids she teaches, as the meaning has evolved, in the past decade, to mean quite definitely what in English is a four-letters word.

How odd. It definitely hasn't evolved to mean that here. While the joual "bisou" is more popular here, "baiser" means to kiss someone on both cheeks, Ã la franÃ§aise. Maybe it's a regional thing.

Post by **Darb** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 4:43 pm

Here in the states, kissing someone on both cheeks has undertones (for some people) of being the proverbial godfatherly kiss of death.

tollbaby · Post by **tollbaby** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 5:31 pm

That's only from Sicilians, if I'm not mistaken. The rest of Europe sees it as a greeting. Here in Canada, it's considered snobbish, or fussy, but we still do it

Mostly en famille.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 5:56 pm

tollbaby wrote: How odd. It definitely hasn't evolved to mean that here. While the joual "bisou" is more popular here, "baiser" means to kiss someone on both cheeks, Ã la franÃ§aise. Maybe it's a regional thing.

You mean, as a verb? In France, as a noun, "un baiser" is a just a kiss, whether on forehead, cheek, lips or mouth, even hands. But the verb is definitely gross.
By "here" you mean french-speaking Canada? I know Ottawa is very close to Montreal, but are you a Quebecquer yourself?
In France, you should never use the verb "baiser" in polite company, unless you are reading MoliÃ¨re or La Fontaine: "Nous allons nous entrebaiser tous" says the rooster to the fox, while claiming to see hounds coming to bring the news of universal peace among animals. This is a poem that is extremely difficult to teach nowadays....

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 4:25 am

voralfred wrote:... the verb "baiser" to mean "give a kiss", what a father can quite normally do to his daughter.
But it is very awkward now, and evokes snickers from the kids she teaches, as the meaning has evolved, in the past decade, to mean quite definitely what in English is a four-letters word.

Oooops!
I typed too fast, and I missed the final S in decades.
If this post gave you the idea it is a very recent evolution, well, that's wrong.
It's been so as far as I was able to understand it, in the mid-sixties (hey, I just told you how old I am), and probably long before that.
XIXth century novelists, like Balzac and Zola, don't use it. They say, as we say now "embrasser", which is also different from the original meaning: etymologically "embrasser" (bras=arm) should mean "to take into ones arms", "to hug" but now you can "embrasser" someone just by giving a peck on the cheek. "Va embrasser Tata Yvonne" (Go and kiss Auntie Yvonne).
XVIIth century MoliÃ¨re and La Fontaine definitely use "baiser" for to kiss..
In between.. well, I can't think offhand of a text by Voltaire or Diderot one way or the other.

KeE · Post by **KeE** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 4:56 am

Has anyone found what mechanism drives this sexualisation of old and esteemed words and expressions?
"Baiser" is, unless I'm mistaken, now used as a derogatory/vulgar verb describing copulation among Homo sapiens.
"Gay" is no longer a lighthearted happy person (or it still is, but only if he is happy about him).
"Suitcase", "Koffert" in norwegian gets sexual connotations when norwegians think about it (the term is "to think suitcase", "Ã¥ tenke koffert").
Is the development random (aka any word can get boggled down by pink/redlight connotations) or is there any system to this development? (aka words with emotional overtones or emotional meaning is most likely to get changed). And if so, is there a way to predict what changes will come next? Exept a feeling of malaise when you utter a word?

I know linguists here in Ultima Thule has debated similarly over the development of profanities- the most potent ones reflect the everchanging taboos of a given society/languange. Prediction of the next profanity is therefore partially possible, since it is possible to predict to a degree in what way a society is developing and thus what it will deem as worthy and what it will deem as foul. Maybe you can use an analogous method for words with future sexual content? Or maybe the development here is of such an erratic nature that no predictions will hold water, the truth will always derogate from the expected ...

KEE

tollbaby · Post by **tollbaby** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 10:30 am

"Baiser" is a perfectly acceptable and common word in Canada (French-speaking Canada is hardly restricted to Quebec.... we have at least four provinces with prominent francophone populations, and no, although I currently live in Quebec, I am not quÃ©becoise... that's a misconception most French-Canadians find extremely insulting - I was born and raised a Franco-Ontarian).

"baiser" simply means a kiss here. "Embracer" quelqu'un... that means to hug and give the traditional kiss on each cheek. If it's become dirty in France, it hasn't spread to the rest of us.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 10:44 am

tollbaby wrote:"Baiser" is a perfectly acceptable and common word in Canada (French-speaking Canada is hardly restricted to Quebec.... we have at least four provinces with prominent francophone populations, and no, although I currently live in Quebec, I am not quÃ©becoise... that's a misconception most French-Canadians find extremely insulting - I was born and raised a Franco-Ontarian).

"baiser" simply means a kiss here. "Embracer" quelqu'un... that means to hug and give the traditional kiss on each cheek. If it's become dirty in France, it hasn't spread to the rest of us.

Sorry, I did not realize there were Franco-Ontarians. I knew there are French-speaking populations in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, though, but this is further east, not west, so I assumed the closest to Ottawa was La Belle Province.

As for "embrasser", no, no, that is perfectly OK, but it does not mean anymore to "hug when kissing", as was probably what how the meaning evolved progressively. In France now, it applies even for a kiss without touching more than by the tip of the lips. And the noun "baiser" is perfectly all right, too. Only the verb changed meaning, curiously enough.

tollbaby · Post by **tollbaby** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:12 am

Actually, there are sizeable francophone populations in all the provinces (save Alberta and Saskatchewan.... and really, who wants to live there anyway? LOL). Manitoba is about 1/2 french, as are Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Nova Scotia surprises me, because it's mostly Irish/Scots and "viking" (what I use to denote anyone of Nordic descent that I can't more precisely narrow down). There's actually a lot less French in the rest of the maritimes, except Newfoundland and Labrador.

If you go further south in the US, there's a large ... I won't say francophone population, but group of French descent in Maine

The Acadians in New Brunswick are the French who were displaced into Louisiana originally (Cajun is a bastardization of Acadien), who returned into Canada later on, if I remember correctly, and a bunch of those settlers stopped off in Maine and decided to stay

It's a common belief that all French people in Canada live in Quebec.... and if Quebec wasn't so anti-anglophone, it probably wouldn't bother the rest of us in the slightest. What bothers me is that Quebec doesn't give the Anglos the same courtesy that the rest of Canada gives the francophones.

I moved to Quebec (I'm right on the border though, and it's a 30-minute walk or a 10-minute drive to get back into Ontario) two years ago, because the rent and daycare costs are cheaper in Hull than in Ottawa. What I discovered blew my mind. I can't send my kids to an English school without the provincial government's PERMISSION (which, incidentally, is quite difficult to obtain - we had to get my ex-husband's grade-school records to prove that he was never educated in French, and get an assessment from a psychiatrist that forcing our son to go through immersion would be harmful - considering that he's got asperger's, we were able to do so, but imagine the hosts of other families who have to go through the same thing). That's just one small way in which Quebec is hostile to non-francophones. They're actually much more tolerant of the hispanic population here than the English. Scary.

violetblue · Post by **violetblue** » Fri Dec 22, 2006 10:37 pm

Wait, I'm still trying to figure out what a TVR is from the last page. Je ne comprends pas!

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 1:43 pm

violetblue wrote:Wait, I'm still trying to figure out what a TVR is from the last page. Je ne comprends pas!

I don't understand the question.
I couldn't find the acronym TVR on the last page nor elsewhere.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 1:54 pm

tollbaby wrote: I moved to Quebec (I'm right on the border though, and it's a 30-minute walk or a 10-minute drive to get back into Ontario)

Either you are a real good walker or your car is really old... or there are a lot of traffic jams...

tollbaby wrote:What I discovered blew my mind. I can't send my kids to an English school without the provincial government's PERMISSION (which, incidentally, is quite difficult to obtain - we had to get my ex-husband's grade-school records to prove that he was never educated in French, and get an assessment from a psychiatrist that forcing our son to go through immersion would be harmful - considering that he's got asperger's, we were able to do so, but imagine the hosts of other families who have to go through the same thing). That's just one small way in which Quebec is hostile to non-francophones. They're actually much more tolerant of the hispanic population here than the English. Scary.

More seriously now, I think this anti-anglo attitude is really a shame. That they fear that encouraging english-speakers to move to Quebec might eventually destroy their particularism is understandable, but what you describe, which corroborates others things I have heard, in particular from my (english speaking) brother-in-law-in-law-in-law* who lives in Toronto, but has dealings across the provincial boundaries in Quebec, is unacceptable, borders (or goes beyond the border) on discrimination and is counterproductive to boot.
*husband of the sister of my wife's brother's wife

Post by **Darb** » Tue Dec 26, 2006 5:37 pm

Extended side discussion split into separate thread {here}.

RecluceMage · Post by **RecluceMage** » Tue Dec 26, 2006 7:22 pm

Going back to the idea of why words come to have a sexual connotation, and whether we can predict it...

As many groups become more public with their sexual proclivities (did I use that word properly?), those that oppose their particular flavor of sexuality will inevitably find new ways to show their disgust. I suppose that these new connotations may even start as the 'insider' way to refer to these groups, and in time those terms usually come to be either demeaning or sexual in nature (sometimes both).

Your basier example I think can show the changing attitudes toward public displays of affection. Perhaps long ago a kiss given in conjunction with light physical contact was practically publically admitting a sexual relationship existed. Now however, it does not, so the term changed to better reflect its true meaning. That does not mean that in all instances there was a sexual relationship, certainly not in regards to family, and that is why parts of the word exists unchanged. I'm just musing here, as I am certainly not a linguistic archaeologist.

mccormack44 · Post by **mccormack44** » Tue Dec 26, 2006 8:02 pm

Brad wrote

Extended side discussion split into separate thread.

WHERE? (you didn't leave a link, as is your wont). I probably won't contribute to this discussion, but I would love to follow it.

Sue

RecluceMage · Post by **RecluceMage** » Tue Dec 26, 2006 8:10 pm

It's the Word of the Day topic, stickied right here in this forum.

mccormack44 · Post by **mccormack44** » Tue Dec 26, 2006 9:10 pm

On December 11, 2006 in WoTD, Brad wrote:

That's what TVR's for, my friend.

On December 22, 2006, here, violetblue wrote

Wait, I'm still trying to figure out what a TVR is from the last page. Je ne comprends pas!

And on December 23, 2006, voralfred answered

I don't understand the question.
I couldn't find the acronym TVR on the last page nor elsewhere.

I don't know what TVR is either, but since I happened to see Brad's original post, I thought I'd bring this together in one place, so that violetblue and I could get our answer.

Sue

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 2:13 pm

mccormack44 wrote:Brad wrote

Extended side discussion split into separate thread.
WHERE? (you didn't leave a link, as is your wont). I probably won't contribute to this discussion, but I would love to follow it.

Sue

WHERE is HERE
THe original place was "Word of the day" but it has been moved from there.

I still do not understand what the question about TVR means

I can't find it i nWoTD on December 11

Post by **Kvetch** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 10:46 am

TVR is an acronym for 'The Velvet Room', one of the hidden fora on this board - reserved for discussions rated NC-17 (or whatever the code is. We have a different system over here in dear old Blighty.) that are avoided by consensus on the open board.

Anyone who wants access can pm either Ghost or a forum admin about it.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 2:25 pm

RecluceMage wrote:......

Your basier example I think can show the changing attitudes toward public displays of affection. Perhaps long ago a kiss given in conjunction with light physical contact was practically publically admitting a sexual relationship existed. Now however, it does not, so the term changed to better reflect its true meaning. That does not mean that in all instances there was a sexual relationship, certainly not in regards to family, and that is why parts of the word exists unchanged. I'm just musing here, as I am certainly not a linguistic archaeologist.

Well, I don't think so.
First the noun baiser is still the perfectly OK equivalent of "a kiss".
For some reason the verb baiser took a very rude connotation, but why should it have any connection with admitting sexual relationship long ago? On the contrary, MoliÃ¨re uses the verb in the context of a father asking his daughter to "Venez me baiser, ma fille", and without any hint at incest. Or, asking his daughter to "baiser" the fiancÃ© he found for her (of course, not of her liking).
I think it is very diffiuclt to guess how words can evolve.

Not all evolutions have a sexual connotation either.

Take the adjective "formidable" (in french). Originally it meant terrifying, frighteningly powerful (as its current meaning in english). Now absolutely noone would ever understand it otherwise than "excellent, great, fantastic" unless the context extremely strongly suggests the original meaning (and than, only only well-read people would ever realize that the intended meaning is the "old" one).
The same evolution is happening to its initial almost-synonym "terrible" (again in French). In most contexts it does mean terrifying, cruel: "Tsar Ivan le Terrible ". But more and more it is used to mean the same as the current meaning of "formidable": great, excellent.
In french it never has the connotation it can take in english of "really bad", quite to the contrary.

tollbaby · Post by **tollbaby** » Thu Dec 28, 2006 3:56 pm

Considering that the beginning of this discussion has been moved elsewhere, it would probably be preferable not to continue it in this thread...

and as with "baiser", "formidable" hasn't undergone the changes in Canadian French that it obviously has in European French.

voralfred · Post by **voralfred** » Sat Dec 30, 2006 3:45 pm

tollbaby wrote:Considering that the beginning of this discussion has been moved elsewhere, it would probably be preferable not to continue it in this thread...

and as with "baiser", "formidable" hasn't undergone the changes in Canadian French that it obviously has in European French.

It seems to me that this thread is just whrere the entire discussion has been moved, from the start, isn't it?

So does "formidable" in Canadian French have just the same meaning as in english?