- One minute read - 35 words

I cannot read the word “poignant” without remembering that it is etymologically related to the French word for “fist” and, by extension, to the French expressions for “punch” and “brass knuckles” (literally, “an American punch”).

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Unexpected topics in research meetings: The difficulty of choosing English translations for French swearing in your data.

As a big fan of both The Good Place and the French language, I suddenly feel an urgent need to know what substitutes Chidi hears in French when Eleanor tries to swear in English.

I have been getting emails incorrectly calling me “Dr.” or “Professor” since I was an undergrad with my own section of French 102. Now, it’s nice to get one of those and be able to suppress the instinct to correct the sender.

Have not made as much writing progress today as I’d like, but today’s progress has validated both my use of a structured folder system as a “reference manager” AND my decision to memorize the keyboard shortcut for French guillemets.

It’s amazing how much French I’m learning translating students’ tweets to English for a research project. Language is so rich, and limiting it to 280 characters arguably makes it more so.

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