Such is the genius of the English language that when we look at the dog on the old HMV record label we know straightaway that it is a he and not a she.
The French language, by way of contrast, shows itself clumsy in the extreme. First of all, its lack of what we linguists call the "Saxon genitive" forces it to say the long-winded "La voix de son mâitre". Secondly, the French insistence that the possessive adjective (my, your, his, her, etc) should "agree with" the noun that it qualifies, means that we end up not knowing whether the dog or person in question is male or female. Not that we necessarily care.
I make that England 2 France 0.
But France narrows the gap thanks to yet more slack proofreading from the BBC. In its notes to Raymond Blanc: The Very Hungry Frenchman (BBC 2, Thursday 8 pm), the BBC refers to the chef's "home region of Franche Comte in north-east France". "Comte" in French means "count" as in "papal count". Since they are so obsessed about accents at the BBC, you'd think they would have remembered to have written "Comté" as in "county".
Oh well, I suppose I must guard against turning into a professional bore, as opposed to an amateur one. I'd go out for walk if it weren't so dreadfully cold.
The French language, by way of contrast, shows itself clumsy in the extreme. First of all, its lack of what we linguists call the "Saxon genitive" forces it to say the long-winded "La voix de son mâitre". Secondly, the French insistence that the possessive adjective (my, your, his, her, etc) should "agree with" the noun that it qualifies, means that we end up not knowing whether the dog or person in question is male or female. Not that we necessarily care.
I make that England 2 France 0.
But France narrows the gap thanks to yet more slack proofreading from the BBC. In its notes to Raymond Blanc: The Very Hungry Frenchman (BBC 2, Thursday 8 pm), the BBC refers to the chef's "home region of Franche Comte in north-east France". "Comte" in French means "count" as in "papal count". Since they are so obsessed about accents at the BBC, you'd think they would have remembered to have written "Comté" as in "county".
Oh well, I suppose I must guard against turning into a professional bore, as opposed to an amateur one. I'd go out for walk if it weren't so dreadfully cold.
Have a heart, Mr. Dunn. We can't "do" accents on our keyboards, which probably accounted for the RT's proof reader falling foul.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's a pretty lame excuse!
Delete