:up:
[Beat me to it.]
please, might you help me to find proper words to wish a nice sail, to a friend of mine who's going for a long voyage by boat ?
thanks in advance
Piero
A strangely appropriate wish would be 'Bon voyage' [French, but widely used by English-speakers]. The stress on the last word is unEnglish - not /'vɔ:jɪʤ/ but /vwa:j:'a:ʒ/ (that's not an accurate transcription of the French, but it's close enough if you restrict yourself to English phonemes).
The word
voyage has - in French, as far as I know - no necessary implication of 'trip on
water (it's derived from
voie, in English a carriage-way, ultimately from Latin
via). But in English, a 'voyage' is usually on water and/or taking place over a considerable time, which is why I said '
strangely appropriate'.
The fact that native English speakers aren't always aware of the derivation is the story of Sam Goldwyn greeting people
arriving by ship with the words 'Bon voyage' - a so-called 'Goldwynism'.
b