Re: Mayday!

On 2025-05-01, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

"Mayday!" is an international radio distress signal.
It comes, we are told, from French "m'aidez!" (help me).

Or more likely not.  Nobody has managed to suggest a convincing
derivation from French.

But we were taught in school that, while the object pronoun (me) is
normally proclitic to the verb, in the imperative it must follow it
(aidez-moi!).

When somebody starts with "we were taught in school", I always
expect the next part to explain how that was incomplete if not
outright wrong.  But here it is correct.  For the affirmative
imperative, the object pronoun is attached to the end of the verb.

A prime exhibit is the colloquial French phrase "t'inquiète!", which
means 'don't worry', although a surface analysis would suggest just
the opposite.  But it's shortened from the negative imperative
"(ne) t'inquiète pas", and although the whole negation has been elided,
the word order keeps it distinct from "inquiète-toi" 'do worry!'.

The use as a distress call dates back only to the 1920s,
so I don't think we can appeal to some earlier stage of the language to
justify "m'aidez".

There is no such earlier stage anyway.  Object pronoun enclisis
with affirmative imperatives is a pan-Romance feature.

The other possibility is that it's really "m'aider",
which (OED suggests) could be either short for "venez m'aider" (come and

Another problem is that none of those phrases are like an idiomatic
French call for help, which would be "au secours!" or "à l'aide!".

help me!), or perhaps the "imperative infinitive". This expression gave
me pause. I think I have encountered French infinitives used with
imperative force, but my experience doesn't tell me what contexts they
are used in and with what pragmatic force.

Cooking recipes come to mind.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de