18 December 2021

La Manche et les falaises à Dieppe

     La Manche means "the sleeve" and is the French name for what we call the English Channel.
Les falaises are the cliffs on both sides of the Channel — falaise derives from a German word
and is the French name for seaside cliffs along the seashore, but cliffs in mountains.
The first photo above shows the pebble beach at Dieppe.

     The port (composed of four harbors) at Dieppe is protected from ocean waves by a breakwater (un brise-lames)
that is usually called la digue (dike). People are allowed to walk out to the end of the breakwater and to fish.
The second photo just above on the right shows the car ferry arriving from the port of Newhaven in England.

     Just above are smaller boats coming back into harbor, and an unobstructed view of a long section of cliff east of Dieppe.
The original port was a particularly deep estuary, and it's not surprising the word "deep"
and the name Dieppe have related derivations from Scandinavian languages.

5 comments:

  1. Interesting language derivations.

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  2. Those Scandinavians got around lol!

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  3. Wow, the color of the water is amazing, and you've captured it so well!

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  4. La Manche...I wonder where the name came from. And brise-lames, is lames waves, or would we call them ondes? Since the cliffs are the same on both sides, I wondered if the land was once attached. NYT says there was a land bridge connecting UK and France in this article:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/science/britain-europe-split-land-bridge.html

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  5. Not a land bridge per se, but many eons and sea levels ago: Encyclopedia Britannica, as ever, tells you more than you could ever want to know on that topic: https://www.britannica.com/place/English-Channel

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