street talk...

Here's an interesting, and local, way to improve and reinforce your precious stock of French words......



This is a map of my current place of residence, Lancaster City centre [enlarge by clicking on it, clicking twice is even better]... and there's loads of interesting street names to be translated into French. Some are perfectly straightforward [Church Street] others will take a bit of looking-up [Damside Street] and others might require a bit of imagination or adaptation [ Cheapside].

There is a Brock Street too... Brock is actually derived from Welsh [ broch = badger in Welsh] so that will be pretty straightforward, just so long as you can find out the French word for badger.

You will, of course, replace Lancaster with your own local metropolis. If you want to.

One good thing about this task is that you can do it at your own level... a beginner l can just stick to the easy ones for now.... High Street, Church Street etc, and add to them as your French improves.

Another of the good things about this exercise is that you can use these names ( inwardly maybe] every time you go into town.When you visit other places you can rename their streets too....not to mention house names, the shops etc.

So, in a few days time I look forward to a flood of emails with home-made maps of your own town or village. If you haven't got a town or village, you could make one up like Trumptonn and invent the French names yourself.

[ Thinks... Trumpton.... that could be tricky to translate ]

Well, it's music time yet again....

First, here's an interview with modern Manu... you know, the singer from Dolly... easily my top French band....



and here she is playing Goodbye live



and here is a clearer version...



and here are the words.....

Je t'envoies de l'air en souvenir
La caresse de nos palmiers perdus
Je t'envoie un sourire
Plus qu'un mal entendu

Et je dis goodbye
Je dis goodbye
Et les mots me manquent
Un peu comme toi

Devant moi les hommes regardent la mer
Et la mer leur souffle des prières
C'est ce sourire que tu n'a pas entendu

Et je dis goodbye
Je dis goodbye
Et les mots me manquent, comme toi

Je dis goodbye
Je dis goodbye
Es-ce que les mots respirent encore
de ce coté là
Est-ce que tu es là
De ce coté là

Et si tu étais là

Mais j'ai dis goodbye
j'ai dis goodbye
est-ce que les mots respirent encore
De ce coté

J'ai dis goodbye
J'ai dis goodbye

Est-ce que les mots respirent encore
De ce coté là
Est-ce que les mots respirent encore
Est-ce que les mots respirent encore
De ce coté là
Est-ce que les mots respirent encore
Est-ce que les mots respirent encore
Est-ce que tu es là


[ Merci à Muzikals d'avoir ajouté ces paroles ]

report......

On one of my other language blogs recently I wrote myself a report on how I was getting on.... just like a school report really.

I did it as a bit of a joke ( hardly surprising) but thinking about it, it was better than that. Maybe taking stock of what is going on with your language learning .... its progress, your enjoyment of it, or otherwise..... is worth doing on a regular basis.

SO... here is a hastily-thought-out report on how my French is doing.After I've done it, I'm going to do another one ...but in the style used by my teachers at Wade Deacon Grammar School for Boys, Widnes. Boy, were they a nasty bunch!! Here is a picture of that august establishment....


But first, my own view....

FRENCH PROGRESS REPORT for RAY.

January 2012

VOCABULARY Ray's vocabulary is good. In fact, he is far keener on digging out obscure words than actually remembering what gender they are or learning actual sensible words that might possibly be some use. Still, enthusiasm should be praised in whatever guise it comes.

GRAMMAR Considering the fact that he has been studying French on and off for what we can euphemistically describe as " quite a while", his grammar is crap. Ray is a logical sort of bloke, a mathematician by trade, and he seems to be unwilling to learn anything which is wayward and skittish in nature... like grammar. This is understandable, but no good for somebody trying to learn French.

GETTING AWAY WITH IT. Ray gets away with this deplorable lack of systematic grammar knowledge by mainly confining his French to reading books and watching films. He apparently scoots through all the verbs and cobbles the author's intentions, plot etc by winging it. This is all very well, of course, until he actually has to speak to somebody.

STUDY HABITS Ray has a butterfly mind, and flits from subject to subject like a toy helicopter. Why has he posted nothing on this blog for ages? Because he has been learning some Welsh and Russian , that's why. Then he suddenly realises that his French is going down the pan, so he flits back. I don't see any prospect of this changing, short of death.

RESEARCH. Ray does lots of what he calls "research", but is in fact just a way of pretending he is studying and learning when in reality he is just pointing his toy helicopter in other juicier directions. Recently he has been "researching" Nabokov's use of French. He tells me that he finds it fascinating that Nabokov wrote novels in Russian and English, but none in French, yet he had a deep knowledge of French and his writings are peppered with it. This is all very well, but reading " Pnin" or "Ada" and scribbling bits in the margins hardly advances his knowledge of French very much, does it?

SPECIAL PROBLEMS PECULIAR TO HIMSELF Ray is shit scared of the Past Historic, or rather, he hates it to death. He tells me it is clumsy, ugly, and totally not needed. What, indeed, is the point of a gruesome and unattractive tense which you never use in speech? Even the silly cartoon story in La Grammaire en Claire has failed to convert him to the cause.



HOMEWORK As Ray is 62 and does not attend school, or in fact do much work at all, most of his work is homework. This is hampered somewhat by the fact that his books are stored randomly in huge heaps all over the house,and the heaps rather resemble Desperate Dan's Cow pies. He does write a lot of things down and do lots of little drawings and tables in a whole battalion of notebooks, which at least keeps him busy.

SUMMARY Ray is a wonderful person, and has many talents, but to be fair, language learning does not come easily to him. I have to say that trying to learn French,Latin, German, Spanish, Welsh and Russian all at once was never a sensible option. However, he is very keen ( on and off) and has come a long way for someone who failed French O level 40-odd years ago and wasn't even entered for German or Latin!

There you go... searing self-analysis there...very cathartic!

Here's what the report would have looked like 40-odd years back at Wade Deacon Grammar School for Boys, Widnes, Lancs...


FRENCH He does very little, and he does it very badly. He seems to spend the whole lesson waiting for a chance to make some feeble joke or other. His homework is either disgraceful or non-existent, and generally looks as though it was done in a henhouse. Does he not realise that most respectable universities require a modern foreign language as an entry requirement? There is, no doubt, some spark of sense or intelligence somewhere deep down beneath his bohemian exterior, but I am past caring.

SO... why don't you try writing yourself a report about how you are getting on...like me, you might find out things!!

This cheerful, upbeat little pop number is by Damien " Mr. Cheerful" Saez.... St-Petersbourg




Saint Petersbourg

A St Petersbourg, la neige tombe
C'est Dieu qui pleure l'histoire du monde,
Des perles qui tombent, comme si le sang du ciel,
Couvrait le siècle rouge
D'un drapeau blanc

A St Petersbourg, la neige tombe
Pour panser de coton, le pauvre monde
Mais le monde, c'est les hommes,
Les pays, les Bons Dieux
Et les perles qui tombent et qui vous montent aux yeux

A St Petersbourg, on a perdu la guerre,
Pas celle des canons, mais celle des idées,
Et y'a Olga la blonde, celle qu'on appelle Espoir
Et celle qui espère, de refaire le monde,
Un monde fait de lumière et de neige en été,
Et de soleil d'hiver et de nuit d'amour.

A St Petersbourg, moi, je n'irai jamais
Et plus je vous regarde et plus je sais,
Que je t'aime, ma princesse, mon ailleurs, mon amour,
Puisque l'âme est la richesse à St Petersbourg.

A St Petersbourg, la neige tombe
C'est Dieu qui pleure l'histoire de ce pauvre monde
Et y'a Olga la blonde, celle qu'on appelle Espoir
Et celle qui espère, de refaire le monde,
Un monde fait de lumière et de neige en été,
Et de soleil d'hiver et de nuit d'amour.
http://lyricstranslate.com

C'est divin.....

To get us started, a brilliant poem by T. S. Watt....

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough ?
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through,
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps ?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness' sake don't call it "deed" !
Watch out for meat and great and threat
( They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not the moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth and brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose-
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and Thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start !

A dreadful language ? Man alive
I'd mastered it when I was five.

Well... that's horrible isn't it.. they say that speaking English is like playing the recorder... easy to do badly, but very hard to do well.

And pronunciation is one of the reasons why... there are plenty of others.

[ By the way, do any of you know any poems like that about French pronunciation... please let me know if you do ]

So what about French pronunciation?

Well, it certainly isn't as fraught as English... which is good. But....( or "boo" if it's French)....

It seems to me there are three main issues...

[a] The whole business of acquiring a decent French accent at all.

[b] The mass of not-always-perfect rules about elision and pronouncing final consonants etc.

[c] All the exceptions to the above.

OK.... just getting the basic accent right... talking the way the French do...well, here's how not to do it...



It's easy to laugh!! So here's another... laughter, is, after all, the best medicine..



So why are they so awful?

I think it's two things... they lack the confidence/chutzpah/guts to just do it right... and on top of that, I suspect they just don't listen to and copy enough of yer actual French.

I bet those students can do great imitations of their teachers and their parents and their enemies... oh yes.

Listening..... imitating it... having the confidence to talk like that.

You know I keep going on about French pop songs.... listening to them, singing along, saying the words over and over to memorise them... there you go... that's how to do it.

For some reason people are happier to "do" the accent in a song format.

So do it.

And IF you want a challenge, try recording yourself reading a piece of French... just pick something from a book.. prepare it if you want... and read it. Play it back and find out what you sound like. Try to put the things you got wrong, right.

Right... that's the accent sorted out.

And the good news is, you can't be much worse than those people in the videos...

Moving on..... look at that word " divin" in the title.... the two i's are pronounced differently you know!!

You can hear Emmanuelle Monet singing this word in "Corps Salin." So they are too in the word intérim and interdit.... but in "piscine" they are pronounced the same.

This sort of thing goes on a lot in French... there are some rules, which you can look up and learn. They're in most of the bigger grammar books... Ferrar, etc.



When you look up these words in your dictionary, in some cases you will get some help... usually in the international phonetic alphabet.

The symbols used are listed in the dictionary, usually with French and English examples to let you know what they actually sound like. With a bit of care, you can work out what the word you are interested in should sound like.

There are also sites which will pronounce any French word you type in... handy!

http://www.audiofrench.com/ is one of them.

But in truth, you've got to listen to a lot of French, and let it all soak in... not passively, but actively... you got to notice these things.

The bottom line is, when/if you try that "recording yourself talking French" challenge, you could well find yourself wondering exactly what to do with quite a few of the words in any passage.... exactly how are the vowels pronounced, do I elide it with the next word, do I pronounce the last bit, what about those accents over the vowels, do I compress the middle syllable..... oh dear!!

And I haven't hardly touched on the pronunciation of imported words yet.

Anyhow, that's enough to think about for now.

Here's that Corps Salin song by Dolly... great song, moody, magnificent... but the video is just a still picture. I have made my own movie for this, but it's not loaded up yet... when it is, I will bung it in... but in the meantime, enjoy this..



That's the CD cover by the way... bloody awful!!

Well, the lyrics off the net are rubbish, so I will sort them out myself in due course... my time is up! Time for real life......

UPDATE... here we go with my very high production value lyrics video....



Nice jumper eh!!

The Fish and Chips Effect.....

I've been reading a terrific book about "Language Acquisition".... it's packed with ideas and examples of good things to do, things that don't work and various methods and theories about how we actually manage to learn these hugely complex sets of "rules and words" that everybody does at least once!

[ The book is An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching by Keith Johnson]

I'll be writing about various issues from this, but the one I want to begin with is one a lot of you learners out there might recognise.

Fossilisation.

Imagine getting hold of a lot of people who are just starting to learn a "new" language, a second language, and testing them every so often to see how they are getting on.

It's been done!

Well, some people in the sample keep on improving... but some reach a certain ( generally rather poor) level and then stay there... they stop improving, and simply stay at their pretty duff level of fluency, or lack of it.

They have " fossilised."

If they do nothing about it, they will stay at this level of "pidgin" speech for ever.

Now I can recognise this in my own learning. For example, I've been learning French for a while, and can read it pretty well... but my ability to actually speak French is very poor.It's more or less fossilised at a feeble level.

Why?

Well, these studies of learners have shown that people tend to fossilise at a level where they have no incentive to get better.



So if all you need is to be able to " get by" then you tend to get stuck at the " just managing" level. This is sometimes called the " Fish and Chips" effect... because if all you need is to be able to ask for fish and chips, then that's where you will stay.

So why to other students NOT fossilise... why do they continue the hard task of language acquisition?

[a] Because they need to improve their language slills all the time... for instance, they could be in the "target language country" and doing a professional job... every day they will need to talk to their team, to deal with new vocabulary and new language structures... they are constantly a long way from the fossilisation comfort zone.

[b] Because they don't just want to learn "fish and chips" competency. They want to " integrate" with those around them... to truly be a full part of the language community and be indistinguishable from native speakers... they just can't afford to fossilise!

You can see from this exactly why my French speaking has fossilised... I never get to use it.. or hardly ever. On the other hand, my reading has not fossilised because I am reading more and more demanding French.

SO... what do I do about it?

I need to have incentive.... and the opportunity to actually do more talking... reading out loud instead of silently, talking to and arguing with the television and radio,watching more French films ( and arguing with the people in them) talking to myself, joining a conversation class/group , finding native speakers to talk to, using interactive learning materials....... the list goes on...

SO... plenty to think about there, if fossilisation is an issue for you!

In the meantime, here's Rose with the charming Comment C'était Déjà.

It has a fine video, which adds to the pantheon of " walking-along-and-collecting-a-motley-crowd films.... hope you like it...



Thanks to lyricsmania for the words....

Lyrics to Comment C'était Déjà :

Tourne-disque qui crépite au loin
Sergeant Pepper sur un dimanche matin
On s'rappelle jamais trop bien
Les souvenirs auxquels on tient

Comment c'était déjà
Comment c'était
Quand ça f'sait rien quand on tombait
Un peu de rouge sur les g'noux
Un peu de rouge qui soignait tout
Isn't she lovely comme si c'était moi
Les cheveux longs, les ch'mises en soie
La moto, les tiges qu'il fumait
Les dessins qui s'envolaient
Et toi tétais même pas née
J'étais heureuse moi tu sais
Trois petits tours et puis trente ans
Un, deux, trois soleil on est grand
Sauf que d'être grand moi j'ai pas l'cran
La machine à coudre qui ronronnait
Les bouts de tissu à nos pieds
Tout avait un sens et c'était d'jà ça
Comment c'était déjà
Et le monde comme un tourniquet
Ne s'arrêtait jamais d'tourner
Et la vie sentait bon l'embrun
Les cyprès du parc Chambrun
Et toi t'étais même pas là
J'étais heureuse moi déjà
Trois petits tours et puis trente ans
Un, deux, trois soleil on est grand
Sauf que d'être grand moi j'ai pas le cran
Et toi t'étais même pas née
J'étais heureuse moi tu sais
Trois petits tours et puis trente ans
Un deux trois soleil on est grand
Sauf que d'être grand moi j'ai pas le cran
Mais où s'en vont finir leurs jours
Les beaux rêves, les grands amours
Où s'enfuient donc ces bouts de temps
Ca s'ra comment dis
ça s'ra comment?

[ These are Comment C'était Déjà Lyrics on http://www.lyricsmania.com/ ]

the relief of Cricket !

Have you tried using google translate? It's dead easy to use, and you can have a lot of fun with it.... and it can often make you feel rather superior when it makes a complete pig's ear of a bit of French.



Let's let it loose on some actual French ............

To start with something very straightforward, here‘s a couple of lines from Nancy Pickard’s “ Jenny et les Dingues. “



Elle tressaillit, souleva ses béquilles et s'éloigna de moi en clopinant. Je demeurai sur place, embarassée, incertaine, et un peu effrayée par l'incohérence totale de son comportement.

And here is what Google Translate makes of it…..

She started, raised his crutches and hobbled away from me. I stood there, embarrassed, uncertain, and a little frightened by the total inconsistency of his behavior.

So that’s a reasonable start for GT!

Here’s a bit of Maigret… it’s from “ Félicie et la” …..



C'est un coup dont je me souviendrai, je vous assure. Celui qui a trouvé ça! Il se glisse entre deux taxis, ou dans n'importe quel coin d'ombre.Il tire. Au même moment, la voiture démarre et, comme de juste, tout le monde s'imagine que l'assassin est dedans; on se précipite à sa poursuite, tandis que notre homme a eu le temps de prendre le large ou peut-être même se mêler à la foule.

And here is the partially successful translation…....

This is a shot I will remember, I assure you. The one who found this! It slips between two taxis, or in any dark corner. He draws. At the same time, the car starts and, just like everyone thinks the killer is inside, they rushed after him, while the man had time to take off or maybe even mingle with the crowd.

[ The “just like everyone thinks” isn’t quite what he means, but it isn’t too bad is it? ]

So, a sterner test… here are a couple of sentences spoken by the eponymous heroine of “Zazie dans le métro”



Si vous continuez à gueuler comme ça, y a un flic qu'est capable de se ramener. Tout ça ne me rend pas mon tonton, on va encore dire que j'ai voulu faire une fugue et ce sera pas vrai.

…and this is how it was translated…

If you keep yelling like that, what is a cop can be reduced. All this does not make me my uncle is going to say I wanted to run away and it will not.

Obviously, once speech slips into the vernacular, Google translate becomes unreliable… in other words, it doesn’t cope with it very well.

Now when I did a similar translation test with some Welsh, it really really came unstuck with poetry!

So I thought I would try some French poetry and see how it coped…

Let’s try it with a bit of Catherine Pozzi….. here’s a bit from “ Ave” …

Par l'univers en mille corps brisée, de mille instants non rassemblés encore, de cendre aux cieux jusqu'au néant vannée, vous referez pour une étrange année un seul trésor,
vous referez mon nom et mon image de mille corps emportés par le jour, vive unité sans nom et sans visage, coeur de l'esprit , ô centre du mirage très haut amour.

And here is its wonderful / woeful translation…

By the world body into a thousand broken a thousand times not yet gathered, ash winnowed to heaven to nothing, you refer to a strange year one treasure, you refer my name and picture of a thousand bodies carried away by the day Long live unity nameless and faceless, the heart of the mind, O the center of the high mirage love.

As you can see, it's got a lot of the words right, but the "feel" of the poem has been lost completely... rather as you would expect. A machine has no chance with stuff like this.... imagine trying to translate The Waste Land using a translation machine.. it's almost beyond the reach of a skilled human translator.

Just for a laugh, let's have a go... this is just after the start of the first section, The Burial of the Dead... here's the English version...

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.


and here is what Google translate makes of it...

Quelles sont les racines qui l'embrayage, ce qui poussent les branches
Sur ces ordures pierre? Fils de l'homme,
Vous ne pouvez pas dire, ou deviner, car vous savez que
Un tas d'images brisées, où le soleil tape,
Et l'arbre mort ne donne pas d'abri, le cricket aucun soulagement,
Et la pierre sèche aucun bruit de l'eau. seuls les
Il ya l'ombre sous cette roche rouge,
(Venez à l'ombre de ce rocher rouge),
Et je vais vous montrer quelque chose de différent soit
Ton ombre au matin marchant derrière vous
Ou votre ombre au soir, la hausse de vous rencontrer;
Je vais vous montrer la peur dans une poignée de poussière.




You can amuse yourself by going through a whole chain of languages... so I took this French version of the Waste Land through Welsh.... Latin.... Spanish and back to English again and finished up with this...

You can leave the roots, which branches to grow
Trash of the stone? Son of man,
You can not say or guess, for you know
A set of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree is not the ceiling, but no relief of Cricket
And the dry stone no sound of water. only
Network under the shade of a rock
(Come to the shade of the red stone)
And I will show another
In the morning you walk after your shadow
Or your shadow in the night coming to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Now that has a loveliness all of its own!

Ah... the relief of Cricket!! And I rather fancy that "network under the shade of a rock."

Well... that's enough mucking around for one day... let's listen to the excellent Holden and their open-air rendering of " Je dois m'en aller"........ I wonder where they are.



and here's the words, apparently...

Je dois m'en aller Lyrics
Holden

Je suis venue le genoux à terre les cheveux en arrière
Mais les paupières me tombent aussi
Vas-tu me laisser cher incompris
Je te l'ai dit
Je t'aime bien mais je dois m'en aller

On s'est saoulé de vin et de mots on s'est mis K.O.
Mais les sirènes m'appellent aussi
Vas-tu me laisser cher indécis
Aujourd'hui
Je ne t'en veux pas mais je dois m'en aller

Je t'ai vu faire le coléoptère t'élever dans les airs
Oh mais les cerp-volants me parlent ainsi
Je les écoute et je les oublie
C'est ainsi
Il se fait tard et je dois m'en aller

Je suis déjà sur une autre planète le coeur et la tête
Mais les boulevards me manquent aussi
Vas-tu me laisser toi qui respire
Qui m'inspire
Je n'y peux rien si je dois m'en aller

SOME NEWS... next week [Thursday 20th ] on BBC4 at 11:50 pm there is going to be a French comedy program on.... so there.

FOOTNOTE... here's what google Translate did to those song words...

have to go Lyrics
Holden

I came to the knees down the hair back
But my eyes also fall
Will you leave me much misunderstood
I told you
I love you well but I have to go

We got drunk with wine and words we started KO
But the sirens call me too
Will you leave me much undecided
today
I do not blame you but I have to go

I saw the beetle to raise you in the air
Oh but cerp flying and talk to me
I listen and I forget
thus
It's getting late and I have to go

I'm already on another planet the heart and head
But I miss the boulevards as
Will you let me you breathing
inspires me
I can not help it if I have to go

Ils croient que c'est finis !

Watching French football... with French commentary.... is another good way to listen to real French.... it's often pretty fast, but they tend to use a lot of stock phrases, and much of the vocabulary is predictable too.

It's fun too, if you like football.

Some of the clips I'm going to show you are quite long... if you only watch one of them, watch the last one which also has some discussions/arguments at the start ( and the end) rather like we get on Match of the Day here in the UK.

To get started, here's some highlights from a France-Spain match, with excited french commentary.. listen out for " la frappe!!!" in this one...



and here's another excited commentary on the highlights from a Lyon-Marseilles match...this is gripping stuff... " et ensuite, un touché magnifique! " ..well, I think that's what he says. A nail-biting finish too, with " une grosse minute..".....



Here's more for you....Marseille v. Caen.... la capitaine montre l'exemple...



This one is a commentary/résumé of a St.Etienne- Marseille match...stacks of French here.. peut-être bon présage....



and here's a terrific footy conversation/argument+ actual match clips... " résumer Rennes-St Etienne. This is real French in action... listen out for " l'attaque plurielle de Rennes"...



Well... wasn't that all entertaining and instructive folks... and of course you can go over and over these , understanding and picking out more each time.

But now, it might be music time..

This lovely piece of music is a version of an Alain Bashung song, performed by the remarkable Ina-Ich……. The song is La nuit je mens…



And here are the words….
La Nuit Je Mens Lyrics

On m'a vu dans le Vercors
Sauter à l'élastique
Voleur d'amphores
Au fond des criques
J'ai fait la cour à des murènes
J'ai fait l'amour j'ai fait le mort
T'étais pas née

À la station balnéaire
Tu t'es pas fait prier
J'étais gant de crin, geyser
Pour un peu je trempais
Histoire d'eau

La nuit je mens
Je prends des trains à travers la plaine
La nuit je mens
Je m'en lave les mains
J'ai dans les bottes des montagnes de questions
Où subsiste encore ton écho
Où subsiste encore ton écho

J'ai fait la saison
Dans cette boîte crânienne
Tes pensées
Je les faisais miennes
T'accaparer seulement t'accaparer
D'estrade en estrade
J'ai fait danser tant de malentendus
Des kilomètres de vie en rose

Un jour au cirque
Un autre à chercher à te plaire
Dresseur de loulous
Dynamiteur d'aqueducs

La nuit je mens
Je prends des trains à travers la plaine
La nuit je mens
Effrontément
J'ai dans les bottes des montagnes de questions
Où subsiste encore ton écho
Où subsiste encore ton écho

On m'a vu dans le Vercors
Sauter à l'élastique
Voleur d'amphores
Au fond des criques
J'ai fait la cour à des murènes
J'ai fait l'amour j'ai fait le mort
T'étais pas née

La nuit je mens
Je prends des trains à travers la plaine
La nuit je mens
Je m'en lave les mains
J'ai dans les bottes des montagnes de questions
Où subsiste encore ton écho
Où subsiste encore ton écho

La nuit je mens
Je prends des trains à travers la plaine
La nuit je mens
Je m'en lave les mains
J'ai dans les bottes des montagnes de questions
Où subsiste encore ton écho
Où subsiste encore ton écho...

Author's note... the picture at the top is from Zig et Puce, a well-loved French comic which ran to only 6 issues ( I think)...so perhaps it was not appreciated at the time.

Here's a little bit about them...

Zig et Puce viennent en tête des nombreux duos de la bande dessinée francophone : Quick et Flupke, Spirou et Fantasio, Blake et Mortimer, Johan et Pirlouit, Astérix et Obélix, Valérian et Laureline... Entre eux, il n'y aura jamais de premier et de second rôle, ni d'opposition de caractère bien tranchée. Ils sont deux, tout simplement, indissociables - et bientôt trois, puisque dès la quinzième planche de leur première aventure ils adoptent le pingouin Alfred (après avoir d abord tenté de le capturer pour s'en nourrir). Le volatile s'attirera une formidable sympathie populaire, dont les causes demeurent difficiles à analyser. Ses maîtres n'en prirent pas ombrage. Leur petit monde s'enrichira encore de trois autres figures récurrentes : la petite Dolly (nièce d'un milliardaire, elle inspire à Zig de tendres sentiments), le cheval Marcel et le professeur Médor -les deux derniers plus intéressants que l'insipide demoiselle.
Fabuleuse odyssée que celle de ces deux gamins de Paris, sans attaches familiales et sans le sou, décidés à faire fortune en les mondes connus et inconnus, de l'Ethiopie, l'Australie et les Indes jusqu'aux contrées imaginaires de l'Atlantide et de la Marcalance, sans oublier une excursion sur Vénus. Dans la lignée des globe-trotters, entre la Famille Fenouillard et Tintin, ils font figures de champions.
Certes, sous le crayon de Saint-Ogan, le monde apparaît comme une collection de lieux communs et d'images d'Epinal, char­riant tous les stéréotypes et préjugés de l'époque. Peut-être est-ce le prix à payer pour un récit qui va toujours très vite et qui accumule les invraisemblances ? Zig et Puce ne se posent quelque part que le temps de vérifier ce que chacun croit savoir. Ainsi, quand un sous-marin les dépose sur la côte du Japon, ils n'ont que le temps de négocier un kimono et d'être victimes d'un tremblement de terre - et les voilà déjà repartis à bord d'une voiture qu'ils gagnent à la loterie.

[I spent a while looking up that word Marcalance which occurs in the cartoon I posted. Silly me]

Les religieuses immurée.....

The other day me and the Librarian toddled up into the Lake District.... right up to the Northy bit where the tourists don't go.

We went there to go and see Richard, one-time lead guitar of both of our fantastic bands.... Blank Czechs and the Walled-Up Nuns. I was the utterly terrific bass player of course... bass-playing and maths go together you know. I am sure that Richard would agree that I wrote their most popular song... "Ammunition." Well, I'm fairly sure.

Well, that was all a long time ago, but since then Richard has done a remarkable thing. He's become a fluent Gaelic speaker. He even teaches it.


To say that I am impressed would be a total understatement. It's not as if he lived up there or anything.... he's been on a few courses and " Gaelic Weeks" or whatever but most of the time it's been all his own work.

SO.... I was keen to glean from this fountain of wisdom exactly how he managed to become so good whilst having very little opportunity to speak the language conversationally.Because, of course, I am on pretty much the same boat, but with French instead of Gaelic.

Mind you, he does have a reasonable age advantage over me. Bah.



It turns out he did much the same sorts of thing that I'm doing.... and he still does.

[a] He listened to lots of courses on tape etc.

[b] He tried to use the language wherever he could....

[b1] .... at home

[b2] ..... whilst driving or walking around the town

[b3] ....... translating boring meetings into Gaelic.

[b4] .........talking back at the radio or tele

[b5] ........... describing things and people as he went around.

[c] He got hold of interesting books and magazines.

[d] He learned patterns of sentences and then changed them for different uses.

[e] He memorised words by all the standard methods.

Basically, all of the things I've been banging on about on the blog.

I was fairly pleased that he didn't come up with anything that I hadn't thought of... but thinking about it, it would have been good if he had.

He liked my mobile phone idea..... well, I think he did... he might just have thought it polite to do so.

I know that I am not temperamentally suited to language learning... I will list my deficiences in this area at some future point!.... I was certainly utterly utterly crap at it at school, in French, Latin and German.I'm versatile me.

In some ways, I am pretty amazed how much I have done in these twilight years of mine.

Not half as amazed as my French, Latin and German teachers would be however. Ciel!

Still, it did make me appreciative of the advantages I've got in learning French compared to Gaelic... here's a little list of all those things I can benefit from that your average Gaelic learner probably can't.... reasons to be cheerful, if you like..

There's loads of interesting, even brilliant, French films to watch.

French music is utterly inspiring and lovely.

The resources for learning French are , in general, abundant and excellent.

French novels, cartoon books, graphic novels, poetry etc are readily available.

You can buy French newspapers with reasonable ease.

There's loads of French resources on the net.

It's probably a lot cheaper to holiday in France than in Northern Scotland.

Warmer too.

You often hear French on news items on the TV and radio.

You can listen to loads of french-language radio stations online.

You are far more likely to meet French speakers than Gaelic speakers.

Well, you get the idea!

Right then... let's have some blasted music. Something cheerful and uplifting is what we want..... we'll try Dolly/Manu and Comment taire... not really a video though.



and here's a fine acoustic version ... still just a still though...



but here's the words..she seems to sing it a little bit differently in places from what it says on the CD sleeve notes, so I've tweaked them a little...any corrections will be welcomed.

Title: Comment Taire
Artist: Dolly

Comment faire
Comment dire
Comment taire
Taire les mots les souvenirs
Revenir en arrière
Je veux revoir ton sourire
Comment faire
Pour te dire
Les mots écrits sur ton visage
Revenir en arrière
Je veux revoir ton sourire
Tu as toujours su me donner l'espoir
Et je n'ai plus peur de trouver juste un peu de courage
Te donner le meilleur
Je vois les signes les présages
Je vois les signes tu es mon plus beaux paysage
J'apprends lire entre les pages
Je veux revoir ton sourire...
Je veux revoir ton sourire...
Enfin te voir mon sourire
Tu as toujours su me donner de l'espoir
Et je n'ai plus peur de trouver juste un peu de courage
te donner le meilleur
Comment faire
Comment dire
Comment taire
Taire les mots les souvenirs
Revenir en arrière
Je veux revoir ton sourire...
Je veux revoir ton sourire...
Je veux revoir ton sourire...
etc....

UPDATE.................
[a] I hope I got the title right up at the top... should it have been murée ?
[b] I've been reading a fascinating book about language acquisition... no doubt I will be writing more about all that at some point...
[c] Yes, I know I missed last Thurday, and I know this is a day early. I'm a pragmatist, rather than a perfectionist....