Algot Runeman wrote:humph
Pronunciation: /həmf/
exclamation
used to express slightly scornful doubt or dissatisfaction.
Origin:
natural utterance: first recorded in English in the mid 16th century
Very interestingly, the french language took
four centuries to catch up.
When I was in first year of junior high school, I read a translation of "Just so stories" in french where the story of the camel ("How the Camel got his hump") was
not translated. Of course, I did not realize it then but only when, just a few years later, I was fluent enough in english to read the original, and discovered a story I had never read before in french. And I realized that the pun "Humph/hump" was just impossible to translate, explaining the absence of the translation of that particular story.
A few (about 10?) years ago I bumped into a reedition of that translation of "Just so stories", by the same editor, the same cover, and essentially the same text for most of the stories, with a major change: the story of the camel
was translated. The expletive "Bof !" which just did not exist 30 years earlier, had in the meantime appeared with exactly the meaning of "Humph !" and was perfect to rhyme with "bosse", the exact word for a camel's hump. So the translation of the pun was in perfect parallel with the original.
At that point I really marveled about the evolution of french language that allowed this to happen. Or was it because of Kipling's story that the expletive "Bof !" had entered the french language?
EPS, have you ever seen a translation of "How the Camel got his hump" in flemish and/or dutch? Does it go through? Did it, 30 years ago ?
Anyone fluent in some other language, any comment relevant to this?
