Forbidden Lawn
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This afternoon at the Jardin du Luxembourg, which is around the corner from where I'm living for the next couple of months:
The sign in the center right of the picture reads:
It's interesting that the English and Spanish versions spell out precisely what you are authorized to do — though it's clear that lying down, walking, playing ball, etc., are also permitted — whereas the French version simply identifies the lawn as authorized.
The existence of the sign obviously implies that not all lawns are authorized, and indeed the Sydney Daily Photo for August 11, 2011, shows exactly the same lawn with a sign that says Pelouse Interdite (= "Forbidden Lawn"):
Although the park was crowded this afternoon, I saw relatively few people trespassing on the pelouses interdites, although there didn't seem to be any active enforcement.
Bob Moore said,
May 9, 2015 @ 4:13 pm
> "around the corner from where I'm living for the next couple of months"
Mark, what is the minimum length of time in your idiolect to be "living" somewhere rather than merely "staying"? I assume you would agree with:
* I am living in a hotel tonight, while my apartment is being painted.
Glenys Hanson said,
May 9, 2015 @ 4:15 pm
When I arrived in France in the 60s I was told that the signs everywhere in parks "Respecter la pelouse" had been installed by the Vichy government. Before that the French could spit and picnic on it as they wished. Couldn't find confirmation in five minutes search on the Internet.
David Marjanović said,
May 9, 2015 @ 4:46 pm
Well, yes, that's the normal way to say it in French. :-| Rather than doing anything particular on the lawn, the lawn itself is forbidden to everyone. Short, to the point, and never a misunderstanding.
See also: spelling "out of order" (hors service) as "H . S".
Kevin Flynn said,
May 9, 2015 @ 5:06 pm
Isn't "Aquí se puede usted sentar" incorrect Spanish? Surely it should be either "Aquí se puede sentar" or "Aquí puede usted sentarse"? — although both of those phrases sound to me a little awkward; wouldn't "Se permite pisar el césped" (the opposite of the "Se prohibe pisar el césped" that appears on the other sign) be a more likely formulation (and much closer, too, to the French "Pelouse autorisée"). What do native-speakers of Spanish think?
Mark Mandel said,
May 9, 2015 @ 6:22 pm
Oh, you know the French: If it's not French, they don't care if it's right or not.
;-)
D.O. said,
May 9, 2015 @ 11:15 pm
It's interesting that the greenery in the pictures is designated as grass and pelouse and not lawn and gazon, which they seem to be more like.
Tom S. Fox said,
May 10, 2015 @ 1:49 am
Kevin Flynn, I assume you intend “Aquí se puede sentar” to be an impersonal reflexive construction (“One can sit down here.”).
But the verb sentarse is by its very nature reflexive, so the sentence really only means, “He, she, or it can sit down here.”
To make it impersonal, you have to add “uno”: “Aquí uno se puede sentar.”
Also, it doesn’t matter whether the object pronoun is placed before the conjugated verb or suffixed to the infinitive, regardless of whether or not there is an “usted.”
So “Aquí se puede usted sentar” is not only correct, it is even found in Spanish language textbooks: https://books.google.de/books?id=Lzr_PcdBFB8C&q="Aquí+se+puede+usted+sentar."
Tom S. Fox said,
May 10, 2015 @ 2:10 am
D.O. wrote: “It's interesting that the greenery in the pictures is designated as grass and pelouse and not lawn and gazon, which they seem to be more like.”
Uhm, that’s what a lawn is: an expanse of grass.
Tom S. Fox said,
May 10, 2015 @ 2:25 am
Although the park was crowded this afternoon, I saw relatively few people trespassing on the pelouses interdites, although there didn't seem to be any active enforcement.
It’s shocking how many Americans are surprised by the fact that people in other countries don’t need to be constantly policed. Here is another example of that: https://elizabethkniffin.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/45/
K. Chang said,
May 10, 2015 @ 2:52 am
@Kevin Flynn — reads like machine translation to me. "Aqui se puede usted sentar" probably came from "Here you can sit". :) You can tell this is written "by committee" instead of a single polyglot. :D My Spanish is getting rusty, but maybe "Sentarse aqui es permitido" is more natural?
Sawney said,
May 10, 2015 @ 3:38 am
I reckon one of the things which is noticeable about the Jardin du Luxembourg is a highly visible police presence – gendarmes as well as municipal parkies. Never mind sitting on the grass, try a slow stroll at closing time.
Phillip Minden said,
May 10, 2015 @ 4:10 am
I was there on Thursday, so that our boy could play with the voiliers. The booth was closed, because they're usually open only when there's no school ("but you can wait, sometimes he comes anyway"). Never mind that the weather was fine and the park full of children. Grrrr.
Glenys Hanson said,
May 10, 2015 @ 4:27 am
Another 1960s anecdote. If you look carefully you'll see three metal chairs in the foreground with nobody sitting on them. Being careful to respect the lawn, a friend and I sat down on two of them. I knew we'd have to pay for the privilege and sure enough a while later an old lady with a leather bag arrived and first asked my friend to pay 1F. Then she turned to me and asked me for 1F 50. When I protested she told me my friend was sitting on a "chaise" but I was sitting on a "fauteuil" (armchair).
Look at the photo again: the middle chair has metal arms. I hadn't noticed them when I sat down – they were all chairs to me. But I dutifully paid for my linguistic ignorance.
"Armchair" in English does not evoke any kind of metal seat to me. How about you?
My French-speaking self has ever since seen these park seats differently from my English-speaking self. Is this a proof of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? ;-)
Mark Meckes said,
May 10, 2015 @ 10:10 am
I'm interested in Bob Moore's question, too, since my (then) 5-year-old daughter once created some confusion for a number of people when, after a period in which we'd done a lot of traveling, she reported that we had "lived" in a long succession of far-flung cities.
J. F. said,
May 10, 2015 @ 10:52 am
@ D.O.
I immediately thought of the film "Gazon maudit".
Peter Taylor said,
May 10, 2015 @ 11:25 am
@K. Chang, se permite is much more idiomatic than es permitido. And I would expect a machine translation to be done directly from the French and give something like césped autorizado, although I'm not sure what exactly Spanish-speakers would generally understand to be authorised.
On a separate note, the subject of authorised lawns reminds me of a sign which once caused me amusement by disclaiming liability for injuries to "unauthorised persons". Although in context it could be assumed to refer to people without authorisation to enter the building site to which the sign was attached, it did raise a mental image of parenting licences.
K. Chang said,
May 10, 2015 @ 2:15 pm
@Peter Taylor — Thanks. As I said, my Spanish is rusty. :) Which is why i think the sign was 'written by committee'. :D
AB said,
May 10, 2015 @ 10:46 pm
You also see signs like this one ("pelouse au repos"/"lawn at rest"): https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3241/3061427121_96455b15eb_z.jpg
Here's an amusing and highly anthropomorphic example (Mandarin?-English): http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b3/60/a8/b360a8b12e19360b9486afb56381c874.jpg (there may even be a whole LL post in this one).
christoll said,
May 11, 2015 @ 6:22 am
This is one of the least appealing things about Paris: the extreme rarity of "authorized lawns". There is no need for them to spell out what it means because lawns being banned from use is such a ubiquitous annoyance in that city. The mere fact that such a sign exists at all is a clear indication of just how exceptional it is to be allowed to sit on a lawn in a public place. In other countries there is simply no sign at all in such cases, because there the exceptional case is that you CAN'T sit on the lawn. We have signs saying "Keep off the grass", but we don't have any signs saying "You don't have to keep off this grass".
christoll said,
May 11, 2015 @ 6:31 am
If you look around the rest of the Jardin du Luxembourg, you'll see that there are not usually any signs elsewhere saying "Pelouse Interdite" because everybody simply knows that you can't sit on any of the lawns there EXCEPT the one in your photo. I believe there is a general sign somewhere in the park with all the rules of the park which says that, but the individual lawns do not normally feature such signs. If you sit on one, one of those enforcement officers will be sure to tell you the error of your ways fairly quickly.
The lawn in the photo, on the other hand, is normally "autorisée" and that is the only reason why the "Pelouse Interdite" sign was used at all: because on that specific day, the "lawn you can sit on" had exceptionally become a lawn like all the others, and people needed to be told that.
Jonathan said,
May 11, 2015 @ 8:50 am
From Wikipedia: The jocular saying is that, in England, "everything which is not forbidden is allowed", while, in Germany, the opposite applies, so "everything which is not allowed is forbidden". This may be extended to France — "everything is allowed even if it is forbidden" — and Russia where "everything is forbidden, even that which is expressly allowed". While in North Korea it is said that "everything that is not forbidden is compulsory"
Sawney said,
May 11, 2015 @ 9:39 am
And who can forget the classic il est interdit d'interdire ?
Mark Etherton said,
May 11, 2015 @ 10:23 am
@ Jonathan
In Saki's 'When William came', his 1913 novel recounting the consequences of a successful German invasion of the UK and its incorporation into the German Empire, the hero is fined three shillings for walking on the grass in Hyde Park. When he asks whether all the grass is out of bounds, he is told:
“Everywhere where you see the notices,” said the policeman, “and that’s about three-fourths of the whole grass space; there’s been a lot of new gravel walks opened up in all directions. People don’t want to walk on the grass when they’ve got clean paths to walk on.”
Jonathan said,
May 11, 2015 @ 2:19 pm
Also, there is the now-classic: https://twitter.com/williamnordberg/status/562188922907017216
"All affischering utom affischering om affischering förbjuden förbjuden." All postings except postings forbidding posting are forbidden.
Brian Ogilvie said,
May 11, 2015 @ 3:54 pm
@Christoll: I think you're behind the times. On my earliest trips to Paris, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the grass in most parks was for show, not use. The main exceptions were Buttes-Chaumont in the 19th and Montsouris in the 14th. (André Citroën wasn't yet open, if my memory serves.) Of course there were many smaller parks, intended for play, with grass patches.
The Delanoë administration radically changed those policies, encouraging the use of grass and replacing the old "pelouse interdite" signs with the new ones, mentioned above, indicating "pelouse en repos" (lawn resting) for those that had been worn by use, or recently treated or reseeded.
The Jardin de Luxembourg is different, though, since it is run not by the Ville de Paris but by the Sénat.
Robert Coren said,
May 12, 2015 @ 10:37 am
Nothing of linguistic interest to add; I just wanted to express my envy of Mark for living (or staying, as some seem to prefer) around the corner from the Jardin du Luxembourg for the next couple of months.
Sarah said,
May 12, 2015 @ 7:54 pm
@David Marjanović
"Well, yes, that's the normal way to say it in French. :-| Rather than doing anything particular on the lawn, the lawn itself is forbidden to everyone. Short, to the point, and never a misunderstanding."
French is never short! It takes so many extra words to say everything. I work with translations and out of 27 languages French is always the one to go over the character count. Maybe their signs are just more succinct than their other communications.
Agreed that somehow it still gets to the point very well.
chris y said,
May 13, 2015 @ 10:24 am
D.O., I can't speak for the Spanish, but "Please keep of the grass" has been the standard phrasing on such notices in Britain since my father was a child in the 1920s. On the other hand, there is no standard phrasing for the reverse, since such notices are rare indeed: if it's not forbidden, it's permitted.
Hershele Ostropoler said,
May 13, 2015 @ 7:35 pm
"Keep off the grass" signs often get the tiresome attention of soi-disant wags in San Francisco (and lately, I imagine, Washington State and Colorado).