# EN: emphasis of object - Il m'insulte moi



## hamlet

Pour traduire "Je l'appelle LUI", "Il m'insulte MOI" etc comment fait-on?

"I call him him", "He insults me me"?

I heard for sure "At some point I called him him a (whatever)"


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## Avignonais

Maybe:

I call him. Him. 

He insults me. Me.

Still, this is very dramatic in English and not at all usual


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## Vachefolle

I think you can also translate more or less like:
It's him that i call / i'm calling.
It's me he's insulting. 
Of course it would depend on the context.


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## JohnGivrolta

I'd go along with Vachefolle's translation.


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## hamlet

Well I did hear a native (actually he's an actor) say something like "He insults everybody but this time I called him HIM a [sob]"

What is this kind of construction not common?


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## Guillou08

Hi, 

I'm calling him. Himself ?! 
It may be wrong, i'm not really sure it works


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## Avignonais

Hamlet, 
Exactly as you said, in a play or a dramatic recounting of a story, you can get away with the theatrical: I called him. HIM.

In normal, low key conversation, of which the French "Il m'insulte, moi" is a part, you could say: "As for him, I call him." "As for me, he insults me."

Hope this is closer to what the French conveys.


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## hamlet

Actually it was in an interview he said it (*can you say that?*) so it's got to be "idiomatic", hasn't it?


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## james_san

> "He insults everybody but this time I called him HIM a [sob]"



There is no reason (that I can think of) to ever say "him him" in a sentence, unless (as already stated) the person was being dramatical, and they were separated by a pause.
Eg. He insulted me! Me!
I can't ever see someone saying ".. called him HIM a sob". Perhaps he said that by accident. I can't explain it.

To emphasize the object, I would do it purely by the tone of my voice (place emphasis on the word, drag it out more)
Eg. He insulted ME (as opposed to *someone else*)
He INSULTED me (as opposed to *doing something else* to me)

If I had to write something like that, I would leave it how it is, or if you really want to get the point across (a little more dramatically):
"He insulted me, of all people." (this really emphasizes that you wouldn't expect him to insult YOU)
Perhaps you could say that 

Je ne comprends pas «Je l'appelle lui». Does it just emphasize that you called him, as opposed to someone else?
If it would be unexpected that you called HIM, then you could add "of all people".
Eg. Girl speaking dislikes her brother, but just broke up with her boyfriend. She doesn't know who to turn to.
"I called my brother, of all people"
"I called _him_, of all people"

If you were talking about calling someone (an insulting name):
"I called him lazy"
I can't think of a good reason to emphasize "him". If someone showed you 6 people and asked _which one you called lazy_, you could say "I called HIM lazy", but it would be emphasized merely by my voice.

That was rather long-winded. If you still don't understand, then you need to explain the context better. But you can never say "him him" or "me me" correctly in a sentence.


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## timpeac

In speech we simply emphasise the word we wish to stress, and this is often represented in writing by italics.

In speech these would all have a completely different meaning (and some possible interpretations, although there would be many others) -

He loves _her_. (not someone else)
He _loves_ her. (and so wouldn't want to hurt her).
_He_ loves her. (I don't!)


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## hamlet

Actually it'll be easier if I just tell you where I heard it. It's in a video from the TV show "Lost" called "Lost S2 Extra: the world according to sawyer". You can find it at youtube
The moment when the guy says "I call him HIM something" can be found around 3:40.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU4n9Ji5z-Q


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## Avignonais

Thanks, Hamlet.

1. It is very conversational: "There is a part where I call him ...him Chewy"
2. The character repeats it because it is the guy being called Chewy this time who usually picks on others and calls them Chewy. That is to say, the raison d'être for the repetition is because this is a role reversal.

That's what I got out of it.


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## timpeac

hamlet said:


> Actually it'll be easier if I just tell you where I heard it. It's in a video from the TV show "Lost" called "Lost S2 Extra: the world according to sawyer". You can find it at youtube
> The moment when the guy says "I call him HIM something" can be found around 3:40.


I don't watch the programme so I don't get the joke but he says "I call him "him-chewy". I don't think the second "him" is a word in its own right but a joke name.


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## hamlet

timpeac said:


> I don't watch the programme so I don't get the joke but he says "I call him "him-chewy". I don't think the second "him" is a word in its own right but a joke name.


can't be because "chewy" is the name of that star wars character


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## Avignonais

It could be Chewy, precisely because it is vaguely insulting and is a reference to a hairy beast. Man, I really should watch more television.

Whether or not, the insult is Chewy, I still think the double him is there because it is usually this guy who calls others by this name.


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## hamlet

> I still think the double him is there because it is usually this guy who calls others by this name.



Yes that's what I meant in the original question. So is that structure possible?

"Instead of him (his?) calling me a "blaireau" all the time, there's this particular moment in which I called him HIM an "abruti"!"


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## timpeac

hamlet said:


> Yes that's what I meant in the original question. So is that structure possible?
> 
> "Instead of him (his?) calling me a "blaireau" all the time, there's this particular moment in which I called him HIM an "abruti"!"


 
It's not impossible, but not the usual way of stressing it in English. You can't say "Il *m*'insulte !" in French stressing the "me" so you have to say "il m'insulte *moi* !" to add emphasis but you can say in English "he insulted *me*!" which is different from the simple sentence "he insulted me" (where the default stress would fall on "insulted"). 

It's not impossible in English, although much less common, but it really really stresses the pronoun if you say "he insulted me, *me*!" (and the inference is, "how dare he insult me when I am so important" or something like that). 

I think what the problem is with the particular clip you quote is that the intonation is very strange. You would expect much more of an emphasis on the second "him" with a pause after it which is what made it sound to me like "I called him "him-chewy", although I do agree the speaker is probably not saying this. I think this is just a rather strange intonation, which is typical of spontaneous speech when we all can say strange things or say things in a strange way from time to time.

It would be perfectly natural to say something like "Every day for years he called me "fat". We met again after several years and I'd lost weight and he'd put it on, so this time round I called *him* fat!". "I called him him fat" would be odd.


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## hamlet

another example found at this website http://www.minettemarrin.com/minettemarrin/the_sunday_telegraph/index.html

"This is what she says about The Daily Telegraph. "If you want a perfect model of institutional racism, buy the Telegraph for a whiff of Britain's Conservative Establishment. In its leaders and columns the racism is witting and unremitting, proud and disgraceful. It revels in it, rolls in it, abominating politically correct non-racists. . . . No, this is not institutional racism - Macpherson describes that as `unwitting' - this is just plain old-fashioned racism. The Daily Telegraph sounds the rallying cry that echoes from the platforms of the British National Party." Not content with this, she attacks the editor, Charles Moore, for his "effete moral frivolity". "*I call him him a racist*," she says."


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## Avignonais

I had just digested this huge problem to finally conclude that, as timpeac said, the guy on TV meant to say: I called him -- _him_ -- Chewy. With the second *him *put in, not to be next to the first *him* but to replace it with an emphatic version. What could have been uttered as "I called _him_ Chewy" becomes "I called him -- _him_ -- Chewy", because of a mid-sentence correction. I had also understood that his weird lack of emphasis on the second *him,* was just bad intonation (2nd rate acting school?)

But then comes the second example, which is probably just a mistake, but nevertheless causes the uneasy feeling that the linguistic world might have moved on and created neologisms of which one is totally unaware. Very disturbing. Yet... at the risk of looking old-fashioned, I stand by my hunch and declare "I call him him a racist" is just a typo. Others?


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## timpeac

Avignonais said:


> Yet... at the risk of looking old-fashioned, I stand by my hunch and declare "I call him him a racist" is just a typo. Others?


Absolutely. Googling "him him" gives no examples of it used like this (well I only scanned the first few results but didn't see any)

http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&as_qdr=all&q="him+him"&meta=

I think that this is a very strange usage, and it doesn't even make sense to stress it in the context. The internet is huge - it seems that everyone has said everything, no matter how strange, at some point!


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## hamlet

timpeac said:


> Absolutely. Googling "him him" gives no examples of it used like this (well I only scanned the first few results but didn't see any)
> 
> http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&as_qdr=all&q="him+him"&meta=
> 
> I think that this is a very strange usage, and it doesn't even make sense to stress it in the context. The internet is huge - it seems that everyone has said everything, no matter how strange, at some point!



try this : http://www.google.co.uk/search?q="call+him+him"&btnG=Search&num=100&hl=en&as_qdr=all

and here http://books.google.com/books?id=6p...ts=bXyyU1r8qd&sig=sx57wwTFUbAARfKLdyQSNghoeGk
in line two you can see : "people will continue to call him him by the name ...."


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## Avignonais

hamlet, My counter to your second example is the fact that the wizards of MS Word consider the repeated word a very common typing error, so much so that it is one of the common errors that Word corrects automatically.

A lot of examples in your first link talk about calling him "him", i.e., keeping him anonymous by only using the pronoun. Sometimes the writers don't use the quotations but capitalize the H or capitalize the second word, or something like that.


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## james_san

For the first link, most of the first examples I looked at are in the form «I call him "him"», as in "I refer to him as _him_". For the youtube example, it makes no sense. It does sound like he is trying to say "I call him himchewy". But there is no sentence structure like "I call him him chewy".


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## timpeac

james_san said:


> For the first link, most of the first examples I looked at are in the form «I call him "him"», as in "I refer to him as _him_". For the youtube example, it makes no sense. It does sound like he is trying to say "I call him himchewy". But there is no sentence structure like "I call him him chewy".


Yes - I completely agree, I don't see any examples in that google list and once again the second link just looks like a typo to me. Hamlet - it seems to me that you're trying to make evidence support something which just isn't the case. The youtube person may have said "call him him chewy" (albeit with strange intonation) but it's just not usual. We all can say strange things from time to time in spontaneous speech, and strange typos can occur from time to time even back in 1859 and I don't think it's anything other than that here.


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