Have sorted the problem of the use of the word curfew. English definitions are always related to time, as in a curfew between dusk and dawn. The current TRNC government announcement has nothing to do with time but only with restrictions on what is permitted and warnings re violations. So a bit of linguistic research.
Not directly relevant, but interesting is the origin of the word curfew. From the French couvre-feu and various Old French and Anglo-Norman versions, meaning cover the fire. Goes back to medieval times when a bell would be rung in the evening warning villages to cover the fire - not necessarily totally extinguish but take down to ember and ash - to prevent buildings catching on fire in the night.
Submitting the word curfew to the notoriously unreliable Google Translate produces a three word phrase in Turkish. Feeding the phrase into GT in reverse elicits only one English word - curfew. However, looking up the three Turkish words - sokağa, çıkma and yasağı - separately in a Turkish-English dictionary, is a little more helpful. More or less prohibition to go on the streets. Which is indeed what the announcement is about.
Posts by British expats in TRNC are interesting. Useful specific info, but as with much social media also some misinformation and stereotypical response. Both the fair minded, precise and logical English and the other-people-should-follow-the-rules-as-we-always-do English in evidence. Particularly interested in what seems an almost hysterical response to any suggestion that dog walking might not be seen as an absolutely necessary exception to any requirement to stay at home. Not from people with obvious concerns about the need to allow dogs outside the building to do their business, but frequently from people who seem to regard thirty minute walks as a non-negotiable necessity. Doggy exceptionalism? TRNC officialdom unmoved.
The authorities are taking it seriously, though. So far 42 people have been arrested and charged for being on the street with no good reason. One expat poster suggests, sensibly, for those who don’t speak Turkish writing the destination in one word on a piece of paper in order to explain the purpose of the trip should the police ask. Thus pharmacy is eczane. Doesn’t seem too onerous a task to memorise one word per trip, but perhaps being questioned by the police would drive it straight out of a coronavirusphobic brain.
And in the evening Boris Johnson announces that the UK is also in lockdown, although the tone remains one of mitigation and apology and some of the terms are rather vague - allowed out once a day for exercise, for example, so enforcement presumably not truly possible.
Not directly relevant, but interesting is the origin of the word curfew. From the French couvre-feu and various Old French and Anglo-Norman versions, meaning cover the fire. Goes back to medieval times when a bell would be rung in the evening warning villages to cover the fire - not necessarily totally extinguish but take down to ember and ash - to prevent buildings catching on fire in the night.
Submitting the word curfew to the notoriously unreliable Google Translate produces a three word phrase in Turkish. Feeding the phrase into GT in reverse elicits only one English word - curfew. However, looking up the three Turkish words - sokağa, çıkma and yasağı - separately in a Turkish-English dictionary, is a little more helpful. More or less prohibition to go on the streets. Which is indeed what the announcement is about.
Posts by British expats in TRNC are interesting. Useful specific info, but as with much social media also some misinformation and stereotypical response. Both the fair minded, precise and logical English and the other-people-should-follow-the-rules-as-we-always-do English in evidence. Particularly interested in what seems an almost hysterical response to any suggestion that dog walking might not be seen as an absolutely necessary exception to any requirement to stay at home. Not from people with obvious concerns about the need to allow dogs outside the building to do their business, but frequently from people who seem to regard thirty minute walks as a non-negotiable necessity. Doggy exceptionalism? TRNC officialdom unmoved.
The authorities are taking it seriously, though. So far 42 people have been arrested and charged for being on the street with no good reason. One expat poster suggests, sensibly, for those who don’t speak Turkish writing the destination in one word on a piece of paper in order to explain the purpose of the trip should the police ask. Thus pharmacy is eczane. Doesn’t seem too onerous a task to memorise one word per trip, but perhaps being questioned by the police would drive it straight out of a coronavirusphobic brain.
And in the evening Boris Johnson announces that the UK is also in lockdown, although the tone remains one of mitigation and apology and some of the terms are rather vague - allowed out once a day for exercise, for example, so enforcement presumably not truly possible.