On falling

[alice]

French has tomber par terre and tomber à terre to distinguish between falling over from a standing position and falling from on high. How do other languages do it?

[Kuchigakatai]

Are both involuntary actions? Like a statue right on top of the ground falling over vs. a statue on a very high pedestal or column falling to the ground.

Assuming both are involuntary, English does it with "to fall over" / "to fall down" vs. "to fall to the ground", right?

[Ares Land]

French has tomber par terre and tomber à terre to distinguish between falling over from a standing position and falling from on high. How do other languages do it?

There's no such nuance with tomber par / à terre , at least in my dialect. The difference (IMD anyway) is more one of register: tomber à terre feels more literary.

But the distinction does exist in French! For falling down on high, you use tomber de: elle est tombée du dix-huitième étage, Il est tombé du ciel and so on...

For instance translating The Man who fell to Earth by l'homme tombé sur Terre feels wrong (to me, at least!). And l'homme tombé à terre implies he fell over.
I'd say L'homme tombé du ciel.

In Spanish and Italian apparently that title was translated El hombre que cayó a la Tierra and L'uomo che cadde sulla Terra so presumably this is specifically French and not Romance?

/annoying Frenchman.

[Travis B.]

Assuming both are involuntary, English does it with "to fall over" / "to fall down" vs. "to fall to the ground", right?

Yes, that is how I'd put the distinction in English.

[Linguoboy]

Hawai'ian uses different verbs: hāʻule is "fall from a height" and hina is "topple over from an upright position".

(There are actually several words for "topple over" depending on the direction, e.g. wala "fall over backwards", hiō "fall sideways", kimo "fall forward, plunge".)

[hwhatting]

German has fallen (neutral "fall"), umfallen "topple, fall over" (from a standing position, normally about inanimate objects, but can also be used for people dropping e.g. from a stroke), hinfallen "fall over" (when used of people normally implying missteps or stumbling, when used of inanimate objects, focusing on the end of the trajectory, like English "land"), and herunterfallen (from a height).

[Zju]

Hawai'ian uses different verbs: hāʻule is "fall from a height" and hina is "topple over from an upright position".

(There are actually several words for "topple over" depending on the direction, e.g. wala "fall over backwards", hiō "fall sideways", kimo "fall forward, plunge".)

What direction does hina imply then?

[Kuchigakatai]

But the distinction does exist in French! For falling down on high, you use tomber de: elle est tombée du dix-huitième étage, Il est tombé du ciel and so on...

I don't think I confidently understand what you mean here... So you're saying that falling over is simply tomber, but falling from quite a bit of a height needs to be tomber de + [the high place in question], because tomber by itself would imply falling over from no height?

In Spanish and Italian apparently that title was translated El hombre que cayó a la Tierra and L'uomo che cadde sulla Terra so presumably this is specifically French and not Romance?

/annoying Frenchman.

That Spanish translation sounds funny and awkward to me, but then, so does the original English. We don't normally talk about people falling accidentally into a planet...

In Spanish, we don't make the distinction much, using caerse for both in neutral/colloquial language. In a more literary or formal style, you can use caer as well. Both caerse and caer can take a complement with de 'from [the pillar, the sky...]' or a 'to [the ground, the floor...]'.

Esta es la estatua que se cayó de la parte más alta de la torre. 'This is the statue that fell down from the top of the tower.' (caerse)
La pintura está a punto de caer de la pared. 'The painting is about to fall from the wall.' (caer)
Mi prima se cayó del tercer piso. 'My cousin fell down from the third floor.' (caerse)

La columna se cayó al suelo durante el temblor. 'The column fell over to the ground during the tremor.' (caerse)
El guardia cayó a tierra porque le habían disparado. 'The guard fell to the ground because he had been shot.' (caer)

Basically, if you want to express falling from a height, you just mention the high place in question...

[hwhatting]

For instance translating The Man who fell to Earth by l'homme tombé sur Terre feels wrong (to me, at least!). And l'homme tombé à terre implies he fell over.
I'd say L'homme tombé du ciel.

That's BTW the German title of the film: Der Mann, der vom Himmel fiel. And a German "Der Mann, der auf die Erde fiel" would also be weird - auf die Erde fallen is something you'd say about an object that has been dropped on the ground. But I think the main reason here is not so much the semantics of fallen, but the semantics of Erde, which means not only "Earth / earth", but can also mean "ground".

[Linguoboy]

Hawai'ian uses different verbs: hāʻule is "fall from a height" and hina is "topple over from an upright position".

(There are actually several words for "topple over" depending on the direction, e.g. wala "fall over backwards", hiō "fall sideways", kimo "fall forward, plunge".)

What direction does hina imply then?

Hina is unmarked for direction. It can also be used of a person who is thrown to the ground (as in a wrestling match).

[Whimemsz]

.

[Ares Land]

But the distinction does exist in French! For falling down on high, you use tomber de: elle est tombée du dix-huitième étage, Il est tombé du ciel and so on...

I don't think I confidently understand what you mean here... So you're saying that falling over is simply tomber, but falling from quite a bit of a height needs to be tomber de + [the high place in question], because tomber by itself would imply falling over from no height?

I'd say that basically tomber without a complement implies falling over. For human beings, that is.
I think it's pretty much the same thing as in your Spanish examples, except that we don't have that caerse/caer distinction.

[alynnidalar]

[snip some glorious Ojibwe]

Stuff like this is why I love Ojibwe so much. This is lovely.

[Whimemsz]

Isn't it though? Geget sa go.

[Linguoboy]

Stuff like this is why I love Ojibwe so much. This is lovely.

I'll confess to feeling a little Ojibwe-envy. (Although I take comfort in the fact that I can put together a sentence in my chosen NAIL, Osage, with relatively little effort, despite not having studied it very thoroughly.)

Speaking of Osage, it has two distinct roots here:

xíða fall down, stumble
oxpáðe fall from a height

What's interesting are their extended/related meanings: xíða is a euphemism for "die" whereas oxpáðe can also mean "get lost" or (with an object) "lose something". oxpáðe takes stative subject prefixes even when transitive but xíða (like cˀé "die") takes active subject prefixes (and is doubly-inflecting, e.g. axíbra "I stumbled/fell/died").