Should " a former British charges d'affaires" be " a former British charge d'affaires"

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"The North certainly seems to be edging away from some of its high-flown rhetoric and having brought in the stealth bombers [during military drills with the South], the US is also starting to ease up a bit," said James Hoare, a former British charges d'affaires in Pyongyang. "I think China is effectively saying to everyone: calm down and let's do something sensible."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/12/north-korea-missile-launch-isolation-kerry

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Type: Question • Score: 5 • Views: 870 • Replies: 19

[+4] - contrex - 04/13/2013[quote="izzythepush"]Should it? We anglicise everything. [/quote] Do we? That's a bit of a generalisation, and like all statements of that ilk, of debatable acuracy. (Summary: speak...

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@oristarA,

Yes. And even more correctly it should be "a former British chargé d'affaires".

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Should it? We anglicise everything. From Wikipedia.

Quote:

In diplomacy, a chargé d'affaires (French for "charged with (in charge of) matters"), often shortened to simply chargé, is a diplomat - usually a diplomatic Secretary, Counselor or Minister - who heads a diplomatic mission (e.g., an Embassy) in the absence of its titular (e.g., an Ambassador).

A chargé d'affaires represents his or her nation in the country they are accredited to, and enjoy the same privileges and immunities of a regular Ambassador.

While a diplomatic mission may be headed by a chargé d'affaires for an undetermined period of time, most chargés are, nowadays, "chargés ad interim", meaning that they are only heading the diplomatic mission on a temporary basis (for example, during vacation of the Ambassador).

Which would seem to concur with what you've said, but the article continues.

Quote:

Chargés d'affaires (ministres chargés d'affaires), who were placed by the règlement of the Congress of Vienna in the fourth class of diplomatic agents, are heads of permanent missions accredited to countries to which, for some reason, it is not possible or not desirable to send agents of a higher rank (although the countries maintain diplomatic relations). In certain cases, a chargé d'affaires may be appointed for long periods, when a mission is headed by a non-resident ambassador, when countries have established diplomatic relations but not exchanged Ambassadors, or when they have recalled their ambassadors for a period of time (to express displeasure or serious disagreement) but not yet taken the extremely serious step of breaking diplomatic relations. It is not unheard of for chargé d'affaires to remain in place for an indefinite period: for example, as of 2010, Saudi Arabia has not appointed an ambassador to Thailand for over 20 years due to the still-unresolved Blue Diamond Affair.

Since a chargé d'affaires does not need to present letters of credence to the host head of state, appointing a chargé may avoid a politically sensitive meeting or implying some form of approval or recognition of that head of state or government. Equally, the receiving country may express displeasure by declining to receive an ambassador, but maintain diplomatic relations by accepting a chargé. They are distinguished from chargés d'affaires ad interim by the fact that their credentials are addressed by the minister for foreign affairs of the state they represent to the minister for foreign affairs of the receiving state. They have precedence over the other class of chargés d'affaires.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charg%C3%A9_d'affaires

So a charges d'affaires looks like a more specific title than a charge d'affaires.
Btw, I don't know how to put an accent over letters, I'm not being frankophobic, it's one thing cutting and pasting, another to add it yourself.
Bbtw, accents aside, in the UK we generally pronounce it Sharge daffairs, not Shargay daffairs, even though that's not the French pronunciation.

3 Replies

@izzythepush,

Even in English and without accents, charges d'affairs would be plural ... at least, that's how the Foreign Office uses the term. And how I understand your quotes.

0 Replies

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Should it? We anglicise everything.

Do we? That's a bit of a generalisation, and like all statements of that ilk, of debatable acuracy. (Summary: speak for yourself!)

Quote:

So a charges d'affaires looks like a more specific title than a charge d'affaires.

The piece you quoted from directly above that remark starts like this:

Quote:

Chargés d'affaires (ministres chargés d'affaires), who were placed by the règlement of the Congress of Vienna

were... plural. One chargé d'affaires, two chargés d'affaires.

Quote:

Btw, I don't know how to put an accent over letters, I'm not being frankophobic, it's one thing cutting and pasting, another to add it yourself.

francophobic... you can do an acute accent in Windows by holding down the ALT key, then typing 130 on the numberic keypad, then releasing the ALT key. Or you can copy-and-paste, as you noted, or in MS Word you can set the language to French, type away, and make the spell checker put all the accents in for you afterwards.

Quote:

Bbtw, accents aside, in the UK we generally pronounce it Sharge daffairs, not Shargay daffairs, even though that's not the French pronunciation.

I don't know anyone who does that; the BBC news does not (at least not Radio 4 or the TV news)

These days, you may see chargée d'affaires where the person is female, although the Académie française might frown at this. In French, genres of people are traditionally deemed to be masculine, so that any firefighter is un pompier whatever their gender, and there is a movement to create feminine versions of titles of occupations etc e.g. une pompière for female firefighters. The last Socialist government under Lionel Jospin produced guidance for civil servants on this.

2 Replies

@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

Btw, I don't know how to put an accent over letters, I'm not being frankophobic, it's one thing cutting and pasting, another to add it yourself.

We've got them on our normal keyboard .... in "Europe". Wink

0 Replies

@contrex,

Quote:

izzythepush wrote:
Should it? We anglicise everything.

Quote:

Do we? That's a bit of a generalisation,

People who like to put on the dog don't anglicise. They're interested in showing others that they know where a word has come from.

English doesn't have accent marks.

1 Reply

@contrex,

Quote:

although the Académie française might frown at this.

There is no English Language Academy, and this is just as well; the purpose of the Academie Francaise is to amuse journalists from other countries with bitterly-argued decisions that the French gaily ignore.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

People who like to put on the dog don't anglicise.

Of course, there is a fine line between correctness and pretentiousness, of which I am always on the right side (of course), which is probably why I resent being accused, however loosely, of "putting on the dog". Maybe in Kansas they regard people thus who pronounce and write French words and phrases à la française, but here in Europe it is not always so.

It is tricky for me personally; I have been speaking and writing French for 50 years, and I would feel like a right spaz if I started saying things like chargé d'affaires like the bloke on the Chingford omnibus. It is contentious to say that English doesn't have "accent marks", UK English certainly does, especially in unassimilated foreign loanwords e.g. in café, résumé, soufflé, and naïveté. Also in UK English there are some native diacritics: the second of two vowels in a hiatus can be marked with a diaeresis as in words such as coöperative, daïs and reëlect – but its use has become less common, sometimes being replaced by the use of a hyphen. It is also sometimes (rarely) used over a single vowel to show that it is pronounced separately (as in Brontë). It is often omitted in printed works because the sign is missing on modern keyboards.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

the Academie Francaise

Even if I allow the excision of an e with an acute accent and a c with a cedilla, the use of a capital F for "Francaise" just looks ignorant.

1 Reply

@contrex,

Quote:

UK English certainly does, especially in unassimilated foreign loanwords e.g. in café, résumé, soufflé, and naïveté.

I rest my case. That's putting on the dog big time.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

I rest my case.

You can rest your f******g *ss for all I care.

1 Reply

@contrex,

You always resort to this type of nonsense, C, when you realize you don't have a leg to stand on.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

You always resort to this type of nonsense, C, when you realize you don't have a leg to stand on.

I also do it when I frustratedly decide to stop wasting time arguing the toss with people talking out of their fundaments.

1 Reply

@contrex,

Yeah right, C. You can up off the floor now, you pretentious ole fart.

1 Reply

@JTT,

JTT wrote:

Yeah right, C. You can up off the floor now, you pretentious ole fart.

I think I won that one on points.

0 Replies

@contrex,

contrex wrote:

JTT wrote:
the Academie Francaise

Even if I allow the excision of an e with an acute accent and a c with a cedilla, the use of a capital F for "Francaise" just looks ignorant.

Well, gentlemen, Aside: in à la française, ç is a c with a cedilla/diacritical mark that is placed below the letter c to indicate that it is pronounced as an s?

But how to read é in résumé and à in à la?

1 Reply

@oristarA,

oristarA wrote:

ç is a c with a cedilla/diacritical mark that is placed below the letter c to indicate that it is pronounced as an s?

Yes.

Quote:

But how to read é in résumé and à in à la?

Without the acute accent, the the letter e is normally pronounced [ɛ] or [ə]. With the acute accent it is pronounced [e].

In most cases, including à, the grave accent has no effect on the pronunciation of a vowel.

1 Reply

@contrex,

Thank you Contrex.

BTW, does anyone have any clue how to read Latin Language (I mean Latin Language itself, not the English words Latin and language)?

0 Replies

Is this page accessible to you?

http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Introductio/Pronunciatio.html

0 Replies

Should " a former British charges d'affaires" be " a former British charge d'affaires"

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