____ a picture, it lasts longer

[muckefuck]

I've tried to get int the habit of remembering to look up whatever I don't know how to say. Like the other night, it occurred to me that I didn't know what verb Catalan speakers used for "take [photos]". Normally, I'd assume a cognate to the Castilian, but Standard Catalan doesn't have the verb sacar. (Or, rather, it does but only in the extremely restricted sports-related sense of "serve [a ball]".) Turns out it's fer "make".

This got me wondering about the verbs used in other languages and what metaphors underlie them. I found a startling diversity. Even those languages which generally use semantically neutral verbs (having the vague sense of "do, make") to form neologisms opted for more specific verbs in this context. Here's the list I came up with along a rough attempt at clustering:

"MAKE"

Catalan: fer
German: machen
Hungarian: csinál/készít
Italian: fare

"TAKE"

Dutch: nemen
English: take
French: prendre
Irish: tóg "lift up; take"
Indonesian: mengambil
Japanese: 撮る toru
Vietnamese: chụp "seize, grab"
Yiddish: נעמען nemen
Zulu: thatha

"REMOVE"

Basque: atera
Hausa: 'dauka "remove, incur"
Persian: برداشتن bar dāstan "raise, remove" lit. "have/hold upon"]
Spanish: sacar
Turkish: çekmek "pull, draw"
Welsh: tynnu "pull, remove"

"SHOOT"

English: shoot
German: schiessen

OTHER

Cantonese: 影 yíng "copy"
Standard Chinese: (拍)照 (pāi)zhào ("clap") illuminate
Igbo: see "draw [as a picture]"
Korean: 찍다 "stamp, imprint", 찰영[撮影]하다 "take-copy do"
Lakota: wicitowa [contraction of wicite owapi "face picture"]
Swahili: piga "hit"
Thai: ถ่าย thàaj "transfer"

Some of the metaphors seem clear if one thinks in terms of an old-fashioned photographic apparatus. The "pulling" or "removing" probably refers to taking the exposed photographic plate out of the camera; I imagine this is also the source of the Thai. The Standard Chinese may be a reference to a flash bulb.

It's difficult to tell for sure how many of these expressions represent independent occurrence of the same metaphor and how many are simply calques. I expect, for instance, that Basque copied the Spanish and colloquial German schiessen is modeled on the English.

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued that "record," "inscribe" or "represent" are so unpopular. "Taking" a picture is a completely different idea from "copying" or "drawing" one; it refers directly to seizing or capturing rather that creating, and that sense (as areia suggests) seems very deeply woven into photography in English.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

It may be related to the French usage, since it was already being applied in the Daguerrotype era. (This page has an 1851 letter from a Frenchman to an Englishman acknowledging payment for "the Daguerreotype I have had the honour to take for you.") I'd guess that it's because the camera obscura had been long known-- what was new wasn't the creation of an image from refracted light, but the ability to capture what had until then been evanescent.

The OED seems to relate it to the earlier sense of "take" as in "take a letter", "take inventory". And contra my speculation, it also has "take" being used the same way for portrait-painting: "1766 GOLDSM. Vic. W. xvi, A limner, who travelled the country, and took likenesses for fifteen shillings a head. 1789 MRS. PIOZZI Journ. France I. 150 Her portrait..will not be found difficult to take."