Saturday, June 24, 2006

Il me manque

Jesse has gone to Chicago for a month. Il me manque. That translates to 'I miss him,' but I like the French version better because it changes the order of the words. More literally, it might be "he lacks in me." Randy never felt the phrase made sense until I pointed out the similarity to the use of the word haunt: he haunts me. The French word makes missing something that happens to you, not something that you do, which I think better describes the hole in your heart when someone is gone from your life.

2 comments:

AnnM said...

Clearly not a linguist here. I knew something was not quite right but it took me four days to realize I had mispelled the word so as to say something like,
"it handles me."

Anonymous said...

Oh, well, we sure didn't know the difference. Patricia