Sunday, June 25, 2006

Peculiarities in the French language

When I first started learning French, I always wonder why the word that means "today", "aujourd'hui" is that looong. I just found out that it means actually twice the same thing: The latin for today is "hodie", which gives phonetically "hui" in ancient french. Etymologist have found out that we tend to reinforce our words, so "hui" in itself becomes "au jour d'hui" (meaning at the course of today). As time passes, the phrase lexicalized and became "aujourd'hui".

The french have the expression "au jour d'aujourd'hui" which means "these days"...will that be lexicalized in a few centuries time to become "aujourd'aujourd'hui"? God knows...

-gAvIn-

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