Sunday, October 12, 2014

develop

to develop.

A pretty normal word in English.

A would just like to lodge a small complaint.  I really really strongly dislike the word for develop in Catalan.

I am sorry.

But it is true.

Desenvolupar.

There it is.

BLECH.

Too long, too hard to say, too hard to spell.

Ugly.

Development?  Desenvolupament.

A b*tch to spell.

Sorry to all of you Catalans, it is a lovely language.  That word though?  Blech.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It has a negative sound while develop is a positive concept. Odd.
Seadogk

oreneta said...

I think it's one of those words that evolved from others, it looks like it's got a bundle of prefixes. Still ugly though.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I don't think it evolved that much. In French, it comes from Old French "desveloper", which means "taking something from what it is wrapped around ("enveloppe"). By extension, it ended up being associated with transformation and evolution. So the Catalan verb seems pretty close to the "taking something out of its shell" original and literal meaning.
Still sounds pretty odd, though. But I guess you have the explanation now :).