somewhere in the south of france, gail is saying, 'i could have told you that'.

Experience and experiment were also originally used interchangably in English, before the idea of 'scientific' experiment developed. Thus when John Donne writes in a sermon from 1622 that "All knowledge in heaven is experimental" he means in our terms experiential--a strange engough claim in and of itself.

I was blog-floating and came across this entry. I'd forgotten this interesting detail about the French language. Explains why I often get those words confused, and gives my blog title (the chutry experiment) a nice resonance that I'd overlooked.

I'll never listen to Jimi Hendrix the same way again.

I learned this one over the winter while remodeling our house here in Deux-Sévres. My carpenter, who is very experienced but not very experimental, almost always says essai or d'essai to mean experimental, as in essayer: to try, and expérience means experience more often than experiment. Mais peut-être c'est la langue du campagne, ou on evite plusieurs jeux avec des mots.

expérience means experience more often than experiment

Well, sure it does, because people talk about experiences much more often than about experiments. But expérience is the only word they have for the latter, so when they talk about them, that's what they use.

Caterina, your entry has sparked a meditation which is only tangentially related:

Currently I'm reading Proust for the first time. I don't know French, and had to choose from several different English translations (all of which seem to originate with Moncrieff). Ultimately, I chose Moncrieff unmodified since, to my understanding, he popularized Proust in English.

I've compared the various translations and alterations; things are different. I can't help wonder what I'm missing from one translaton to the next.

Even with the title of Proust's opus, I feel a victim of the translation. The almost-literal translation is apparently In Search of Lost Time. Moncrieff translated the work as Remembrance of Things Past, though, and he had his reasons: it's more poetic, and it's truer to Proust's source (a Shakespearean sonnet) and intent (to evoke a particular feeling/mood). Which is best? I don't know.

At this point, I just wish I knew French!

JD -- The title is not truer to Proust, who did not have Shaxper in mind. The main reason for most of the modified translations has been to correct Moncrieff's mistakes and distortions; I'm not suggesting that you'll have a bad Proust experience (Moncrieff has a fine style), but if you want accuracy, the more recent the version the better.

And by all means, learn French!

I hereby withdraw the first sentence of my previous comment; J.D. has very kindly written me to explain that apparently Proust did have (an inaccurate French translation of) a Shakespear sonnet in mind. I still think the Shakspere quote is misleading in terms of the mood of the novel, but my remark was overhasty.

*reminds self to be more careful about shooting off mouth*

To be fair to Language Hat, I have only one source (Phyllis Rose's The Year of Reading Proust), and am not convinced it is infallible. I agree that In Search of Lost Time, while less poetic perhaps, is a more accurate representation of the novel.

On Proust translations, there was an interesting examining of the merits of each in a Guardian article from last year: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/classics/0,6121,841473,00.html Incidentally, I was at school with a relative of the infamous Scott-Moncrieff.