Thank you, Galant girls!

[annathepiper]

I was going to do another French sentence post tonight about Fred and George and the lively discussion I’ve had on Facebook about better words to use for describing cats as ‘fuzzy’. But this just got trumped by my picking out an entire understandable sentence in a song I don’t even have written lyrics for!

The song is “Faites-moi un homme sans tête” by Galant Tu Perds Ton Temps. The Galant girls have no lyrics posted on their website, which gives me a Sad, so I have to just keep listening to them and hope I get lucky picking out a word or three here and there. Tonight, that actually happened! On the way home I heard, in this particular song, a phrase that sounded like “je ne vas pas marier”. Which means, “I will not marry!”

I already knew ‘je’, the ‘ne … pas’ construction, ‘va’ being part of the conjugation of aller, and I got ‘marier’ from various other songs in my collection. So WOW, I picked out an entire sentence in French with my very own ears. Go me!

I just doublechecked the song and discovered that the line is actually ‘je ne va pas me marier’; I hadn’t caught the ‘me’ just before ‘marier’ the first time through. Now, Francophones, sanity check me on this–if I’m understanding my shiny new verb book correctly, the presence of the “me” in there indicates that the verb being used here is “se marier”, not just “marier”, which is the difference between “getting married to someone” vs. “causing an act of marriage”. So that makes the sentence more “I will not get married.”

Am I reading that right?

Either way, HOLY CRAP I just understood an entire French sentence in a song! *does a little dance*

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I will not myself marry, I will not get married.

Good job, you are really rocking this!

These people may have a Quebecois accent - if you find tutorials on the web the people on them will probably have a Pariesienne accent. I guess I'd say the Paris one is more precise and the Q one is more gutteral? See if you can fine any West Indies/Caribbean accents online, they should be more lyrical, you should be able to hear a difference. I -think- it's the Southern France/Marsallies (former capitol!) accent that's maybe more soothing-sounding but that may not be captured on the web.

My mom may have a slight German accent in French, it's hard for me to tell b/c she's my mom and all. She used to say my accent wasn't terrible but I think that was b/c I sounded more like HER than like my (primarily American) high-school French teachers.

[wingedelf.livejournal.com]

So that makes the sentence more “I will not get married.”

Am I reading that right?

Je pense qu'oui.

[annathepiper]

Thank you! And ooh, another verb. :D

[annathepiper]

Thank you!

And oh, I TOTALLY expect French accents to be different between Quebec and Parisian French. Since what I'm working with here are six bands' worth of Quebecois trad, Quebecois accents are a given.

What has been interesting to me with the music so far is the seventh band I've started listening to, Mes Aieux, who are NOT trad and whose overall accent in their songs seems different to me than most of the trad stuff I've got. But this may be a matter either of differences in local Quebec accents, or differences in individual style of specific singers. I don't know yet.

I'm hoping I can get hold of some French SF/F audiobooks as well, ideally ones to go along with print editions of stuff. I expect those will be read by Parisian French speakers, most likely! It will be interesting to compare!

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

I have a really hard time listening to media in Parisien French. Not that I don't understand what's being said, it's just so... singsongy, I guess is the word? I parse it as the way you talk to an infant.

[annathepiper]

eeyorerin was telling me she once witnessed Quebecois French speakers and a Parisian French speaker trying to communicate, and it was very impressive to her how dramatically different they sounded!

solarbird and I matched that with how people with a deep enough Southern drawl down here in the States are almost speaking another language, too, so I have at least a glimmer of ability to imagine this. My drawl is weaksauce compared to some of the accents you can get out of REALLY rural parts of the South.

And all of this just intrigues me deeply! Wordgeekery across languages for the win!

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

That's entirely right! Well done!

And there are regional differences in Québec accents, yes, as well as age differences (that I've noticed, anyway). Older Québecois men sound like (and may well have been) they've been smoking since they were six and have a giant moustache.

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

Mes Aieux sing in a Montreal-area accent; I haven't listened to other Quebec trad acts in far too long, but I'd hasard a guess that the others are singing in a more rural accent.

[annathepiper]

Okay, that makes sense, given what little I know about Mes Aieux so far; I know several of their songs are specific to life in Montreal!

I don't know yet about the other bands on my lineup. I haven't read up enough on them to know where they're all from. :)

[annathepiper]

Thank you very much!

And hee, there is certainly a bit of an age jump between some of the bands I've got and the rest of them. The older bands I've been listening to also do seem to be the ones who have the very round, very full accents as they sing. Monsieur Yves Lambert in La Bottine, I am looking at you! (He's the one who was singing lead in La Bottine when I saw them and his voice steamrollered right over me at the time. DAMN, he was good.) Also, most of you gentlemen in the Charbonniers!

Though this is NOT exclusive, the guy who sings lead for De Temps Antan has some of that going on too and he looks like he's my age or a bit younger. :)