I wanted to know how to say death, la mort, since it's a word my mouth seems incapable of reproducing though I've tried again and again with results ranging from l'amour to a few unintelligible syllables, but all of which are not death. My question ended up inspiring my prof to go off on an unforeseen tangent.
According to my French prof Mme. Maurice there is no death in France and no one dies. She says this is a product of the youth-obsessed French culture and that people will always find a way to get around saying that someone has died by using a different verb - he is lost, she has passed, they are deceased. But never he is dead, she is dead, they are dead.
Death, she says, is reserved for animals like dogs.
And as she was saying this all I could think about was that when I die I want it to be said that I am dead. I want that verb, that specific verb. Because death is a specific process and a specific process requires a specific verb. Rather than saying this aloud, I just decided to call it a cultural difference and I still can't pronounce death properly in French.
According to my French prof Mme. Maurice there is no death in France and no one dies. She says this is a product of the youth-obsessed French culture and that people will always find a way to get around saying that someone has died by using a different verb - he is lost, she has passed, they are deceased. But never he is dead, she is dead, they are dead.
Death, she says, is reserved for animals like dogs.
And as she was saying this all I could think about was that when I die I want it to be said that I am dead. I want that verb, that specific verb. Because death is a specific process and a specific process requires a specific verb. Rather than saying this aloud, I just decided to call it a cultural difference and I still can't pronounce death properly in French.
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