#écumeuses. adjective modifying points. my guess is it means frothy? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

coquelicoq · 2 years

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i love reading shit in my second language in which i am not fluent. like do i know what all the words in this sentence mean? no. but do i know what the sentence means? basically, yeah. so it's all good. i'm not gonna be doing any amazing literary analysis here but i get the gist. i'm in the neighborhood. who needs to see the trees when i can see the forest? close enough.

#i just read the sentence 'Le soleil se leva pur et brillant‚ et les premiers rayons d'un rouge pourpre diaprèrent de leur rubis #les pointes écumeuses des vagues.'#here are the words i don't know:#pourpre. could this have something to do with purple??? it's definitely an adjective modifying the adjective rouge #diaprèrent. passé simple third person plural‚ so the subject is les premiers rayons. something about the rays of sunlight doing #something to the waves. to the tips of the waves?#rubis. has to be singular because leur is singular. unclear if the rubis has to do with the rayons or the points des vagues #because i don't know what diaprer means #écumeuses. adjective modifying points. my guess is it means frothy?#because when i see a word that starts with é i replace it with an s and that often gives a hint to the meaning #at least for me as an english speaker with some background in latin #scumeuses is reminiscent of scummy‚ which in an ocean context would be like the froth on the crests of waves #but okay the sentence is about the sun rising over the ocean and coloring the crests of the waves #maybe making them shine like rubies?#like that's what the sentence means. i get it. establishing shot. sun rising over the ocean. color is happening. classic.#okay i looked up the words and this is basically right. diaprer means to adorn with many colors #also ahaha i just looked up diaprer in my robert de poche and it's not even in there! just diapré and it's marked as literary #so i feel like i get a pass for that one lol #french #my posts #i'm now trying to figure out the etymology which has led me down this whole rabbit hole #this by the way is why i don't stop and look up every word i don't know. because it doesn't stop there! i end up surrounded by #my robert de poche my latin dictionary and a device with wordreference AND etymonline AND a french etymology site #all open at the same time and i'm just referring back and forth between them #and then i lose the thread of whatever i was supposed to be reading about in the first place #i do feel like it's cheating learning french as an english speaker because so much of our vocab comes from french #so i can really just guess half the time. pourpre and rubis? come on. if i was learning some totally unrelated language i wouldn't even #have a guess #this time i decided i'm only going to write down/look up a word if it keeps showing up over and over #i'm five chapters in and so far i've only written down 12 words! and i guessed the meaning of half of them

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