University and research

Les heures de permanence are a lecturer’s office hours, and the noun inside them is one English can hardly help misreading. « Permanence » in English is an abstract quality: the state of lasting for ever, the thing a temporary arrangement lacks. Une permanence in French is concrete, countable and strictly bounded in time — a stretch of hours during which somebody is on hand so that others may turn up. A department runs une permanence téléphonique between two and four; a party keeps une permanence on the high street; in a lycée, la permanence is the supervised room where pupils sit out a free period. The verb that goes with it is assurer, so qui assure la permanence samedi ? asks who is covering the desk. The noun that in English means for ever therefore means, in French, from two until four. One fixed phrase does keep the English sense, and it is worth learning apart from the rest: en permanence means continuously, without a break. Everywhere else the word points at a rota rather than at eternity.