2

Consider the sentence:

Il joue au tennis.

Is the true meaning he is having fun time / feeling joy at tennis?

EDIT BELOW

By 'true meaning' I mean the etymological/ancient/root/deep meaning or a meaning from an era like 15th century.

In today's French it is true that you don't have to enjoy your activity to use the verb jouer. But words change in meaning in time and sometimes get really far from the original meaning.

My logic is that the French people would not have been using 'à' without a reason. Because in French language, there are many verbs used without a preposition. Also, according to English speakers to play is an activity that does not need a preposition, too. I was trying to figure out what made the French people use the verb/action that way.

Xfce4
  • 503
  • 2
  • 7
  • 2
    Could you please expand on what your mean by "true meaning". Jouer means to practice a sport (a musical instrument...). Is this question “Jouer à” or “jouer de” for sports games? any help? – None Aug 04 '21 at 16:14
  • have fun is s'amuser. Il s'amuse quand il joue au tennis ou en jouant au tennis. – Lambie Aug 04 '21 at 18:06
  • @None Question edited. – Xfce4 Aug 05 '21 at 17:38
  • i do find the questions in this question interesting (eg, of "how did jouer change its meaning?" and "historically, why are `a and de used to introduce objects, and why no preposition are used to introduce objects?", and "is there a semantic reason why French and English verbs usually agree about whether that verb takes an indirect object or whether it takes a direct object?"). unfortunately, i wouldn't know how to ask questions that invite exploration of these ideas, in a way that is precise (ie "not too broad") enough for them to be acceptable on SExchnage sites.. – silph Aug 05 '21 at 23:38
  • I still don't understand how you can see a the relationship between the use of jouer and have fun or enjoy. Or with the use of à (as opposed to what ? de ?). And why have à would be "at", it could be "on", "in", "to"... à is just a preposition with various meanings that introduces an indirect object. – None Aug 13 '21 at 17:53

2 Answers2

6

Update

I mean the etymological/ancient/root/deep meaning or a meaning from an era like 15th century

Well, we should definitely distinguish "etymological" from "deep"; nothing about the past makes a meaning any more valid than a meaning from the present. (Hence, I'm keeping the bottom half of this answer for anyone wondering whether this à is of any importance to a learner.)

Going by the TLFi article and the Latin root, where jouer is from an intransitive verb meaning « s'amuser », I suppose it makes sense to speculate that Vulgar Latin speakers used it more as you suggest: « Il joue, il s'amuse. » — « À quoi ? » — « À ludus latrunculorum. »

Nevertheless:

My logic is that the French people would not have been using 'à' without a reason. Because in French language, there are many verbs used without a preposition.

The reasons for using or not using à aren't related to the meaning. There's no generalization I know of that would link verbs that take a prepositions vs. verbs that take no preposition. Again, in English we "listen to the radio" while the French « écouter la radio »; in French, you « regarder à la télé » while the English "watch TV" — yet, despite the inverted prepositions, these pairs describe one and the same action.

Also, according to English speakers to play is an activity that does not need a preposition, too.

It's tempting to explain one language by another, but these are unrelated words in very distantly related languages. What English does with "play" has no particular bearing on what French does with jouer.

Original answer regarding modern French

No, that's not the true meaning, for several reasons.

  • The type of complement a verb takes is a matter of grammar, not semantics. Otherwise, I take it you'd interpret « il joue du piano » as "He's having a good time with his playing of the piano"? It gets silly fast.

  • The meaning of a French sentence is unrelated to English translations. That is, if there were some other "true meaning", it would be expressed in French and it would actually be hard to express without relying on this same à (« il s'amuse [à jouer] au tennis »).

  • But in fact such a sentence doesn't capture the true meaning, as can be seen by the many contexts in which we'd say « il joue au tennis » when a person regularly plays tennis or is playing tennis at this moment — whether or not he's having a good time! In other words, the true meaning can be seen by how the sentence is used, and it's just used to mean "play".

  • Even if you were to translate in this literal way, à is not always translated at. It has no exact translation.

In short, this word-for-word reading is neither accurate nor does it help comprehension. It only hurts it. If you love grammar, you can take an interest in why jouer takes à, but if you simply want to understand and speak French, it's a fairly meaningless detail.

A French speaker might as well say: "Why in English does listen take to, as in He listens to the radio? Is the true meaning « Il apprend attentivement en ecoutant la radio » ?" The answer would be the same: no. "Listen to" is the natural, and only, way to describe how one interacts with a radio; and « jouer à » is the natural, and only, way to describe how one participates in tennis.

Also, as Lambie points out in the comments, this is a standard construction with jouer, so you'd have to propose a similar alternative meaning for a ton of phrases.

Luke Sawczak
  • 19,438
  • 4
  • 34
  • 70
  • Isn't it worth mentioning that the idiomatic usage jouer au tennis for to play tennis opens up a series of uses such as jouer aux cartes, or jouer aux échecs or jouer aux sports, to mention a couple, where the structure of the language really reveals itself. sometimes so hard to get for newbies. – Lambie Aug 04 '21 at 18:10
  • 2
    @Lambie Beware that jouer aux cartes/aux échecs are common and idiomatic, jouer aux sports is not. – jlliagre Aug 04 '21 at 22:25
  • @jlliagre C'est idiomatique au Canada: https://mcl.schools.smcdsb.on.ca/UserFiles/Servers/Server_91226/File/Le%20fran%C3%A7ais%20avec%20Mme%20Laframboise/Visual%20Aids%20for%20learning%20French/11%20sports.pdf – Lambie Aug 04 '21 at 22:31
  • Annexe 22 2e année: Activité d’écoute Listening text: Bonjour, je m’appelle Marc et j’adore jouer aux sports. https://www.stf.sk.ca/sites/default/files/unit-plans/p102_5.pdf ]Je sais, on peut dire pratiquer les sports, faire du sport, etc. Please do not use Beware. Beware is for a danger: Beware of the dog. Perhaps you mean: Be aware that. And in Switzerland: jouer aux sports traditionnels//https://doc.rero.ch/record/31130/files/mp_ms1_p18313_p18521_2011.pdf/par exemple – Lambie Aug 04 '21 at 22:32
  • 2
    @Lambie Pas idiomatique, il s'agit d'anglicismes. Google ne trouve que cinq occurences de il joue aux sports et manifestement, aucune n'a été écrite par un francophone. On ne dit pas non plus pratiquer les sports, sauf si on ajoute une précision, pratiquer les sports de combats, par exemple. – jlliagre Aug 04 '21 at 22:48
  • L'exemple suisse suit la même logique: jouer aux sports traditionnels**. – jlliagre Aug 04 '21 at 22:51
  • Effectivement, je traduis attention par beware mais ça semble exagéré ici, il n'y a pas de danger immédiat... – jlliagre Aug 04 '21 at 22:56
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Lambie Aug 04 '21 at 23:29
  • Luke thank you for the detailed explanation. It looks like I need to edit the question to be more clear. – Xfce4 Aug 05 '21 at 17:10
  • Nice update. In today's French language, the reason for using à is not related to the meaning 'anymore'. But it looks like there was a reason for that in the past and although the exact action corresponding to the verb changed, the generations kept the phrasal tradition. This seems to be the case for the English phrase listen to, too. – Xfce4 Aug 06 '21 at 02:11
  • jouer comes from Lat. jocari (to play, to joke) which in late Latin replaced and took on the meanings of ludere (to play, to entertain, to play games - skill games, gambling games, to play a part, to mock, to practice a physical exercise) so I think you are taking a big short shortcut in saying that "jouer is from an intransitive verb meaning « s'amuser »". In Middle French jouer had already acquired the meaning of Pratiquer, exercer (une technique, une activité) (to practice an activity). Your answer doesn't clarify that al all. – None Aug 13 '21 at 19:12
1

‘Jouer à quelque chose’ is a misleading idiomatic expression. Indeed, the verb ‘jouer’ implies the notion of pleasure, but not in this case. For example, in middle school or high school, during physical education and sports classes ‘on jouait au football’ and believe me I have never experienced the slightest pleasure in this game. In French ‘on joue à un sport’, in the sense that one practises a sport, and this because at the base it is a game with its rules and scoring system. But ‘nous jouons également aux échecs, au backgammon, au tarot’. I hope I have answered your question as well as you could expect.

MLD Traduction
  • 119
  • 4
  • Thank you for the échecs part. It was not so clear to me if à or de would follow jouer in those cases. Btw, I edited the question to make it more clear. – Xfce4 Aug 05 '21 at 19:44
  • Bienvenue sur French Language SE. Good point in that playing something doesn't have to mean enjoying it. @Xfce4 That is a different issue than what makes a phrasal verb. For jouer à ou de ; please see the linked question for things like jouer aux billes, à la marelle. À quoi tu joues ? – livresque Aug 05 '21 at 21:51
  • 4
    On ne dit pas "jouer à un sport". Si on utilise "jouer à" en parlant d'un sport, il s'agit de ce sport considéré en tant que jeu (ex: football). Pour les sports n'étant pas des jeux, on ne peut pas dire "jouer à". Ex: on ne dit pas : "je joue aux lancer du poids" ou "je joue à la course à pied". – XouDo Aug 06 '21 at 08:48
  • 1
    Je vous rejoins sur ce point XouDo, néanmoins nous jouons au rubgy, au football, à la pétanque, à la course (jeux favoris des enfants), à cache-cache... – MLD Traduction Aug 06 '21 at 09:19
  • @XouDo Dans le domaine sportif on emploie jouer uniquement dans le cas de sports d'équipe (sinon on emploie le verbe faire, parfois pratiquer), pour jouer il faut qu'il y est interaction. Le substantif qui correspond au verbe jouer est jeu mais on n'emploie jeu que pour parler de la façon dont un sportif exerce son art, pas pour l'ensemble de la prestation de l'équipe. Aucun sport n'est un jeu. – None Aug 13 '21 at 17:34
  • @None Pourtant on dit bien "jouer au tennis" et ce n'est pas vraiment un sport d'équipe. Pareil pour jeu, au football on bien dire : l'équipe X impose son jeu à l'équipe Y. – XouDo Aug 17 '21 at 14:52
  • @XouDo Le tennis ça ne joue pas tout seul il y a bien interaction entre deux équipes qui s'opposent (à moins d'être à entraînement avec un lanceur de balles). Pareil pour la pétanque ... Quand tu dis « l'équipe X impose son jeu » il ne s'agit pas de s'amuser mais de la façon dont le sportif exerce son art, on parle aussi du « jeu » d'un instrumentiste en musique. Et ça n'a rien à voir avec le plaisir évoqué dans la question. Comme le dit excellemment cette réponse (la seule valable à mes yeux) il y a au départ un contresens dans le sens de jouer. – None Aug 17 '21 at 14:58
  • @None Les sports d'équipe comme le tennis, la boxe ou le ping-pong, ça semble évident! Plus sérieusement c'est le fait que "jouer" implique "plaisir" qui me semble pas exact. L'expression "jouer à" n'est pas misleading... elle est idiomatique c'est tout. – XouDo Aug 17 '21 at 17:21