Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Geste do it.




[Indila]
Miss me miss me, you are the one who makes me feel
Makes me feel for real
In the night in the night, you know when I close my eyes
I can hear your voice for ever
Im dreaming, singing, hoping, smiling
Giving flying falling, fighting, crying, living, writting when you love me
Im dreaming, singing, hoping, smiling
Giving flying falling, fighting, crying, living, writting when you love me

[Youssoupha]
J'écris des textes en relief juste avec des rimes plates
J'ai pas changé mes rêves contre un chèque de 1000 plaque
Quand je suis en concert et que le public back
C'est grâce a Philo mon frère big up a mon big black
J'suis parti de mon bled forcé sous les bruits d'balles
Dans la rue les murs ont des oreilles et les briques parlent
Rap de référence tu sais je ne biz pas, espérant que ce putain de show biz ne me brise pas
D'une manière ou d'une autre rêvais de toucher le ciel
J'pouvais pas être astronaute alors j'ai fait de la scène
J'ai un pied sur terre, l'autre dans le vide
Un pied dans le superficiel, l'autre dans le din
J'ai un coeur chez les miens, un coeur chez les fous
Un coeur sur la main, un coeur au milieu de la foule

[Indila]



[Youssoupha]
(yeah)
J'allume une bougie pour éclairer nos remords
Je me bouge vite pour ne pas rester dehors
Le temps s'écoule vite donc on a besoin de l'or
Jai le flow de LL Cool J quand jai besoin de loves
Jai une main sur mes proches l'autre sur une femme
Jai une main sur le microphone l'autre sur une arme
Le succes est de taille mais faut garder nos repères
Plus belle sera la médaille plus lourd sera le revers
J'écris ces quelques lignes car souvent je m'y perd
La defaite est orpheline la victoire a mille pères
J'ai un œil sur nos vie un œil sur le monde
Un œil sur mon fils un œil sur la montre
Ma vie sans la foule triste anesthésie
Quand je souffre pour vous je souffre avec plaisir
En guise de refrain pour le public qui m'entoure
Ya cette voix qui revient pour vous dire tout mon amour

[Indila]

[Indila]
No one else but you
Im nothing without you
I don't want it to end
My love is ïn your hands</div>

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Greenwashing

We get a lot of greenwashing in our marketing, whether it's for shampooing or buildings...

 


On veut du green green green green green green washing
On veut des tours d’avion, des airbus, du diesel
Des mandarines toutes les saisons, des grands voyages dans le ciel
Du high tech à la maison, de la nouvelle technologie
On veut pouvoir dire pardon et soulager son esprit
On veut d’la viande d’Argentine, d’la bidoche à tous les repas
De la world food dans la cuisine, on veut du sucre, on veut du gras
On veut moins cher, on veut meilleur, on veut toujours un peu d’ailleurs
On veut la mer, on veut l’été même en hiver on veut bronzer

Refrain

On veut du green green green green green green washing
C’est nous les as, les pinocchios du marketing
On veut du green green green green green green washing
On cache les galets sous le sable, on veut des plages de sable blanc
Du réseau pour nos portables, on voudrait quatre barres tout le temps
Des orgies raisonnables, des grands échangeurs de béton
Et des amis toujours joignables, on veut des baleines et du thon

Refrain

On veut de l’eau toujours qui coule et des rides un peu moins creusées
On veut de la jeunesse en poudre et puis de la neige en été
Des grands buildings sous le soleil, des monuments pharaoniques
On veut partout partout pareil, de la wifi, du numérique
On veut du green green green green green green washing
C’est nous les as, les pinocchios du marketing
On veut du green green green green green green washing
On veut du green green green green green green washing
On veut des lessives sans phosphates, des shampoings tout organiques
Et des forêts pour nos 4x4, du charbon dans nos cosmétiques
Des slogans abusifs, plus blanc que blanc, plus vert que vert
Mascarade écologique pendant qu’on s’shoote au nucléaire
Greenwashing
On veut du green green green green green green washing
On veut du green green green green green green washing
On veut pouvoir dire pardon et soulager son esprit
On veut du green green green green green green washing
On veut la mer, on veut l’été même en hiver on veut bronzer
On veut du green green green green green green washing
On veut des baleines et du thon
On veut du green green green green green green washing
C’est nous les as
On veut du green green green green green green washing

Monday, August 27, 2012

meilleurs voeux

It's Sam's 12th birthday today. So naturally, we wanted to get him some bonbons and a best-seller

Saturday, June 16, 2012

pipi room


They know I'm not very good at speaking French. So they give me little bits of English to help.

WC, doobla-veh-seh, is of course familiar. But I had not seen pipi room before.

There's all sorts of linguistic swaps going on. Pipi As the dictionary has it,

pee



1788, "to urinate," euphemistic abbreviation of piss. Noun meaning "act of urination" is attested from 1902. Reduplicated form pee-pee is attested from 1923.
and here's another sign that Sam found for me

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Super Crack

Help me out someone...


Supercrack. Supercrack?

If it was spelt differently I'd assume it was something to do with the French verb craquer, to make a cracking noise. As in, Les morceaux de viande craquaient avec un bruit effroyable.

From the -ck ending it looks like it's meant to be an English word.

Bit which kind of crack? A gap or fissure of some kind? The drug? Certainly the dog looks addicted to the stuff...


So* Toulouse

Look what the ad man* has come up with for Toulouse: sotoulouse.com


I especially like that asterisk. Asterisks are all over the place, aren't they? - they look like stars, like the sun, like something stretching out from the centre and influencing all sorts of other things, like something a bit exciting, but also cute...

But, here it is also just a standard asterisk - with that very small and lonely vertical "Tellement", explaining to any puzzled non-English speaker what "So" means!

Then again, someone pointed out that "so" isn't an ideal word. There is so, as in "so, what's so good about that?". The asterisk would then be *et... alors?

*L.A.Solution - "Marketing territorial" - that's another French "ing"-word - marketing.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Quick, get me out of here!

It's not the food I mind so much as the language. It's not French, it's not English - it's some fast food no-man's-land in between.
The first hint of trouble is the name, Quick. It's a fast food chain very much like Macdo, with the same linguistic booby-traps set all over. The next clue is Drive:
How do you say that in French, drive? I don't honestly know. In all my years in French lessons at Westminster City School I don't remember ever being taught how to say that. (Not that I remember much actually from all those years of French lessons.)

It's a French chain. According to wikipedia, it's actually nationalised by the French government!
What's all this then?



That's "du fun servi sur un plateau". The milkshake cup says "Milk Shake your body" and the softy cup says "Nice cream"!

But never mind all these Anglicisms and bad puns. More important: how, when you're ordering, do you say these words? How do you say milkshake in a French way? Sam reliably informs me it's "meelk-shek". And how about bacon?

The word bacon in English I pronounce like everyone else, with a "bay" and an unstressed o, called a "schwa" and written [ə]. According to French rules of pronunciation it should be bacon, with "ba" as in the English word "bat" and that kind of nasal "on" that the French have. But you don't say it like that in Quick or Macdo. You say "beiconne", with the first syllable as in berry and the second like in our "con man". 


Do you see what I mean? And that's just one word! There's a whole minefield of these things in there:
  • the Cheeseburger
  • the Suprême Cheese
  • the Quick'n Toast
  • the Giant
  • the Long Chicken
  • the Long Chicken Barbecue Bacon
  • the Long Bacon
  • the Long Fish
- and that's just the burgers! Quick! Get me out of here!


Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Strangers- it's now!

You have to give it to them: the French do try. To make us English feel at home, that is. The way they use English and Englishy-sounding words so that the French language isn't too much of a shock.

Thinking about the ongoing storage problem in our house, I turned to Ikea Toulouse. There's work going on there, apparently, and they've closed off some parts of the store. I was astonished to read that "Un relooking spectaculaire du libre service marché" was one of the developments - a makeover for the self-service market. A relooking?!? Where did that one come from?

I guess it's the newest member of that small family of -ing words that have been put into French for us.

It started with a parking - what we in Britain would call a car park. As French wikipedia says: "Le mot parking n'a pas ce sens dans la langue anglaise et constitue donc un faux anglicisme." Yes, don't be pedantic, I know that parking came from the French parc, and I've also  read that before that it was the word for an enclosure or fence.

Shampooing is a strange one. As an Englishman, my first understanding of the word shampoo is as product, the stuff you get in the bottle .(Although it does come, via an interesting history, from the Hindi word for a massage, chāmpo, चाँपो) Like parking, it seems like the action has become the thing in French. It has the added twist of a strange pronunciation, just to keep us on our toes: shompwung.

Along the same lines, in the forest there is a Parcours Footing. Footing?!? I think it means jogging -  "de l’anglais foot avec suffixe -ing, et pourtant pure création française."

And then last of all - for now - meeting. This has the same meaning as in English. But the puzzle is why it's used all the time, when there is the perfectly good word réunion??

So, thank you for the gesture, France. I am  looking forward to meeting new members of the family to appear. Or should that be relooking forward?

Happy May Day

It's the Fête de Travail here in France, so it's a day off!

Which reminds me, I was checking on the distress signal "Mayday" the other day (as you do). It has nothing to do with the 1st May.

The expression comes from the French Venez m'aider (come and help me). As it says in French wikipedia:

Le mot est une déformation volontaire anglophone de la phrase française : « venez m'aider ! »

I like that déformation volontaire - deliberate corruption. It makes it sound like it was a piece of linguistic vandalism!

Anyway, happy May Day!