On Sat, Jan 24, 2015 at 1:52 PM, André Warnier <a...@ice-sa.com> wrote:
> Christopher Schultz wrote:
>
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>>
>> André,
>>
>> ...
>
>
>> Morality : in web applications, always specify the content-type
>>> (and character set, if applicable) of what you are returning.
>>>
>>
>> To André: the word you are looking for is "Moral", not "Morality". A
>> "moral" is the essential message of a story, while "morality" is being
>> able to tell the difference between right and wrong. ;)
>>
>>
> Thanks for the vocabulary note. I my defense, I would say that this
> family of English terms is a bit confusing, for a native French-speaker.
>
> The English terms "moral*" are originally undoubtedly imported from the
> French language (William the Conqueror was after all a Frenchman). But
> they kind of messed it up during the import procdure, since in French :
>
> "moral" can be a noun or an adjective. As a noun ("le moral"), it means
> what in English is "the morale" (like "..of the troops"). As a masculine
> adjective, it means "that which is moral/ethical". And that adjective also
> has a corresponding feminine form "morale".
> So you would say :
> - ce conte (masculine) est très moral (this tale is very moral/ethical)
> but
> - cette fable (feminine) est très morale (this fable is very moral/ethical)
>
> On the other hand, "la morale" (feminine noun) is what in English would be
> translated as "the morality" (or "the ethics").
> And to top it all, the English "the moral of this story" would be best
> translated in French as "la moralité de cette histoire".
> A bit confusing, he ?
>
> There are many such things between different - but related - languages,
> some of them often leading to amusing situations. For example, the word in
> spanish for "suffering from a cold" is "constipado", which is very close to
> the french word for being incapable to go to the toilet ("constipé"). And
> the English adjective "embarassed" (also imported from the French
> "embarassé(e)", and with the same meaning), is very close to the Spanish
> "embarassada", which means "pregnant".
>
> This all just in case someone was wondering about my interest in character
> set issues on the WWW..
>
>
Ant then there are the people who think German is a difficult language ...
:-)
Cheers
Martin
