🚀 go-pugleaf

dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark) writes:

|>  I have a question.  I finally managed to find a French dictionary 
|>  in a store over here-- not a French-English dictionary, but a 
|>  French-French dictionary, words and their meanings.  I was surprised to 
|>  find <<etang>> defined as:
|>  
|>  etendue d'eau moins vaste et moins profunde qu'un lac
|>  
|>  (yes, I realize that the initial 'e's in etang and etendue have accents 
|>  over them...)
|>  
|>  ... "extent of water smaller and less deep than a lake"
|>  
|>  very much like the definition of "pond" in English.
|>  
|>  Anyway, my question is how to explain "Etang de Berre", "Etang de Vaccares", 
|>  et tout les autres etangs grandes de Languedoc??  These are actually much
|>  larger than typical lakes in France, so they would seem to contradict the
|>  definitions.

|>  So...
|>  Is the above dictionary definition "wrong"?
|>  or
|>  Are the coastal etangs of the south exceptions that are too unusual to be 
|>  mentioned in a small, standard dictionary?
|>  or
|>  Are there two kinds of water body that are called "etang" in French, the 
|>  small pond-like ones and the large lagoon-like ones?
|>  or
|>  Are the Langeguedoc etangs wrongly named?  
|>  (If so, I can imagine a picture of "Etang de Vaccares" with a sign, "Ce 
|>  n'est pas un etang", homage a Rene Magritte...)

Well, most of them are certainly less deep than any of the alpine
lakes:-).  (I'm not sure about the Etang de Berre, though.)  My Petit
Robert says "generallement moins vaste, moins profond qu'un lac."  (Note
the "generallement".)

Two possibilities (just guessing): one is that this usage might be
regional (southern France), and the other is that the bodies of water in
question are very recent, and originally were only the size of a pond.
Or maybe that the size is considered relative to the neighboring body of
water -- they are much smaller than the Mediteranean.


-- 
James Kanze    +33 (0)1 39 23 84 71    mailto: kanze@gabi-soft.fr
GABI Software, 22 rue Jacques-Lemercier, 78000 Versailles, France
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