Notre amicale s’adresse à

11:12 Jun 25, 2013 

"Notre amicale s’adresse aux auteurs du catalogue: XYZ."


If there's no space before the colon, that's a sign of someone unfamiliar with punctuation. I have no idea if XYZ might give clarifying context.


It's true that the organization being limited to people who penned a catalogue that has already been printed seems a bit strange. Has the catalogue been printed? Is it an ongoing series of exhibitions? "Amicale" was a common name for amateur groups holding annual exhibitions.


The sentence is a bit less strange when one is used to seeing "amicale" and "s'adresser" used in this fairly common 1901 usage.

10:34 Jun 25, 2013 

s'adresser means "concerns" or in this context, "is meant for".

A program that is "adresser" to parents is a program for parents. Everyday French.

10:29 Jun 25, 2013 

But it's worth checking for the existence of an association. If there is one involved it is sure to be named elsewhere in the text.

10:27 Jun 25, 2013 

Well in that case there is a word missing in front of amicale, such as salutation

10:21 Jun 25, 2013 

It comes after a lot of acknowledgements (museums, galleries etc), and before a huge list of names for 'remerciements'.
Using the dictionary definition of 'amicale' as an association doesn't really make sense to me here as it then 'adresses' the list of authors involved with the publication. And s'adresser' then means what?

09:48 Jun 25, 2013 

A might more context would be nice. As it, Paul's reading is in line with mine!

08:32 Jun 25, 2013 

as you mention, this comes AFTER the acknowledgements, they are apparently giving a very short description of the membership requirements.

08:28 Jun 25, 2013 

This is a quite ordinary noun. Here's what Lil Bob says:
◆ Association amicale, ou ellipt amicale (n. f.) : association de personnes ayant une même profession, une même activité, une histoire commune. L'amicale des anciens élèves de l'école de…

07:49 Jun 25, 2013 

Hi all and thanks for the ideas.
This is the complete line which comes after loads of acknowledgements for an exhibition:
Notre amicale s’adresse aux auteurs du catalogue: XYZ.
I too was confused by the use of 'amicale' as a noun here, hence my post. My initial reaction was like Tony's. The 'amicale' here refers to all of those involved in the exhibition and publication IMHO.

07:33 Jun 25, 2013 

As Paul has said, the usual expected meaning here seems at odds with your stated context; BUT... is there by any chance soemthing written AFTER the list of names, so it would read:
"Notre amicale s’adresse à X, Y, et Z ses remerciements..." etc. etc.
"