There
is an hypothesis popularly referred to as the
"Sapir–Whorf
hypothesis", which purports the concept of linguistic relativity, which
holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which a speaker of
that language sees her world. The
proposition is that it is not the way we think that affects the way we speak,
but rather the way we speak affects our way of thinking. It should follow then,
that the more languages we speak, the broader our thinking. Anyone involved in
translation, or the teaching and learning of languages, will be affected by the
process.
There are a number of figures of speech
in English which, when translated into another language, loose their meaning
yet provide amusement for the speakers of both languages. e.g. "She has ideas above her station"
becomes in French, "Elle a des
idées au-dessus de sa gare.". A famous line from Terence Rattigan’s
French Without Tears.
Say to a Frenchmen “J’ai la langue dans la
joue” and he’ll not have the slightest idea what you’re on about, unless he has
a knowledge of English, in which case he might smile. On the other hand, should
you refer to ‘taking French leave’ he might take offence and correct that
figure of speech as ‘filer a l’Anglaise’. Indeed there is a curious notion
across Europe that to slip away without notice is either a French exercise or
an English one:
•
Czech: zmizet po
anglicku ("to leave English style")
• German:
"sich (auf) französisch empfehlen" or literally 'französischen
Abschied nehmen ("to take a French leave")
It would
appear by a factor of 2 to 1 that most of Europe attributes this trait to the
English. The phrase is clearly the result of the historical associations between
the countries concerned, indicating that the two most influential, or perhaps
dominant, of European States are France and England.
Apparently
the phrase first appears in the English language in 1771, whilst the opposite
French phrase appears around the turn of the 19th/20th
centuries. Presumably the phrase rises out of the Seven Years War, which is
claimed to have been a critical moment in the history of Anglo-French relations
and which laid the foundations for the dominance of the Anglosphere during the
next two and a half centuries, and arguably the spread of English common law. The United
Kingdom was pretty widespread from that time on through to the First World War.
Indeed, the English language can be regarded the lingua franca just about everywhere.
As to the
French view, it may be the phrase was developed in retaliation to the English
idiom as the result of what is referred to as the Scramble For Africa between
the 1870s and 1880s. The Suez Canal project, begun by Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps and later taken over
by the English. is an instance in point; as well as the strained relationship
between the United Kingdom and France leading up to the First World War, even
although allies.
However it came
about, do these figures of speech seriously affect the way different speakers
think? ‘Flash in the pan’ is an English expression originating from the use of
firearms and referring to a
brief, intense effort that produces no really significant result. The French
equivalent idiom is “un feu de paille”
or literally, ‘a fire of straw’.
Both
expressions involve a short-lived fire, although the one emanates from the use
of firearms and the other from merely trying to start a fire which could be for
any number of reasons, most likely cooking, it being a French phrase. But I
project. In any event both figures of speech indicate a very different process
of thinking. Does this have any profound significance? I do not know that it
does, save that the knowledge of it, I believe, is worth having.
I leave you
with this English phrase (told to me by Charles Carne, allegedly spoken by
Nelson at Trafalgar) and translation in French, which should be spoken quickly:
“To
the water, it is the hour” = “À l'eau, c’est l'heure”
