A language learners’ forum

Randorama wrote:
I found myself struggling to convey the (simple?) concept, so I tried with:

"Maxime est situé trois metres devant la voiture"

My French friend proposed that a better sentence would be:

"Maxime est situé à trois metres devant la voiture"

Both sentences are correct.
As a native speaker, I would perhaps also use "à" because it's more souple: Maxime est devant la voiture, à trois mètres: if you change the words' order, you see that you need "à", so when you use "à" you don't have to think about the words' order: the words can get out of the brain in a more spontaneous way, perhaps..
The more natural for me is without "situé". Maxime est à trois mètres (,) devant la voiture.

Klara, thank you! It did not even cross my mind to Google "Nadir Électrique".

As to Jeff Nadir, as he is the Health and Safety Director, which is a staff position, I doubt that he was the founder (founders of small businesses usually come from the Production/Operations or Sales/Marketing side). In addition, as the business was founded in 1966, Jeff looks too young to have be the originator. Perhaps he inherited the business from a relative, turned it over the les Wilmot (who are the Executive Directors) and occupied the staff position in which he felt most comfortable. Perhaps ... perhaps ... perhaps. We seem to be one step further; that is, the "Nadir" in "Nadir Électrique" would appear to be derived from someone's last name.

I just Googled "Nadir" as a family name and it would appear that this is personal name based on the Arabic "nadir" meaning 'extraordinary', 'rare', 'exceptional' which seems to be at odds with the etymology presented above (nadir is a distant synonym for zenith ???). Je suis perdu!

Speakeasy wrote:I just Googled "Nadir" as a family name and it would appear that this is personal name based on the Arabic "nadir" meaning 'extraordinary', 'rare', 'exceptional' which seems to be at odds with the etymology presented above (nadir is a distant synonym for zenith ???). Je suis perdu!

It's also the name of a fictional people, based on the mongols, in David Gemmell's Drenai books.

Since some people were bothered by this post I deleted it.

Text removed: no longer pertinent.

Speakeasy, he is probably hoping to maintain a peaceful atmosphere in a group that he helps run. I suggest we leave it at that.

tête de mauvais jours > Quand on est de mauvaise humeur, très contrarié, la mine que l'on fait quand on est mécontent, visage patibulaire, mécontent, malaimable

https://www.languefrancaise.net/Bob/60875

Il a sa tête des mauvais jours, celle qui dit son désarroi et son irritation.

quote from Les grands mythes - L'Iliade episode 3, 18 minutes into episode.

The other day, in response to some information that rdearman kindly passed along my way, I responded: "Je vais me coucher moins niaiseux à soir*!" and it has now just occurred to me that some members of the Le groupe français, and perhaps more particularly those who are interested in Québécois idomatic speech, might wish to know about it. Per the "note" at the bottom of the following description, I confirm that many Québécois (deliberately) choose to use the preposition "à" (for socio-cultural reasons which I will not explore at this time).

*se coucher moins niaiseux = to go to bed less clueless

*se coucher moins niaiseux (ce soir, à soir, ou le soir)
location verbale:
1. (Familier) (Québec) Avoir appris quelque chose (relevant de la culture générale) dans sa journée.
o Je ne savais pas ça. Eh bien ! Je vais me coucher moins niaiseux à soir.
o Sans doute l’idée nous passe-t-elle par la tête le jour où, las d’admirer le ciel et de ne point savoir nommer ce que l’on voit, on décide, comme disait l’autre, de se coucher moins niaiseux. — (Cyberpresse, 31 mai 2006)
o Mais que diriez-vous de quelques informations sur les orchidées, des renseignements de base qui vous feront mieux les apprécier ? Ainsi, […] comme on dit, vous vous coucheriez moins niaiseux ce soir ! — (Le Soleil, 21 novembre 2004)
o C’est comme ça, le sport : on croit avoir tout vu, et on trouve toujours le moyen de se coucher moins niaiseux. — (Jean Dion, Le Devoir, 10 avril 2003)
Note : On dit surtout se coucher moins niaiseux à soir (« ce soir »), mais pas nécessairement
Source : Wiktionnaire

EDITED:
Erreurs de frappe, comme toujours!

tenir tête à quelqu'un > stand up to someone

https://www.wordreference.com/fren/teni ... 3%A0%20qqn

... pour servir d'avertissement aux autres extrémistes et pour tenir tête à la Convention de Paris.

Quote taken from Joseph Fouché, by Stefan Zweig.

Sacre québécois
Les sacres (synonyme de jurons au Québec) québécois font partie du lexique du français québécois parlé. Ils sont pour la plupart tirés de termes ayant trait à la religion catholique. En effet, l'Église catholique a joui jusqu'à la Révolution tranquille d'une influence considérable dans la société québécoise. Source: Wikipédia

Sacre québécois - Wikipédia
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacre_qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois

I learned just about everything on the Wikipédia list, and quite a few more, "sur le tas" whilst working in a small town in the Quebec interior. Apparently, the "bon peuple" used to hold public competitions to determine the most imaginative users of this register of speech. While, as reported in the Wikipédia article, the wellspring from which these "sacres" were drawn was the Catholic religion, the society as a whole is much more "laic" nowadays and most people would not be able to make the connection between the "sacres" and the religious artefacts, rites, and terminology from which they were derived.

This has been your "culture capsule" of the day.