In that case, they were lamenting the doc.

Jeri

A very nice rose too, extremely fragrant and very healthy for me. The blooms unfortunately dried out quickly in my hot, very low-humidity garden. Olga, who gardens in a high-humidity and blackspot-prone area, praised this rose highly.

Ingrid

Deuil is very much like Souvenir. They basically mean "in memory of", such as Souv. d'un Ami, "Souvenir" or "Memory" of My Love. Deui de Paul Fontaine is In Memory of Paul Fontaine. A very nice rose, BTW. Kim

Oh, I thought he was lamenting. What would be the French term if he was lamenting a loved one? du versus de? I need to brush up on my Francais.

Reynaud is the surname of the French side of my family. What is (this specific) Dr. Reynaud's first name?

I known about the "Souvenirs". I am curious about the "deuils".

Google Translator says, "mourning", so you're probably more correct. Sorry about that. Both are "in memory of" to me, so I equate their sentiments. Kim

Mauvegirl, if he were lamenting a loved one, it would be: "lamentation sur".

"It was a time for mourning and lamentation" translates as "L'heure était au deuil et àla lamentation".

It sounds like no one knows for sure. I thought the rose was because Dr. Reynaud and the likes lost a loved one. It's THEIR loss. But everyone says it was they, who were being mourned.

If you put the name of the rose in Google Translator, from French to English, it reads, "mourning dr reynaud". I would take that to mean the rose was named to mourn the loss of the doctor, not HIS mourning someone else. Kim

There are words/phrases that get lost in translation (Google Translator included) and do not make sense if literally translated. I am not saying that is the case re: my original question.

duelo is the Spanish word for deuil and means the exact same. Besides mourning, it is also "the wake"

I am not stuck on the word deuil. I'm inquiring on the "de" or if it was "du" whichever word suggests ownership.

I could be wrong, but I think Jeri and Kim are right. The rose represents the passing, mourning of Dr. Reynaud.

"De" does double duty in French. It means "of," but it also represents possession. It all depends on the context. So:

la robe de la jeune fille = the girl's dress
la chemise du docteur = the doctor's shirt
le livre de l'homme = the man's book

BUT
Souvenir de la Malmaison = Memory/Remembrance/Souvenir of Malmaison.

In that case you would not say Malmaison's Memory as if the house itself possessed a brain and could remember things or Malmaison's Souvenir as though the house went on a trip somewhere and brought back a souvenir. :-)

"Du" is the obligatory contraction of "de le." You would never write or speak "de le" in French, rather always "du."

Deuil de Dr. Reynaud = mourning of Dr. Reynaud
Deuil du Dr. Reynaud = mourning of the Dr. Reynaud

I don't know if that confused things even more. There are several native French speakers who come into my workplace regularly. I'll ask one next time I see them.

This post was edited by bellegallica_zone9 on Tue, Dec 25, 12 at 23:25

cool! Thanks bellegallica.

English is straightforward.

english is straightforward!!!
recalling my travelling days where I earned a crust doing bits of english 'teaching', english was anything straightforward for my 'students'

In those days, before TEFL and proper accreditation, 'teaching' consisted of simply rambling on (about anything) to a baffled audience of Moroccans, Thais or Japanese......so I may have to shoulder much of the blame for the general confusion.

Look at it this way, in English: YOU is you--- not tu or vous or tu or usted. Many other languages are the same (regarding how to address someone). It depends on familiarity or respect.

In the U.S. we are very casual. Hi! is the norm even without a proper handshake . Or the "What's up?" But I see other cultures give the cheek air kiss even when introduced to a stranger. In Spanish language countries especially.

English seems straightforward to native speakers only because its many grammatical peculiarities are engrained into our brains. For that reason they seems natural to us. I know several people whose native language is Chinese. To them, gender is a very odd concept in a language, and they often get him/her, he/she wrong. I would imagine that languages like French and Spanish where everything has gender would be even stranger to them.

We don't have formal forms of 'you' in our language anymore, but we used to -- that is what thee (informal) and thou (formal) were all about. And while we are very casual in our daily lives, more so than any previous generations, there is still a place for formal behavior -- business, funerals, ceremonies, government and law. I live mostly in the informal world, but I do think that formality lends a sense of respect to important events. I would not say "What's up?" at a funeral, for example.

Rosefolly

English did have a singular form of "you." It was "thou" and included the use of possessive forms "thy" and "thine" (thy family, thine apple). I don't know at what point English speakers abandoned it in favor of using the plural/polite "you" exclusively.

This is completely off the track, but having a singular and plural form for "you" can actually makes things clearer at times. There is a famous passage in the New Testament that was misinterpreted by English-only speakers because they wanted to believe that Jesus was addressing a group of people when he was actually speaking to only one person. (But they would have had to read/know the original Greek to realize that.)

I haven't run into one of our Parisian patrons yet, but I did look up "deuil" in the big French dictionary here, and it gives the following as an informal expression:
faire son deuil de ____________

which means:
to say goodbye to ____________
to kiss goodbye to ___________

So that means the phrase "deuil de" means saying goodbye, mourning, who or whatever follows. They were saying goodbye to Dr. Reynaud.

Language is funny and infinitely fascinating. We all think our langauge makes sense simply because it's the one we know.

The thing that drives me batty in French is how they deal with the concept of missing something or someone. It is "backwards" to English.

"I miss David" in French is: David me mangue. (Lit. David is missing to me.) It makes the person or thing being missed the subject of the sentence rather than the object. BUT I would imagine that to a French person, English would seem backwards.

I guess a related idea is that you don't have an accent where you live, but if you move to another part of the country you find people commenting on your accent. :-)

French and some other languages tell you what they are talking about before describing it. Our green bean is the French haricots verts, or bean green. Logically, that should make more sense. How can you provide a description without a subject? You have to build the house before you can paint it. Kim

Then there are languages like Latin and Russian, which give you huge amounts of other grammatical information we don't even think about in English. Case, for example. I'm trying to think if we ever use case at all.

One thing I'm thinking that is still in English but much less used is adding a plural when things are in doubt. For example, we should say "if he were" not "if he was" because of the use of if. Same thing for "I wish I were", not "I wish I was". Still correct, but dropped from informal speech much of the time.

We have conversations like this over on GW's Reader's Paradise Forum sometimes.

Rosefolly

English spelling is certainly not straightforward. Swedish has some spelling peculiarities where older pronunciations are still lingering in writing but nothing compared to English. I helped in my son's first grade class when the family lived in Madison, Wisconsin for a time. I felt sorry for the poor little ones who had to learn how to spell "see" and "sea" and other homophones with different spellings. I have studied the history of the English language and know why the spellings are different but I could hardly explain that to the first graders as that would have confused them even more. They had to learn by rote. It must be worse to be a dyslectic in English than in most other languages. I notice spelling mistakes like "there" for their, "would of" for would have even among educated English speakers.

Years ago, I asked someone who only spoke Spanish what did English sound like to them.

The answer:

like we were talking with a mouthful of crackers!

Bellegallica, I was surprised by what you said about 'thou' because it was different from my own long-held understanding. However I looked it up and you are absolutely correct. 'Thou' was the singular 'you' when used as a subject, while 'thee' was the singular 'you' when used as an object. Apparently it gained its overtones of formality later when it was used for the King James translation of the bible into English.

I love this stuff.

Here is a link that might be useful: Forms of 'you'

Hi Rosefolly,

Yep, I forgot about the objective "thee." And you're right, after "thou" was dropped from everyday use it was only used in situations like the King James Bible or in flowery, ornate writing: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." So to our modern ears it has an almost semi-sacred quality, but back in it's day it just meant "you" singular.

Back when I was an English teacher (for a very short time), I'd start the Shakespeare unit by conjugating a verb:

I have
thou hast
he,she it has

we have
you have
they have

The students who had taken a foreign language got it right away.

In your other post, when you give the example of "I wish I were," you're talking about the subjunctive mood. French-and probably other languages too--uses it a LOT. English only retains it in isolated cases like that one.

And as far as case goes, I think English retains it mainly, possibly only, with pronouns:

I gave it to him.
He gave it to me.
She gave it to her.
Who gave it to whom?

The distinction between who and whom is slowly disappearing.

More thoughts on "you"

Here in the south, we've solved the problem of the loss of singular "you" by using the contraction of "you all" for the plural.

For us, "you" is singular and "y'all" is plural. :-)

But sometimes we use "y'all" when addressing a single person which obviously confuses some northerners when they hear it.

I was watching a kids show/cartoon in which a horribly stereotyped "dumb" Southern sheriff was passing sentence on some poor criminal (only one) and told him, "I sentence y'all to the..." and I burst out laughing because it had so obviously been written by a northerner who didn't understand. When a southerner uses y'all with a single person, he means that person and whoever is associated with him/her.

When a southerner asks his friend, "Are y'all going out of town this weekend?" What he's really asking is, "Are you, your wife, three kids, and the dog going out of town this weekend?"

Other areas of the country do that, too. In the area around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where I grew up, people say ''yunz" for the plural of "you", a contraction of "you ones". It is frowned upon, and I don't use it myself, but I think it makes sense.

I think we unconsciously need a plural you. Why else do we keep coming up with one?

Rosefolly

Deuil de Dr. Reynaud would translate as "mourning Dr. Reynaud," but literally it is 'mourning of Dr. R.' Mourning is actually a gerund, which is often awkward in English, so we leave it as a verb (actually, the present participle or the present progressive with an implied subject (I am, we are, etc). Deuil implies a sadness and more personal connection that is not expressed in "souvenir," which is translated as "in memory of" or just as souvenir, ie, a memory token.

du is a contraction of de+le and is used only with masculine nouns.

Re: the retention of cases in English. The two other places we keep case distinction are in the plural s/es and in genitive 's and s' i the plural.

Who know what English will look like when Tweeter and text messaging are finished with it.

I agree with Kim. You have to build a house before you can paint it. Anyway, back to the original subject of this thread, I think Deuil du Dr Reynaud (or however you wish to spell it) is a beautiful rose!