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Rêver vs. Songer

teadrenchedbrioche asked : I was going to do an ask, but I couldn’t make the words fit. But basically, I found this on the wordreference forums, and I wanted to ask if it’s a good explanation of the difference between “songer” and “rêver”?: ” Rêver is the broader term in contemporary usage and is more apt to imply a serious depature from reality (‘Mais non, tu rêves !’) ; songer is more apt to be used to mean something like “to imagine” or even “to think” (‘A quoi pouvait-il songer en faisant ça, on se le demande’) in English and thus be more “realistic.” ” Thank you for all of your hard work! ^_^

awesomefrench

I don’t usually post fanmail but this one is interesting so…

Rêver really means “to dream”. “Tu rêves” (“You’re out of your mind” in this context) is an idiom so I don’t think the given example is proper to any kind of meaning explanation, since it could be replaced by thousand other things that have no link to the act of dreaming. It simply refers to the act of dreaming, in its most basic conception, and you could translate it by “to dream” in all cases I believe.

Songer is more of a literary term, that actually feels closer to “wonder” than to “think”. It implies some daydreaming. It could also mean dreaming, but I have the feeling that the sense of “dreaming” is kept for the noun (un songe = a dream). It’s also a very literal term that you don’t use in modern French without the will to add some “poetry” to what you’re saying, either to sound formal or polite, or to imply a sort of “amazement”, a sort of general poetic state of mind. In modern French, you wouldn’t use “songer” to speak about nightmares for example, it would sound really ridiculous and pretentious. You’d keep it for sweet dreams, dreams that are worth some poetry. In old French, you could totally use “songer” or “songe” for both sweet dreams and nightmares.