How Do You Sound Fancy in French?

[Terra]

Do their scientific terms all sound like long-winded baby talk? "Now children, who can tell me the atomic number of Big-Boom-Explodium?"

No; Do you think about how you stand under others' ideas when you "understand" them? Compounded words (and also derived words, as Legion showed) are often more than just the sum of their parts.

hard drive

Heh, I bet that the term "hard disk" will stick around after even after solid state drives (which have no disks) become popular, because to many people, "hard disk" just means "the thing inside your computer (as opposed to outside, like a CD or USB drive) that stores your data". We're still stuck with the floppy disk symbol to mean "save", after all.

[clawgrip]

For saving, nothing is more iconic than the floppy disk.

[Ser]

This thread is surprisingly lacking on syntactical fanciness.

Here's just one extract, from the exercice labelled 'Precieux':

C'etait aux alentours d'un juillet de midi. Le soleil dans toute sa fleur regnait sur l'horizon aux multiples tetines. L'asphalte palpitait doucement, exhalant cette tendre odeur goudronneuse qui donne aux cancereux des idees a la fois pueriles et corrosives sur l'origine de leur mal (1). Un autobus a la livree verte et blanche, blasonee d'un enigmatique S (2), vint recueillir du cote du parc Monceau un petit lot favorise de candidats voyageurs aux moites confins de la dissolution sudoripare.

These sentences sound just as silly and parodic as your examples.

Look at that big non-restrictive relative clause (1), and those long non-restrictive adjectival phrases (2, 3).

A few things that I think are particular to higher registers of English/French/Spanish, to get things started:

• Long non-restrictive AdjPs and relative clauses
• Asyndeton: lists of phrases of any kind (especially AdjPs) without a conjunction ("and/nor/or") before the last element of the list
• Long AdvPs between the verb and the direct object, especially egregious when the direct object is very short in comparison
• Absolute clauses.
• In fact, probably most kinds of non-finite clauses as well as phrases headed by a non-finite verb (including "dangling" modifiersǃ)
• English: use of possessed gerunds which still take object arguments nonetheless ("it was his discussing this issue that first got my attention")
• French and Spanish: non-restrictive adjectives before a noun
• Spanish: omission of the indefinite article before a singular countable noun functioning as a direct object or the object of a preposition, whenever it's normally added (things like tengo computadora or (escribir) a mano don't count)

[Drydic]

Do their scientific terms all sound like long-winded baby talk? "Now children, who can tell me the atomic number of Big-Boom-Explodium?"

No; Do you think about how you stand under others' ideas when you "understand" them? Compounded words (and also derived words, as Legion showed) are often more than just the sum of their parts.

hard drive

Heh, I bet that the term "hard disk" will stick around after even after solid state drives (which have no disks) become popular, because to many people, "hard disk" just means "the thing inside your computer (as opposed to outside, like a CD or USB drive) that stores your data". We're still stuck with the floppy disk symbol to mean "save", after all.

I haven't heard someone use hard disk in years. Everyone says hard drive.

[Ser]

I've never come across "hard disk" before, only "hard drive", though disco duro does remain common in Spanish.

[Thry]

True, I've heard both disco duro and jar drai but rarely hard disk.

[Terra]

I haven't heard someone use hard disk in years. Everyone says hard drive.

Yes, "hard drive" is more common, but it's just a contraction of "hard disk drive", where "hard" is contrasted against "soft", like in the various kinds of floppy disks of the past (I think). Describing a solid state drive as a "hard drive" would still be inaccurate then.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

Disque dur is the usual word in French. Pronounced as /dzisdzyR/ where I come from.

[Burke]

Disque dur is the usual word in French. Pronounced as /dzisdzyR/ where I come from.

Do I smell Quebec by chance? If so, please go on. I love Quebecois because of my grandmother.

[Drydic]

I haven't heard someone use hard disk in years. Everyone says hard drive.

Yes, "hard drive" is more common, but it's just a contraction of "hard disk drive", where "hard" is contrasted against "soft", like in the various kinds of floppy disks of the past (I think). Describing a solid state drive as a "hard drive" would still be inaccurate then.

You're dumb. People don't mentally contract it from hard disk drive, they just think and say hard drive.

[Terra]

People don't mentally contract it from hard disk drive, they just think and say hard drive.

1) How is this against my point that it's a misnomer when applied to solid state drives?
2) Where did I say that people don't "they just think and say 'hard drive'"? Just because I said it's a shortening 'hard disk drive' doesn't mean that I think people know that it is.

[Travis B.]

People don't mentally contract it from hard disk drive, they just think and say hard drive.

1) How is this against my point that it's a misnomer when applied to solid state drives?
2) Where did I say that people don't "they just think and say 'hard drive'"? Just because I said it's a shortening 'hard disk drive' doesn't mean that I think people know that it is.

The problem is that the supposed term *hard disk drive really is not current, unlike hard disk and hard drive; there is no current term that hard drive is supposedly a shortening of. Hence it is better to regard hard drive as a term unto itself, with hard disk being a separate, alternative term to it.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

Disque dur is the usual word in French. Pronounced as /dzisdzyR/ where I come from.

Do I smell Quebec by chance? If so, please go on. I love Quebecois because of my grandmother.

I'm ZBB's proud Quebecker. Joual is my first language.

[dhok]

Adding another example onto the top of the pile: in Portuguese, any verb form formed with the future stem (that's the conditional, and future and future subjunctive) which has a direct or indirect object clitic can insert the clitic between the stem and the ending, in a process called "mesoclisis": eu falarei, "I'll speak," eu falar-lhe-ei, "I'll talk to him." This sounds extremely stuffy, and is only used in writing; when I've tried to use it on the street here in Brazil I've only received blank looks. Dunno about Portugal.

[Drydic]

You would try using it on the street despite knowing it's only used in writing.

[Thry]

Adding another example onto the top of the pile: in Portuguese, any verb form formed with the future stem (that's the conditional, and future and future subjunctive) which has a direct or indirect object clitic can insert the clitic between the stem and the ending, in a process called "mesoclisis": eu falarei, "I'll speak," eu falar-lhe-ei, "I'll talk to him." This sounds extremely stuffy, and is only used in writing; when I've tried to use it on the street here in Brazil I've only received blank looks. Dunno about Portugal.

The reason you get blank looks is because that's a formal trait of European Portuguese. In Portugal you can say it when it's appropriate but it does sound hm, solemn, like "Vais fazer a salada?" "Fá-la-ei" - but the reason is not the mesoclisis per se, it's more the usage of the future indicative [more common: vou fazê-la "I'm gonna do it"], which as in Spanish is being replaced by other tenses.

Brazil is quite different in terms of pronouns, like you wouldn't even say lhe for "to him", using para ele instead. Direi/Vou dizer para ele amanhã....

And never the future subjunctive, which is formed with the perfect stem (i.e. nós formos, dissermos, pusermos, fizermos...); that's just wrong.

You would try using it on the street despite knowing it's only used in writing.

Also wrong country xD

[Astraios]

Shouldn't it be falar com anyway, not falar + dative?

[Thry]

I've come across both [different usages, "speak to you" vs. "speak the truth to him"], though maybe that's why I thought of dizer for that particular instance.

[Salmoneus]

People don't mentally contract it from hard disk drive, they just think and say hard drive.

1) How is this against my point that it's a misnomer when applied to solid state drives?
2) Where did I say that people don't "they just think and say 'hard drive'"? Just because I said it's a shortening 'hard disk drive' doesn't mean that I think people know that it is.

The problem is that the supposed term *hard disk drive really is not current, unlike hard disk and hard drive; there is no current term that hard drive is supposedly a shortening of. Hence it is better to regard hard drive as a term unto itself, with hard disk being a separate, alternative term to it.

More than that: to me, they don't even mean the same thing. I mean, extensionally they do, at the moment, but not intensionally.

To me, a 'hard disk' is a physical thing - a computer part that contains a big metal magnetic disc and things to pick information off it and write onto it (I mostly think of it as the old big metal boxes from desktops). To me, on the other hand, a 'hard drive' is a part of my computer system, where I store things. The differences are that a) a hard disk is a piece of hardware, whereas a hard drive is a virtual location (the contents of which location happen to supervene upon the physical states of a hard disk). If that sounds pedantic, the analogy is that a hard disk is part of a brain, and a hard drive is part of a mind. And then more practically, b) if I had a computer with a virtual location of similar size and characteristics to the one I have now, I would call that location a hard drive - regardless of whether there was a hard disk in the computer, or just some functionally equivalent thing.

At least, that's what I would use the words to mean if I used 'hard disk' - most of the time I just say 'hard drive' in both cases.

[Vuvuzela]

A few things that I think are particular to higher registers of English/French/Spanish, to get things started:
*list*

English:
* Some forms of Syllepsis, when one clause contains a verb which applies to both of them (e.g. "He works his work, and I mine."
*Use of "I" in place of "me", and "myself" in place of "I" or "me" in conjunction phrases p(e.g. "Do you want to come with John and I to the book signing?" "It's been decided by several of my colleagues and myself that..."

[clawgrip]

Thanks for reminding me about ellipsis, someone was asking me about that a while ago and I had forgotten to get back to them on it.