chris on Mon, 16 Jun 1997 22:59:04 +0200 (MET DST)


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<nettime> name.same


Can't find the personnal adress of the person who asked for name.games
so, I send directly to the list. And I just hope the accents will pass
through the lines and not fall in the depth of C-space.

In french you have a very bizzare similitude between  "gène" and "gêne"
(pronounce gen). First one is the french for "gene" and second translates
as "disconfort" or "embarassement" ". According to Larousse dictionnary
(which BTW means the red-hair girl), it comes from old french
gehine=torture and means "a state of uneasiness felt when one has to
accomplish certain actions". Which can be the case when certain people are
binding certain caracters such as intelligence or superiority to genes. A
way to induce that people would not be " les mêmes" (the sames), cause of
their genes.
One french proverb says " la où il y a de la gêne y'a pas de plaisir"
(where there is discomfort there ain't no pleasure). Yes indeed.

Second exemple more similar if possible : "mèmes" and "même" (pronounce
mem), first one meaning "meme" and second one "same" which is not really
the same as meme but undoubtedly part of it.
If you define (who dares) a meme as a self-replicated element, you can
consider it produces "sames"(mêmes) of itself, to propagate. In french,
only the accent  makes the difference, as local culture probably does with
memes, coloring them or changing the name of the firm advertised on the
reverse-baseball-cap.
According to the red-head girl,  "même" derives from latin "metipsimus"
from "egomet ipses", and its first meaning, when put before the noun, is
"similitude, total identity". "Un même mème" tends to be redundant, as it
signifies a same meme.
Written after the noun, it "marks insistance, underlines some precision";
"un mème même" translates as a mere meme. "Etre à même" means to be able
to, to have the capacity to. "Etre un mème" to be a meme doesn't mean
anything.
The philisophical meaning hits the point : " invariant principle of the thought"
and allows me to close this first serie of jeux de mots.

Y.V.

Christine

"One is part of the problem, or of the solution" Ulrike Marie Meinhoff
-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!-!
Christine TREGUIER
90 avenue de Paris - 92320 Chatillon - FRANCE
Tel : 33/1 47 35 6548 - Fax : 47 35 8588
http://www.babelweb.org/virtualistes


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