Re: French

2009/1/21 Chris Wright <dhasenan@...>

>
> Unless the French portions start including stuff that's conveniently
> left out of the English translations, like "All Anglophones are
> morons" :P
>
The problem here is that *any* French utterance always contains "All
Anglophones are morons", even if it's not spelt as such. Even a completely
(or rather apparently) benign utterance like "oui", "merci" or even "au
revoir" means, besides the obvious "yes", "thank you" and "good bye", "All
Anglophones are morons". In a way, the sentence "All Anglophones are morons"
forms a subtext that is always present in any French utterance, whatever it
is about and whomever it is directed to.

The reason seems to be that one of the cornerstone of the French cultural
heritage is the unshakeable belief that "All Anglophones are morons", a
belief so deeply rooted that it is almost never spelt out explicitly, but is
always present, lurking behind any and every French word in existence. Such
a certainty helps us pull through in this world dominated by the
anglo-saxons, since anyone of us French people needs only to utter a simple
sentence like "un café ?", and the others know immediately that he shares
our common certainty that "All Anglophones are morons".

The only way to prevent French portions of text from containing stuff like
"All Anglophones are morons" would be to ban French altogether from the
mailing list. Anything else would let the dreadful "All Anglophones are
morons" stuff pass through unnoticed by most, while we French people on the
list would keep happily winking at each other via the Internet, happy that
we managed to insult the English again without them ever noticing ;) .



And of course, since mailing doesn't carry any tone of voice and there's
always someone to take things seriously when they aren't, let me just make
it clear that the here above text was nothing but a joke, or "une blague
(subtext: all Anglophone are morons)" as French people like to call it :) .

Funny little translating exercise, I must say. I'll have to look at it (but
my languages usually lack insults, as it's not the first thing I think about
when I build a vocabulary - strangely enough -).
-- 
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.

http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/