Franglish Untranslatables: devoir

Showing posts with label devoir. Show all posts

Monday, February 8, 2016

#18 - Should & Devoir

This word is an interesting case. Though it's not 100% untranslatable, it can lead to some very awkward linguistic contortions. If you look up "should" in a French-English dictionary, you will inevitably find the word devoir. Simple enough, right? However, if you flip to the other half of your dictionary and look up devoir, you'll find that it actually means:

About Franglish Untranslatables

French and English are like step-sisters. We're not from the same branch of the language family tree, it's true, but we've grown up together and a LOT of vocabulary as been begged, borrowed, or stolen both ways across the Channel in the hundreds of years that we've known each other. Much as we might hate to admit it, we have a lot in common.

However, since I've been living in France for the past year, I've come across a lot of words and concepts between French and English that, often surprisingly, don't have a real equivalent in the other language. I thought it'd be fun to explore these and share them with you by making a kind of dictionary of these untranslatable words!

I hope you find it helpful, informative, and entertaining. ^_^