Again, Manuel, that is very interesting and I thank you for the
enlightenment. The "mon" bit is part of the French that was taught
in schools in England 35 years ago ... If only I could talk to my
various French teachers about it now :-)
I believe that you have just used "deprecated" in the W3C sense: that
a tag or function is no longer recognised as current. That's not its
real meaning in English. It might seem subtle, but it means devalued
or understated, e.g. " ... I am not a very good drummer", he
admitted, self-deprecatingly ...
Chris
On 13 Dec 2006, at 15:16, Manuel Viet wrote:
> You're perfectly right, but firstly, in the construct you used
> («bien dit, mon
> brave»), in fact you are shortening the full sentence which is «
> bien dit,
> mon brave *first name here* », so that the implied noun is after the
> adjective.
>
> The other form, meaning "gallant", I think, is almost deprecated in
> common
> use.
>
> And secondly, it's nearly never well perceived to use a possessive
> "mon"
> against someone else. Even « mon cher ami » can convey the exact
> opposite
> meaning, and explicitely « mon petit ami » is outright offensive in
> direct
> address to someone. The only accepted cases of use are for a girl
> talking
> indirectly of her boyfriend. « Mon » is still used in the military
> to address
> an officer as « mon *insert rank* ». This case is specific, because
> in the
> military « mon » is shorthand for « monsieur » and as such, isn't
> used with a
> female officer.
>
> The difficulty in learning another language is that teaching is
> often based on
> classic texts, and they are not very useful for those kind of
> meaning shifts.
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