mur / muraille

    • "Mur" = any wall you may think of, including some barriers ("sound barrier" = "mur du son").
    "Muraille" is never used for a house, even for a castle. It means something really huge and preferably very old and always made of stone, enclosing a stronghold, a town or a whole country. It is also sometimes used to describe a high cliff or a steep mountain slope.

    Example : "La Grande Muraille de Chine".
    On the other hand : "Le Mur de Berlin" (because the Berlin Wall was not that high, and was built in recent times)
     
    From Flaubert:

    "Le matin, par habitude, Félicité entrait dans la chambre de Virginie, et regardait les murailles."

    Now, that is definitely inside...

    MURAILLE : Définition de MURAILLE seems to suggest that it is (was?) used to refer to a number of walls so that, in the above example, "mur" would have been used to refer to one wall, but "murs/murailles" could be used to refer to the set of walls...

    Is this literary? Unusual? Rare?

    And again, from Flaubert:

    "Il se tordait, le stréphopode, dans des convulsions atroces, si bien que le moteur mécanique où était enfermée sa jambe frappait contre la muraille à la défoncer." Again, this is inside...
     
    Ostaire said:
    "Mur" = any wall you may think of, including some barriers ("sound barrier" = "mur du son").
    "Muraille" is never used for a house, even for a castle. It means something really huge and preferably very old and always made of stone, enclosing a stronghold, a town or a whole country. It is also sometimes used to describe a high cliff or a steep mountain slope.

    Example : "La Grande Muraille de Chine".
    On the other hand : "Le Mur de Berlin" (because the Berlin Wall was not that high, and was built in recent times)
    Click to expand...

    Je suis d’accord avec cette explication, mais je pense que pour le mur de Berlin, il s’agissait d’un cas tangent.
    On aurait très bien pu dire «la muraille de Berlin», mais c’est le hasard qui a consacré l’usage avec «mur».
    En allemand, il existe deux mots qui présentent la même différence qu’en français, mais les Allemands ont choisi de dire «muraille de Berlin».
    En grec aussi.
     
    Essentially, French has two words where English really has only one: wall.​ We need to distinguish the meanings with adjectives or other context.
     
    So why is the Berlin Wall translated as "le Mur de Berlin" but the Great Wall of China is translated "la Grande Muraille de Chine"? Is there a difference between "un mur" and "une muraille" ?
     
    Muraille is mostly used for an ancient wall made of stones. I woudn't call a concrete wall "une muraille".
     
    a muraille is basically a huge long tall wall (the one in Berlin was long, but not tall enough to be a "muraille" ; by extension, it is also a very high cliff barring an access, or anything that be crossed only with extreme difficulty (like a huge bodyguard blocking your way : "une vraie muraille")
     
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Back
    Top