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Crainte versus peur in French | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4470 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes  Speaks: English*, German | Message 1 of 7 23 October 2013 at 5:50am | IP Logged | |||||
I have a Catherine Deneuve movie, La sirene du Mississipi, with both French and English subtitles. From it I picked up the word "crainte," which means "fear." In my language lessons I learned "peur" to mean fear. Here's the sentence in which Deneuve's character uses that word:
I take that to mean:
The English subtitles translated that much more loosely. I think I understand the sentence fine. I'm just wondering if there's a significant difference between "crainte" and "peur" and, if so, what is that difference? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4274 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 2 of 7 23 October 2013 at 9:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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As a native French speaker, I believe that "crainte" and "peur" have basically the same meaning. "Crainte" may belong to a slightly higher, slightly more bookish register, though. But even that is not always obvious. "N'ayez pas peur!" has the same meaning as "N'ayez crainte", though the latter is definitely more bookish.
Now there are differences in the use of those words, they are not always interchangeable, e.g. you would say "éprouver des craintes", "dissiper des craintes" and you could not use "des peurs" in this case. On the other hand, you could say "la crainte/la peur d'un échec", "de crainte/de peur qu'on te voie", etc. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 7 23 October 2013 at 9:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Is not "peur" a bit stronger and more direct too? If I was really scared about something I might say "J'ai
peur!", but it would not occur to me to say "J'ai des craintes". The latter would seem softer and less direct to me. It would feel more like "I am worried about" than "I am scared". Or am I totally off here? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 23 October 2013 at 10:01am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 4 of 7 23 October 2013 at 10:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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It doesn't always translate well either.
Je crains qu'il ne vienne pas "I fear he won't come" - doesn't necessarily indicate fear in the I'm scared of bears sense, but English would translate this much better idiomatically as "I fear he won't" than "I'm worried he won't come", unless that latter part is more obvious from context of course. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 7 23 October 2013 at 4:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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They can sometimes be used to mean the same, but generally, they carry a different nuance.
Peur is fear when something scares you -- j'ai peur des araignées, I'm afraid/scared of spiders. Crainte is the fear or worry of a future displeasure -- j'ai des craintes au sujet de son avenir, I have fears/doubts/worries about his future. In this sense, peur is stronger, it's a more physical, more physiological type of fear, whereas crainte refers to a potential negative outcome. In your movie script example, she couldn't have said something like "je ne peux m'empêcher d'avoir peur" (without adding anything afterwards) as it would have meant she is scared of something, whereas she is only refering to worries about some potential outcome. However, peur can also be used in a more figurative sense in sentences like "J'ai bien peur qu'il ne vienne pas", I fear he may not come. Edited by Arekkusu on 23 October 2013 at 4:07pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5189 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 6 of 7 25 October 2013 at 1:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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I mostly agree fully with Arekkusu's explanation.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4274 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 7 of 7 25 October 2013 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I must admit that my first post was too vague. Thanks to those who commented after me for
providing more specific explanations. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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