alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

August 23, 2006

French Headline of the Day

by @ 2:00 pm. Filed under foreign affairs, french

From RFI:

La participation européenne au sein de la Force internationale des Nations-Unies au Liban. Les 25 se réunissent aujourd’hui à Bruxelles pour trouver une réponse commune…

Originally I thought this was an interesting headline in that names that we take as universal, such as the United Nations, are not-so-universal. We see here that it’s rendered as Nations-Unies. The acronym “the UN”, however, is rendered as “l’ONU”.

Note also that while the foreign press uses the acronym FINUL (Force internationale des Nations-Unies au Liban) as a proper name, the english-speaking press just uses the more generic “UN peace-keeping force”.

Nouns: La participation (the participation), aujourd’hui (today), une réponse (an answer).

Verbs: réunissent (they meet), trouver (to find).

One thing that becomes apparent as you look at the nouns used in journalism, as opposed to what we’re taught in introductory French classes, is that the former are almost all abstract nouns, whereas the latter are mostly concrete nouns.

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