How do the French manage to pick up such weird words?

[menthe]

Thank you, ET.  Now I shall never forget what to call those x-ray plates.  Because cliché is such a common word, I tended to forget it although I have known the word for the 5 years since I was first diagnosed with cancer and have had a fair few occasions to hear that word.

However, there is now a NEW complication.  That verb clicher you describe sounds to me to refer to what a compsositor (English) does.  A French compositeur means, of course, a COMPOSER😀

How I enjoy these subtle and not so subtle differences between our 2 languages....ha!

 

[EuroTr@sh]

4 hours ago, menthe said:

How I enjoy these subtle and not so subtle differences between our 2 languages....ha!

 

Me too Menthe.

It's why it makes me a bit sad how far automatic translation is taking over. It's so easy now to live in France and use your smartphone or pc to translate incoming and outgoing communications and information so that it's almost as if there's no language barrier any more, you don't need to learn the language. But any subtle play on words gets lost, the nuances get lost, the humour gets lost and you'll never get anything out of French poetry or literature, it reduces language to purely functional and takes all the fun and pleasure and stimulation out of it. 

Anyways I see the forum is already being slammed for having threads about wimpish things like flowers and language and not being controversial enough in its new reincarnation. I wondered how long it would take before the whipping up started. So I'm off again, but it was nice chatting quietly about interesting things like language. Just like old times.

[ssomon]

Never mind, ET. There will always be people who complain, and criticise what others do, without actually doing anything more constructive about their grievances.