So I was driving along and saw a beauty salon with the name - in French - “Expirez!”, and the additional and further bewildering slogan of “It’s Time to Exhale”. They really should have used “exhalez”. I still wouldn’t get the point, but, anyway.
I did some Googling just to make certain, and in French, one of the synonyms of expirer is indeed mourir, or “to die”, which is the general English usage of “expire” (including that of “time’s up”). Coiffures to die for?
They’d really be stretching it, then. At least “Curl Up and Dye” is time-honored. Maybe I should have posted this in the “meet” thread, but, alas, no pix, and I guess I was sort of covering the outrages of the Engish-speaking world in using other languages. Equal-time, like.
There. I changed the thread title to reflect this.
Well, actually, you’re not the first, but hey, thanks.
I’ll keep an eye out for some of the other local putting-on-airs signage gaffes I’ve seen. Most of the really funny or bizarre ones around here tend to be in questionable French.
There is a large (about 12’x4’) vinyl sign on a fence in front of a lot of recreational vehicles, trailers, etc. it reads “FINANANCING AVAILIABLE”
Every time I pass it I have to look carefully to see if it’s changed.
Tony
I live in a mostly first generation Polish neighborhood in Chicago. About a block from my house is a men’s barber shop called the “Hot Mess” and next to it is a women’s hair salon (perhaps trying to be out of this world) called the “Uranus Salon”.
I can’t help but think that if they had just left the names in Polish like the rest of the signage in the businesses’ front windows it might make more sense?
I only just now remembered this, but one time I was in Columbus, Ohio, and I saw a local election sign, white and blue with bright red letters, which said:
VOTE
COON!
Just like that.
The first impression I got was that the sign was calling the voter “COON,” but then I realized that must be some woman or man’s last name.
There are two businesses right next to each other (only down the street from the finanancing place) that have signs practically touching: ‘Bob’s Barbeque’ and ‘Tanning Salon.’ They make you think.
Tony
One I’ve always wished I’d taken a picture of was in our local Harris-Teeter back in North Carolina. It was on the display of olive oil, and proclaimed “FAT FREE!!!” in big letters.
It’s not English (well, it is partially, but…), but a friend of mine took this picture in a Gaeltacht, which apparently gives a break in the dumping fine if you speak Irish:
“Expirer” is actually the normal French word for “breathe out”, and its second common meaning would be to run out of time - “expire” as in membership of a club, for example.
Most French peopls wouldn’t think of the subsidiary meaning of “die” unless the context suggested it.
But I regularly see misunderstandings arising in my work between people of different languages due to such differences of meaning or connotation: my favourite is the way English-speakers use “pragmatic” as a compliment, to suggest something that’s practical and works, whereas I’ve heard a French person using it practically as a term of abuse for something that didn’t fit into his rational framework of analysis (he was probably a lawyer as well as a Frenchman ).
).