Jimmy Wales wrote:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:
And I don't see anything encouraging in this
discussion.
What do you mean? I see a lot that's encouraging.
Look at all the
discussion that we are having. Look how hard
people >are working to
try to find mutually agreeable solutions. Look how
civilized and
cautious the decisionmaking is.
I didn't read all post (translate is fastidious for me), but in those I read I see words as "silly", "pushy French attitude" and other not so friendly sentence. Hope it's just translation mistake ;o)
In american english (and in Maverick voice), I think "silly" is rather friendly. A bit like "gros b�ta". It is not very offending, rather a gentle reproach. Perhaps slightly friendly moquery.
Not in french. Saying to someone he is "idiot" (the translation of silly) is *not* friendly. And not encouraging at all.
I remember Mav also told me I was silly once. I then thought of a computer game I played a long time ago, where the hero party met a colony of very friendly spiders. The cute little spiders were using the adjective "silly" (this was the english version). But they did not mean to offense. So, I said nothing to Mav.
But perhaps would it be wise to be cautious while using this word ?
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Anthere wrote:
In american english (and in Maverick voice), I think "silly" is rather friendly. A bit like "gros béta". It is not very offending, rather a gentle reproach. Perhaps slightly friendly moquery.
Not in french. Saying to someone he is "idiot" (the translation of silly) is *not* friendly. And not encouraging at all.
The problem here is that the French "idiot" is not a good translation of "silly". This is perhaps an instance where the "idiot" of the two languages are mostly not false friends. Your choice of "béta" (but certainly not "bête") is more appropriate for "silly". "Silly" often tends to be used about children, and suggests something childish about the person or action. It is indeed a gentle reproach, but if used to excess tends to have a cumulative effect.
Circumstances can, of course, change things. When my son was 3 or 4 years old we kidded him about something by saying that he was a "petit niaiseux". To emphasize that he was getting bigger he replied "J'suis pas un petit niaiseux, j'suis un grand niaiseux" :-D
I remember Mav also told me I was silly once. I then thought of a computer game I played a long time ago, where the hero party met a colony of very friendly spiders. The cute little spiders were using the adjective "silly" (this was the english version). But they did not mean to offense. So, I said nothing to Mav.
Pikmin?!
But perhaps would it be wise to be cautious while using this word ?
Always advisable when going across languages.
Ec
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org