Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 December 30

= December 30 =

Jamais mon amour
For Christmas, one of the gifts my 3 year old daughter received was a shirt (from an American clothing company) with the words "Jamais mon amour" written in large letters across the front. I found this very odd. The literal translation would be "never my love", which doesn't lend itself to any interpretation that would be nice for a little girl to wear. Is there some non-literal meaning in French that I'm missing? Or maybe this is just a design created by someone who doesn't know French and just thought the words looked nice? Any ideas? JJO (talk) 18:45, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, there is the old song Never My Love, but it's difficult to imagine why the title would appear on a shirt at this late date, and in a French translation. Deor (talk) 18:52, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * From personal experience, there seems to be a contingent of folks who like to wear clothes with writing on them, and they're not that interested in what the writing says. I used to work with a guy who liked to wear shirts with obscure text on them, could have been the names of metal bands or something.  I'd ask him about them, and he had no idea.  It was just a shirt. --Trovatore (talk) 21:34, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It must be the word "contingent", not metal bands but they led me right to the selected filmography of film director Alain Resnais. It can be used as a great source for ideas for designing clothes. Resnais' themes, atmosphere and style is an obvious catch for some of the contemporary fashion design scene. Tip: do not stamp the phrase "Last Year in Mariendad" on a swimsuit, although you're all-right do so on shirts. --Askedonty (talk) 10:03, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * (ec) Never My Love is the title of 1967 song. Not sure why anyone would want the title, written in French, on a toddler's shirt, but then there has been "Juicy" written on a toddler's butt, so it's hard to get any more inappropriate than that. StuRat (talk) 18:58, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * "Mon amour" is a phrase you use to talk to a lover, like "darling". So I would assume, if I saw that on a t-shirt, even though there is no comma, that it means "Never, darling", a bit like shouting "I WON'T" (whatever they are saying no to, I have no idea) --Lgriot (talk) 21:46, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * In the song, at least, "Never, my love" is the answer to a series of question which amount to, "Will there ever come a time when you stop loving me?" The song has been covered countless times, and a google search suggests it has been translated into a variety of languages, including French. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:57, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Jamais in this context is likely to mean 'ever', not 'never'. -- zzuuzz (talk) 22:14, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * What could "Ever my love" possibly mean? "Forever my love"? Then no, "Jamais" cannot be used like this at the beginning of a phrase, no one would understand it that way, if you want to mean forever, you have to use "A jamais".--Lgriot (talk) 17:02, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

As a native French speaker my interpretation is the one of Lgriot above. The only positive thing you could say to a 3 year old girl, is that these are words taken from a love song but we don't know the rest of the lyrics and these words alone have no meaning. I also think this T-shirt works best as "just a design created by someone who doesn't know French and just thinks the words look nice". Akseli9 (talk) 11:55, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That kind of thing can be risky. There was a story about a woman who had a T-shirt made with some Chinese characters she saw on a menu. After having worn it for a while, a Chinese acquaintance told her it translated as "cheap but good"! ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:36, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * :-) At least less risky than having them tattooed... Akseli9 (talk) 14:48, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps cheap, and not so good maybe. There is a stupid pun in French to be made using the name of the singer (found by the IP, see below): The little fancy clothes shop. --Askedonty (talk) 10:24, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
 * A similar story I've heard ended with the woman discovering that what she had taken to be the chinese translation of the poetic store name in fact invited those reading her tshirt to "come inside and see what we have on offer" MChesterMC (talk) 10:42, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
 * From talk page. Tevildo (talk) 09:42, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
 * More likely than it being a translation of an English song, it refers to a French song. If you google the phrase, all the first hits are lyrics sites for the song Jamais mon amour by the French singer Castelhemis.184.147.121.46 (talk) 00:12, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed! There we get the proof how much Refdesk enquiries may be influential, well, relating to search engines and their reactivity. I googled the same yesterday and there was only an obscure blog I did not even care to check for the name of an author. --Askedonty (talk) 10:13, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

AmE in the UK, or BrE in the US: error?
Is it considered an error to use the "wrong" spelling? Or to mix American/British spelling? --Llaanngg (talk) 21:41, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It can be. A given document should be consistent. I've gotten e-mails from Americans and from Britishers and those taught in British-originated schools, such as Indians. I expect the first to spell it "color" and the other two to spell it "colour". It's not an error, in those cases. If they collaborate on a document, though, they need to agree on which spelling to use. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you mean is it considered an error in Wikipedia, or in general (e.g., office) usage? In Wikipedia, each article is written in the appropriate regional variety of English.  It is considered an error to use American spelling in the article on London or to use British spelling in the article on the Mississippi River.  In general use, it is usually considered an error to use spelling other than that of the country in which one is.  (There are exceptions.  In discussions of treaties to which both the United States and the United Kingdom are parties, it may be an error for an American to use American spelling, because the treaty, or the English version of the treaty, is in British English out of deference to the mother country.  The United States reports its holdings of "armoured combat vehicles" under certain treaties, for instance, and on the "colour" of the filters used on certain cameras.)  In Wikipedia, use the appropriate regional variety of English.  Robert McClenon (talk) 21:50, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I meant in general, but Wikipedia's policy is also of interest. I also wonder how colleges deal with this. There must be a lot of edit warring in article like the War of 1812 or WW II Allied aeroplanes bombed the Nazis. Stop edit-warring, your behaviour is unacceptable. No, Allied airplanes bombed the Nazis. Your behavior is unacceptable. . --Llaanngg (talk) 21:55, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The very first version of the article in 2001 had British spelling, possibly because it was lifted from a British encyclopedia. Currently it appears to have American spelling. In the end, Andrew Jackson prevails. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:05, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Wiki policy is designed first and foremost to favour American over English. As wiki started off as a mainly American project, most of the early articles would have been in American. The policy is that the article stays in the original spelling, whether or not that makes sense. This leads to quite frankly bizarre situations where many wholly European articles are written in American. Fgf10 (talk) 22:37, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * There are many more Americans than Britons. I don't see how British English can find it's way through an international site, unless an article is about Elizabeth II.
 * "The English Wikipedia prefers no major national variety of the language over any other."  Alansplodge (talk) 15:12, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ENGVAR issues actually occur in my day job as well. Quite a few scientific journals actually explicitly specify which dictionary to follow when writing manuscripts (this usually means Websters, as this usually the American journals). However in the few times I've come across this, I've simply ignored it and have not had any problems. Fgf10 (talk) 22:37, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * As with the discussion of words like "conversate" vs. "converse", as long as the meaning is clear it really shouldn't matter. But to some, it does. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:41, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * To modify Robert McClenon's point just a little bit: Yes, it's true that it is usually considered an error to use spelling other than that of the country where one finds oneself. However, at least in the US, unless there is a legal or professional requirement to use a specific dictionary, that "error" is likely to be one for which there is no penalty. StevenJ81 (talk) 22:43, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * There can be unwritten penalties, though. Cronyism is pretty huge at the top of most careers, and the fewer hunches you can give your boss that you might be "one of them", the better. For your wallet, anyway. It can be hard on your hair keeping up the act. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:01, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I also would like to know whether publishers localize their books using alternative spellings. I only know systematic localization from product manuals (for cars and software). Llaanngg (talk) 22:50, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes and sometimes in very strange ways. I read a US published book originally written and published in the UK. They removed the U from colour and labour but left in the words bonnet and draughts. It may have been on the RD but there was something about a major US newspaper spelling the Labour Party (UK) without the U. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 00:13, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * And sometimes U.S. publishers "Americanize" the bonnets and draughts stuff as well. See, for instance, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Deor (talk) 01:33, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
 * And in Australia, publishers often do not consider it worthwhile to specifically create an Australian localisation, and so just use the British-ised version, with some odd results, such as references to pounds instead of dollars, or substitution of US idioms by British idioms which are even less familiar to Australians than the original US ones. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 10:47, 31 December 2015 (UTC)