French MeetUp Groups

[Alane]

We've just been out to a "French Meet Up" group in the UK which was surprisingly enjoyable. It was held in a pub, The Oak in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire. Good beer as well - a Fullers pub. I'd never heard of these groups before but they seem quite popular in London www.french.meetup.com . Looks like an American idea that has migrated to the UK.

A local guy who has recently started to learn French has started the group and 10 people turned up on the first night ranging from beginners to near bilingual. We saw an advert he'd posted and as we had nothing else to do on a Monday night decided to go along. The idea is that people trying to learn/maintain their French get together and practice on each other with the more advanced helping the beginners and each other. It went surprisingly well - probably helped by the beer and the special French wine the landlord had put on for the event. A lot of grammatical errors no doubt but better than no practice at all.

The organiser is hoping to build the numbers up so if anyone is interested the venue is advertised on the web site or PM me.

[cooperlola]

I think this is a great idea, I belonged to a small group like this before I moved here.  Great to keep up and polish your convesational French. 

However, one niggle - why meet UP for goodness sake?  It would be a good start if its name was good English.  Why the up bit?  Where has this horrible expression come from?  Why can't people just meet like they used to? Sorry, it's probably just me but it gets up my nose - as you can see![:)]

[Cjlaws]

To meet up is a phrasal verb. It appears in the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary, the current Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary. It is not a new usage. Oscar Wilde is quoted as using it.

[cooperlola]

George Orwell would be turning in his grave.  Please tell me, Christopher, what does it add to the expression meet?  Does I am going to meet up with somebody, convey any more than, I am going to meet somebody?  No it does not.  I shall continue to hate it, even if Oscar W did see fit to use it.  Just as I detest park up and other usages like this.  A pointless waste of breath or ink!!

[Dick Smith]

It is a new usage, as here it isn't a verb phrasal or otherwise, it's either an adjective or a noun. And the phrasal verb has a gap in the middle! So it isn't a phrase, either. No-one ever wrote "I am going to meetup with Oscar". Especially Oscar.

And stop making me think about grammar when I've got a headache - it's an inelegant phrase/word, the 'up' part is redundant however many old authors used it and it sounds naff.

The idea's a good one, though.

[Will]

When I woke up this morning, and soon afterwards got up, I never dreamed up that the use of such a small two-letter word would stir up such emotion. Even on the way up to town, on the up train, I had to sit up and think about it. I got up from my seat when the train pulled up at the destination, walked up the road to work and when I fetched up outside the building I decided I just had to look up 'up' (not as in look up old friends) in the dictionary, which would probably throw up many more uses of the word, but I just got fed up with it all.

Up yours....

[Cjlaws]

I agree with Dick Smith; “MeetUp” or “Meet up group” isn’t English. I hadn’t noticed that the O/P hadn’t used “meet up” as a verb. I was replying to Cooperlola's "why meet UP for goodness sake?"

 

The idea for group language improvement’s a great one.

 

[quote user="cooperlola"] Please tell me, Christopher, what does it add to the expression meet?  Does I am going to meet up with somebody, convey any more than, I am going to meet somebody?  No it does not. [/quote]

 

It works like this:

 

To meet up is to meet somebody by arrangement, so there’s a difference between “I met Charles last week” and “I met up with Charles last week”. The former may have been by chance, whilst the latter must have been by arrangement.

 

I stole this from BBC World Service Learning English:

 

‘Meeting up’/ ‘meet up’

Of course, we talk about meeting up, and that's a very common expression: in fact it's what we call a phrasal verb, but you can meet up, or you can meet up with somebody - that's always for social reasons and it involves getting together, usually then to do something else, and it may involve not two people, but a large group of people. So, at the end of an evening of doing something socially, somebody might say ‘when are we going to meet up again’?

[Alane]

I too thought the term "meet up group" was inelegant but it seems that there are "meetup" groups for all manner of activities www.meetup.com including Ghost Tracking Meetups, Pagan Meetups and even Beppe Grillo Meetups.

I was wrong to label it a "meet up" group in the original post it should have been "meetup". It worked well for those of us who attended so we were content to put up with the name.

[Dick Smith]

Which is what matters, of course.