Nature and the environment

Animals and plants are on the earlier list; this one is the processes. Near the end of it is durable, which an English reader will translate correctly as a word and wrongly as a subject. English « durable » means hard-wearing, long-lasting as a physical property — durable goods, a durable fabric. French durable carries that too, but since le développement durable became the standard term it is first of all the word for *sustainable*, and une solution durable in an environmental text is a sustainable one, not a hard-wearing one. The mistake also runs backwards, which is the part worth remembering: the French that looks like « sustainable » is soutenable, and it means bearable or defensible — une position difficilement soutenable is an argument that will not hold. So the two languages picked opposite members of the same pair for the same idea.