Manage or Menage ?

[CobLogic]

Following on from a debate my friend and I were having last night... Is a horsey arena spelt Manage or Menage and where does this word originate from?
Thanks so much

 

[Tallante]

.. or perhaps Manege ..

 

[Sooty]

It is manege. Menage is a common mistake, and is a French word for household. Manege is French in origin, and means training or a place to train horses.

 

[Zebedee]

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.. or perhaps Manege ..

[/ QUOTE ]

Pronounced Menarge.

It's French for Riding School (or at least thats what I was told as a kid)

 

[Holly831]

Manege - but most people spell it incorrectly - especially on planning applications

 

[FinnishLapphund]

Manège if you should be 100% correct according to my English - Swedish horse translation dictionaries.

 

[ester]

school or arena makes life a lot easier, I'm english not french

 

[Booboos]

Another way of remembering it is that Menage a Trois is a French word for three people being 'naughty'!!

 

[cptrayes]

Er no, not pronounce menarge - that menage.

Pronouced manedge without a hardness to the "d"

 

[Paint it Lucky]

I just call it a school, much easier!

 

[nijinsky]

I hate the bloody word, whenever people use it I just have to laugh, what on earth is wrong with arena or school, I mostly call it a school.

 

[Chavhorse]

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I just call it a school, much easier!

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Ditto

 

[Britestar]

Hee hee. My ex neighbour built his house and kept going on how he was going to build a meenige (how he said it), it took me ages to work out what he meant!

 

[FinnishLapphund]

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school or arena makes life a lot easier, I'm American not French

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School, in this horse related meaning, is American English - Manège is British English.
Just like you've gotten the word Ombudsman from Swedish, you've gotten the word Manège from French that got it from the Italian maneggio, which in turn comes from maneggiare which comes from the Latin word manus.
Besides we say manege in Swedish too, so I would say that manège is a very European word to use, compared to the American word school (again, in its horse related meaning).



Also in proper English, you would have to say riding school, which is much longer than manège.
Arena, well personally I would then want to say arena for equestrian sport but since that sounds far to complicated for daily use, I would most likely say horse arena, just as I say football arena, track and field arena, rodeo arena etc.




Sorry it is a bug bear of mine, off topic but we have evolved our languages to include all these words to make it rich and full of nuances and instead e.g. the word cool have now, for more and more Swedes, replaced maybe 10 Swedish words. It makes their lives much easier but their language looses the nuances.


P.S. The

smiley in the beginning was because I changed a word in the quoted text.

 

[CobLogic]

Thanks so much for all of your help with this post! I'm going to send the link onto my friend now...