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Comment by mysterypie | Hacker News Reader

That seems similar to the way people say PIN number even though PIN itself means personal identification number. I don't know if au jour d'aujourd'hui sounds horribly redundant in French, but I find that PIN number is perfectly acceptable in English, along with SSN number, UPC code, and many others. It takes mental energy to decompose PIN into its components and realize it contains the word "number", so I welcome the redundancy.

When someone asks, "Do you remember your PIN?", I'm thinking about sewing needles or medallions for a second -- if they didn't add the word "number". On the other hand, the acronym ATM is so common that I don't feel the need to say "ATM machine" anymore; I'll say "Where's the nearest ATM?" and expect that most people will immediately understand it without having to think about what it stands for.

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> I don't know if au jour d'aujourd'hui sounds horribly redundant in French

To me it does, it's irritating, like "to go up upstairs" (“monter en haut”). But most people evidently don't care, journalists do it all the time now.

I think it comes down to familiarity with expressions (or acronyms), as you explain. The more you internalize what a conjugate thing is, the more it becomes its own — and grammar be damned on the way, as logic evidently isn't the only path to understanding/speaking (perhaps not even the most common).

I really don’t like the example of “monter en haut”. Certain verbs, like “monter” can have very different meanings without the noun.

Monter en haut: to go up (not specifically stairs, contextually maybe, could just as well be an elevator or a tree house ladder for example)

Monter a cheval: to get on a horses back

Monter un meuble: to assemble furniture (think ikea)

The noun here is not irritating, it’s essential.

I agree with the sentiment, but it's logically redundant since you cannot possibly “monter en bas”, so you should really just say “je monte”. In context, everybody knows if you're talking about the elevator or a horse (right?), and otherwise you may specify. And you're likely to add something, like “je monte chercher blabla” or “elle est montée depuis une heure”, which usually removes ambiguity.

Also, there are proper ways to say “monter en haut”! — monter à l'étage, monter l'escalier, monter dans sa chambre, etc.

Speaking of which, I find that it's particularly important to speak properly around kids, it reinforces good logic, thoroughness I think. My parents were like that, I've always been like that, and I guess I'll do the same to my kids, haha.

> otherwise you may specify

thanks your majesty, queen of fuckin england was it, yea?

back to french you have the reflective verb "s'[en] foutre" (not to give a shit about [it]), which you use "je m'en fous" = i don't care, "tu t'en fous" = you don't care...

you can acronym "on s'en fout" as osef for a general "no one cares" and then rebuild osef as a verb : "je m'osef", "tu t'osef" etc...

No one says "je m'osef".. :roll_eyes:

Never heard "je m'osef" in my whole life :)

"Je m'en zef" is a more popular way of saying so (even if 'zef' is mostly used for slang on other contexts)

>reflective

reflexive

> That seems similar to the way people say PIN number even though PIN itself means personal identification number.

At least in Germany/German language, if you use such a redundant wording, you are often considered to be not very knowledgeable. In the 90s, some people even loved to point out that SMS is the name of the service - the message is an SM (oh, the funny puns that can be constructed from this fact).

> I don't know if au jour d'aujourd'hui sounds horribly redundant in French

No, we use it to emphasize that what we're talking about is as of today, but we can't make projections on the future.

You would use it in a sentence like : au jour d'aujourd'hui there are 'only' 300 deaths from the Chinese virus (implying that you don't know if it's going to get much worse or not).

Agree. It’s like a bad translation of “as of today”. It is kind of ugly though and to me it sounds awful, especially when you consider that you can replace it by the much more simple and elegant “à ce jour”.

“Au jour d'aujourd'hui” is most definitely bad grammar, or at bad least style, and thus I'm pretty sure it's wrong in the eyes of linguists, the Académie Française, etc.

But I'm sure the French are not the only ones to elevate some bad grammar/style to a level of consensus. Proof that languages are living things!

JFYI:

http://www.acronympolice.org/

http://www.acronympolice.org/?page_id=90

>3.2 Multiple Repeat Violations: A section 3 paragraph 2 offence occurs when multiple redundant acronyms are used in the course of a conversation. An example of a section 3 paragraph 2 violation would be “Honey, what is your PIN number, I need to take some money out of the ATM machine. If I have to go into the bank, they are going to ask for my SSN number and I can’t remember it”.

This is known as PNS Syndrome.

Hopefully it won’t grow into eTLA acronym.

RAS (Redundant Acronym Syndrome) syndrome: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome

> I don't know if au jour d'aujourd'hui sounds horribly redundant in French

It varies from community to community. Some say it all the time, others laugh as soon as someone says it, and everything in between.

It might not help that "PIN" sounds exactly like of of the numerous slang synonyms for... well, just ask any French guy ;)

Then again, if your usual corner distributeur is asking you for this other PIN, authentication methods have certainly gotten a lot more creative!

What's wrong with PINumber?

It's not like "RIP in peace"

Pin and P.I.N. (spelled out) are two different words in reality.

That's fine if you're chatting via a written medium. I think the point the GP was making was when it's used in spoken language.

Where does pin the word come from in this context?

TTL logic

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