Monday, October 8, 2012

Remembrance of things

When you travel to France, you'll see signs like this everywhere. What does RAPPEL mean? Obviously, "slow down," right? Ummm...

It doesn't mean "straighten me up" either

After seeing RAPPEL for the thousandth time, I finally looked it up. It means "reminder" or "recall." Aha! Appeler means to call (as in Je m'appelle Brian, "I call myself Brian"), so rappel is literally "re-call." How elegant. And it brings us to an interesting point. In France, one of the responsibilities of a driver is to know, by heart, a table of the standard speed limits on various types of roads. That means, in turn, that a driver has no excuse for not knowing what the speed limit on a given road is. The word RAPPEL on a sign means "You should already know this; this sign does not indicate a departure from the previous regime." How admirably tough-minded.


No comments:

Post a Comment