Brass and Copper

[M Mcglashan]

I have recently discovered that, in several European languages including French, the same word is used for both Brass ( which, of course is an alloy of Copper made by combining it with Zinc)and Copper.

Can anyone, please, explain how then a differentiation is made between these two metals? And what is a Brass Band called?

 

[Neil Coffey]

In French, I'm not sure that what you say is quite true. The basic word for cupper is cuivre and the basic word for brass is laiton.

Then, it's true that in the case of brass instruments, cuivres is used to refer to musical instruments that are not actually made out of pure copper (so e.g. brass band = orchestre/fanfare de cuivres).

But that's essentially not much different from English where, for example, the word coppers can refer to coins that aren't actually necessarily made of pure copper.

Note that brass used to be referred to as "yellow copper" (cuivre jaune in French), which may be the source of some of the confusion.

[M Mcglashan]

You are, of course, quite correct re 'cuivre' and thank you for the additional information- although I'm not sure that using 'coppers' for coins in English really parallels using 'cuivre' for brass instruments.
To any other multi-lingual people out there: Can you offer any clarification re how the differentiation is made in Swedish (koppar); Dutch (koperen); or German (kupfern)
Thanks again