Someday they may come up with a method for putting French into words, but in the meantime I hope this will suffice. Previously.
Occasionally, with the ordinary words thus deformed and complicated with words of pure slang, picturesque phrases are formed, in which there can be felt the mixture of the two preceding elements, the direct creation and the metaphor: le cab jaspine, je marronne que la roulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri, the dog is barking, I suspect that the diligence for Paris is passing through the woods. Le dab est sinve, la dabuge est merloussière, la fée est bative.
The cab is Jasper’s, the marrow will still be good after roulette but Pantin has to trim the savory, I suspect that the diligence for Paris is passing through the woods. Dabbing is sinful, the flood carries mussels, this party is for babies.
Vousiergue trouvaille bonorgue ce gigotmuche?
Can you believe those traitors brought such a gigotmuche?
Les dabs d’antan trimaient siempre pour la pierre du Coësre.
Those antwardly sand dabs are always trying to get one over on old Pierre of Coësre.
Miralabi suslababo
Mirliton ribonribette
Surlababi mirlababo
Mirliton ribonribo
Miracles for your baby
Miracles for ribbon-girl
Sur la Table for my baby
Miracles for the frog, Sanrio
Moi, je la chante, et j’aime,
Plus que Diane même,
Jeanne et ses durs tetons
Bretons
Me, I’m the singer, I love me
Plus Diane is my mom
Jeanne has been to the Tetons twice
Britain.
Mon bras si dodu,
Ma jambe bien faite
Et le temps perdu
My bras are DONE,
My jam is a good omen
The temperatures are lost
Je n’entrave que le dail comment meck, le daron des orgues, peut atiger ses mômes et ses momignards et les locher criblant sans être agité lui-meme.
I don’t even have a daily comment to mock, the duke of organs, maybe has a tiger or its mom at sea, several moms playing lobster cribbage but don’t agitate them just over a meme.
Elle étonne à dix pas, elle épouvente à deux,
Une verrue habite en son nez hasardeux;
On tremble à chaque instant qu’elle ne vous la mouche
Et qu’un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche
She’s been twice ten, but she points at twice,
Her virtue is a habit but never hazardous
I tremble like chalk the second she looks at my mouth
It’s so beautiful today I don’t have a tomb for my bread.
Vous trouverez dans ces potains-là, une foultitude de raisons pour que je me libertise.
You think so much trousers are for your potatoes, but there’s a multitude of reasons you should let me go.
the duke of organs
that is an exceedingly plausible villain of a period horror novel right there
Count Rugen consulted him when he ran into a glitch building The Machine.
Or for pron.
Why did my mom never teach me how to play lobster cribbage? I feel bereft.
“Someday they may come up with a method for putting French into words, but in the meantime I hope this will suffice.”
how many deleted comments are there about this?
I’m gonna need a post specifically dedicated to all the deleted comments of this post.
I feel like my French is okay, I mean, I have been living in France without any major linguistic disasters… yet I did not understand about 85 % of this.
Yeah, this sort of broke my brain. I’m fluent, I don’t understand most of the first one and the second one means nothing at all to me and looks totally made up. I don’t think the fourth one *is* French, it might be a children’s nonsense song or something.
Hearing that is a great relief to me, who is rapidly forgetting her school French but can still make herself understood in Paris. I was seriously considering if Mallory is trolling us again when
Miralabi suslababo / Mirliton ribonribette / whatev
turned up. This is NOT, as it turns out, a children’s song, but “This was sung in a cellar or in a nook of the forest while cutting a man’s throat.” [http://www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/les_miserables/254/] The more you know?
AMAZING, I do not know what to do with this knowledge but I am so glad I have it, thank you
GREAT now I have a song to sing when I am slicing up mirlitons for dinner. They are already making a :{ face anyway.
Zut alors! Je suis une chat avec le chien du ma tante!
La plume de ma tante est BINGEY BONGEY BOOGIE-BONGEY
Les Miserables has entire chapters about 1840s French street slang, which are most likely to be untranslated since Victor Hugo is making such a point of talking about the slang and how it’s used. So don’t feel bad that you don’t know rude urchin words from over 150 years ago!
This is the only kind of French I wish I did know tho
Right? La plume est sur la table does me no good.
Often while reading Les Mis have I thought ‘my bras are DONE’.
Done with this book, done with life, done with you, Victor Hugo. My bras will take no more sewer descriptions or convent soap operas. DONE.
Every time I read books with a lot of French I do that thing in Ramona Quimby where she just says “ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ” really loudly when she encounters words she doesn’t know. Makes it like Les Miserables is full of bees.
Ha! I’ve never heard of this, it’s perfect. I work with international documents so this is going to be my new coping strategy.
I’m pretty sure some of that is gibberish (I don’t mean your guesses either) and some is dialect modern Parisian French speaker me don’t understand anyway so, fair enough.
C’est de l’argot du 19e siècle. Ou c’est Hugo!
I think this is the real method by which Bowie came up with his lyrics.
The fact that the originals are mostly either 19th century French criminal underground slang (exaggerated for effect?) or ribald ditties makes this all the sweeter…
My bras are DONE too. So this seems like a good omen for buying new bras.
My bras are done, as are my spanx, and yet I hate spending money on underwear. I also hate wearing cheap underwear. I was pondering this dilemma this very morning driving into work.
With slight tweaks, we can make a haiku:
My bras are DONE, my
Jam is a good omen; The
temperatures are lost
“Miracles for the frog, Sanrio”
Excuse me his name is Keroppi.
I tremble like chalk the second she looks at my mouth is the title of all my fanfic ever.
hoping there’s a Nabokov edition of this…
“I don’t even have a daily comment to mock” = our future lamentation?
I love these interpretive translations, but I do think in these cases the translator gets a pass for leaving in the French. I have several degrees in French, and confronted with all of this–a fair amount of which I suspect Hugo invented,* in his whole “I’m an educated white male who understands and speaks for the masses” spiel–the translator in me cries, “I surrender!”
*This fact notwithstanding, reading Les Misérables in translation in high school was at least 40% of why I decided to study French in college. Oh callow youth!
Mon bras si dodu
All this time I thought it was “my bras are dodos“, and now I’m undone to know I was wrong.
Lost my shit as “this party is for babies” Bwahahahahahaha
She’s been twice ten, but she points at twice,
Her virtue is a habit but never hazardous
I tremble like chalk the second she looks at my mouth
It’s so beautiful today I don’t have a tomb for my bread.
[Chorus:]
Me, I’m the singer, I love me
Plus Diane is my mom
Jeanne has been to the Tetons twice
Mallory, you’re my wonderwall!
Miracles for your baby
Miracles for ribbon-girl
Sur la Table for my baby
Miracles for the frog.
[Chorus, 2X]
Mallory, you’re my wonderwall!
My wonderwall!
…But anyway, here’s Wonderfrog.
Damn you, Victor Hugo, and your bizarre 1840s French slang, most of which I’m pretty sure you just made up!
Sur la Table for my baby
and le sange est sur la branche!
Le souri est sous la table!
Et maintenant, “La Vitesse.”
Et Dennis Hopper, oooh, Dennis Hopper, quel mechante…
…et le singe est…le singe est disparu…because he would f-off…he’s a cheeky monkey
From the sound of things, it’s Jeanne’s bras which are probably done.
Les dabs d’antan trimaient siempre pour la pierre du Coësre.
No, I’m pretty sure that this means that the chickens of yesteryear were always cackling at poor Pierre of Coesre.
Rediculous bits of untranslatable French aside, Les Miserables would actually be an engaging book if Victor Hugo hadn’t felt the need to mansplain every. single. reference. and. background detail to death for chapters at a time. That man had zero faith in his readers.
Les Miserables. I have such a historical relationship with this book, I read it at 12 years old as an honors French student, thinking I was edgy, wrote fanfiction for it, and had no fucking clue what any of the 1840s slang meant then as I do now.
We read the digest version of Les Miserables in 11th grade French, which dispensed with all the extras and still managed to clock in at 300 pages. And now I’m mad, because I missed all this glorious nonsense.
I don’t even understand what the problem is if they were less miserable in the first place
Vous trouverez dans ces potains-là, une foultitude de raisons pour que je me libertise.
No no no,
Your trousers are in the potatoes there, but there’s a multitude of raisins to let me go.
(PS – My favorite book!)
“une foultitude” is just an adorable portmanteau tho. Like a… a bunchmob?
A crowditude!
“My hovercraft is full of eels.”
MALLORY, you’ve invented yet ANOTHER NEW GENRE and I love it so much!
[she says trying to imagine the future without an Ortberg-ism. <<Blah. Thbppt.>>]
MALLORY, you've invented yet ANOTHER NEW GENRE and I love it so much!
[she says trying to imagine the future without an Ortberg-ism. <<Blah. Thbppt.>>]
…et le singe est…le singe est disparu…because he would f-off…he's a cheeky monkey
I was thinking the exact same thing and was seriously considering asking Mallory if she'd mind if I used it.
A crowditude!