Reading the brochure “Employee Code of Ethics” of the client, to whom I came here. The brochure is in French. It includes a phrase about the company taking action in case of law violation – in French, this is prendre des mesures. Literally, it translates directly. Came home to Google, wondering what measures (mesure) have to do with it. The word “measure” clearly relates to measuring, and prendre means to take. In English, there’s a similar phrase: to take measures. The internet doesn’t answer why measuring something means doing something to fix something. Maybe you know?
I recalled another interesting example, I wrote about it sometime. The word au lieu means “instead,” where au=at, and “leau” – place. Interestingly, in English, instead is built similarly (stead means “place,” which is related to stadt in German, meaning city). So, it’s a calque as well.
Became interested in the question of linguistic “calques” and found a few more. Have you ever thought that department literally means “parting,” and influence – where in = in, and fluence = flow. As for the word “переворот” (coup) – it’s a calque from revolution, as revolve means to turn. Also interesting is the word “трогательный” (touching) – translated as touchant. Actually, it arrived into Russian from there. les personnages les plus touchant 🙂
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 