True. There’s also the Québecois “Jos Bleau” (Joe Blow), but it’s not a legal term either. I really don’t know what is used in a legal way.
And funnily enough, Rue St-Laurent is known as “the Main” in Montreal.
There is no “Main Street” or “Principale”(though there’s one in Laval), but your other examples all exist (well, Jacques-Cartier is a bridge, but Cartier is a road).
I tend to agree with your impression of street names, but I can’t think of a rue Principale or St-Laurent in Sherbrooke (though Magog has a Principale). I feel I might be spending way too much time looking at Google Maps for the next while!
Do you mean to tell me that there are towns in America where the main street is actually called “Main Street”? I had always assumed that this was a literary concept.
In my experience, most places (planned ones, anyway) have a Main Street. My hometown of Columbia, SC is a planned city and has a Main Street; I just got back from Salt Lake City which also does.
That was intentional. Translating it “are you sleeping” would have not served the purpose of showing the difference between the translation and the original. Yes, I’m aware that the present tense often can be translated as the present progressive in English.
It also would have made an important point moot–that the French does not spell out that there are “morning bells”, and just assumes that the person knows that if someone asks you to ring morning-prayers, they mean the bells that announce them. If I’m going to add the word Are, what justification to I have for not adding the word bells?
Finally, it’s a habit I picked up from being a vocal music major. IN order to learn a piece had three different types of translations: literal (which was done through looking each up word up in a dictionary), figurative (figuring out what they actually meant), and poetic (the one provided by the music itself). While I am used to people using figurative for what I was taught to call poetic, I was not aware of people using literal to mean what I call figurative. I will endeavor to use the proper term “word-for-word” in the future.
And here’s the version you apparently wanted:
Brother James,
Are you sleeping?
Ring the morning prayer bells.
Ding Dong Ding.
Any more so than First Street, Fifth Avenue, or Broadway?
“Main Street” has become a common metonym, (especially as a rhetorical trope when paired with “Wall Street”), as has Madison Avenue (=ad industry, hence “Mad Men”), and places such as Hollywood (=commercial film aesthetics and practices). However, in most cities of the U.S. the street itself is almost always a principal commercial route. In Los Angeles it’s where the street numbers start.
I am from Dublin. It has neither a CBD nor a downtown; it has “town”, as in “I am going into town” or “his office is in town”. The boundaries of “town” are not well-defined, and to some extent depend on where you are when you use the word.
There is a High Street, but it’s not the main street, nor indeed a street of any great commercial significance. It running along a ridge on which stands the cathedral. The land slopes downward on either side of High Street; hence the name.
Diego / Santiago / Jaime / Jacobo / Yago, and there are some people who theorize that Diego is actually not a derivation of Santiago (Sant-Iago, where Sant is the old version of Saint, with the San which is the new version of Saint re-separated to leave Tiago, would soften to become Diego) but of a different name of Latin origin (Didacus IIRC).
The British have John Bull, but he isn’t invoked nearly so much as Uncle Sam. Furthermore, John Bull represents the national character, whereas my impression is that Uncle Sam personifies the US government.
We say “Oncle Sam” when referring to the American “Uncle Sam”, or to an actual uncle whose name happens to be Sam. It’s just a translation of the title.
I don’t think Canadians really have an equivalent character to Uncle Sam. I can’t really think of one off hand.
Almost every village, town, and city in the United States has at least one Main Street.
Sometimes, “Main Street” replaces “First Street,” and the next street parallel to “Main Street” is “Second Street.”
Sometimes, instead of a “Main Street” there will be a “High Street,” “Broad Street,” or “Central Avenue,” but these are less common.
I know of at least one town that has both a “Main Street” and a “High Street” (they’re perpendicular).
I know of another town that has a “Main Street” a “Broad Street” and a “Central Avenue” (they roughly form a triangle). The same town also has a “High Street,” but it’s a tiny, minor lane only about a block long.
Cincinnati, Ohio, has none of these, so far I can tell. It has two streets named “Central Parkway” that are perpendicular.
I have a vague recollection of reading something that argued that this is a mistaken origin/etymology for “Diego” and that it’s related to a different name. I can’t remember where I read that though.
Now that I think about it, I think the contention was that “Diego” and “Jaime,” although today associated with “Yakov” and its descendants, were both actually indigenous Iberian (perhaps Basque) names unrelated to Yakub, Iacomus, Jacques, James, etc.
New Orleans doesn’t have a Main Street, we have Canal Street, which separates uptown from downtown. The cross streets change names at Canal and addresses start at 100 on either side.
We use “CBD” because our central business district is on the uptown side of Canal Street. Downtown is the French Quarter, which nobody actually calls downtown.
ETA: Wow. I just realized this is still the Frere Jacques thread. What a hijack/tangent. How the hell did this subject even come up?
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the average man in the U.S. doesn’t picture himself as looking this way. That’s supposed be those guys in Washington, asking for conscripts or selling bonds.
However, by the same token, does the average U.S. women want to see herself in this way, either, (“Columbia,” the female Uncle Sam). If so, what exactly is she pleading for? Probably more appealing would be the prototype for Madame Secretary Clinton, trying on the idea of a new protectorate with her bonnet.
I’m still waiting for the Canadian version. Or do I have to settle with Dudley Do-Right?