Musical vocabulary in French

[annathepiper]

I am beginning to see that when it comes to musical instruments, the French words for them are pretty easily recognizable. For example, if I look up flute, piccolo, guitar, and bouzouki, the primary instruments I can play, I get flûte, piccolo, guitare, and bouzouki! Also, I know from Le Vent du Nord song lyrics as well as the liner notes of the Symphonique album that violin translates to violon.

And that of course points me at an important musical verb: jouer!

So I can say Je joue le piccolo, la flûte, la guitare, et le bouzouki. The important thing for me to note here also is which noun gets ‘le’ and which one gets ‘la’. Why piccolo gets ‘le’ and flûte gets ‘la’, damned if I know! But that’s the wacky fun of a language that does gendered nouns. I remember running into that all the time as well with German.

(Wherein that same sentence I just quoted becomes Ich spiele Piccolo, Flöte, Gitarre und der Bouzouki, according to Google Translate, but I must be dubious about that sentence slapping a ‘der’ in there when none of the other nouns get one.)

I just bought the ebook edition of the book 501 French Verbs (the print version of which maellenkleth very kindly sent me!), and it tells me ‘jouer’ is considered an essential verb for students. Certainly it is relevant to my interests! And present tense conjugation looks pretty easy. I will need to see if I can practice this one!

All of which should warn y’all that I’m going to be Frenchgeeking periodically on this blog, as I inch my way into trying to figure out more of the words of all this Quebecois trad I’ve been listening to! Again, mad props to maellenkleth for pointing me at that verb book, and I’m on the hunt for French translations of any of my favorite SF/F authors as well. If I can get hold of any French editions of anything by jimbutcher, mizkit, katatomic, cmpriest, andpuff, or Julie Czerneda, that would be particularly awesome. :D

ETA: Fixing the spelling of jouer up above. I keep making the typo joeur, oops! Thanks to llachglin for the catch!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

Comments

[shadowspar]

The viola's one of the few instruments I've encountered that seems to be called a few wildly different things in different languages. It's alto in French, as well as being something akin to "alto violin" in several other languages, and Bratsche in German.

[annathepiper]

I love that so much, that a given thing can be called such wildly different words. :D

Also: mad love for the sound of a viola in general! It's a delicious instrument.

[filkferengi]

Some of the words are just fun to say, like hautbois. Just think of the fun you can have with holiday music!

Also, check your verb book; jouer takes prepositions. With musical instruments, it's de: je joue de la guitare, du piano, etc. With other activities, it's a: je joue aux cartes, au hockey {very relevant in Canada! ;)}, etc.

See you at Conflikt!

[annathepiper]

Ooh, okay, cool, thanks for the tip on the prepositions! Most appreciated! :)

Conflikt, ho! I hope to bring a shiny new flute there. :D

[filkferengi]

Joie! Je suis certaine que tu vas jouer merveilleusement!

:)

[annathepiper]

Woo! I understood that sentence! \0/ (And I certainly HOPE I will...)

[filkferengi]

Bonne chance avec tes études du francais!

[annathepiper]

Merci beaucoup. Je parle seulement un peu francais...

... and now I switch languages because I don't know yet how to say "... without looking stuff up or throwing it through a translation engine." ;) I need to study a lot more! But it's fun picking up random sentences out of Quebecois lyrics now and being able to go WOO! I know what they just sung!

[filkferengi]

Do you like Bottine Souriante? They're marvellous, but if I listen long enough, their québecois starts to sound understandable, which would have made my phonetics professeur cry, "Quelle horreur!" [weg]

[annathepiper]

I love La Bottine Souriante. They are in fact the first Quebecois band I ever saw--I saw them in conjunction with Great Big Sea, back in 2000.

I've been swooning most loudly over Le Vent du Nord lately, but La Bottine is right up there with them. I'm more familiar with La Bottine's earlier discography, but I'm working on getting newer albums of theirs and in fact am very much looking forward to the new one they're coming out with at the end of this month. :D :D

(I've got a whole raft of Quebecois bands I've been listening to--Le Vent du Nord, La Bottine Souriante, Les Charbonniers de l'Enfer, De Temps Antan, Galant Tu Perds Ton Temps, and La Volee d'Castors for the trad. And Mes Aieux for trad-influenced rock. They are all the whole reason I've been so caught up in paying attention to French lately!)

[filkferengi]

I've got "Maudite Moisson" & obviously need to listen to it soon.

Have you ever tried Coeur de Pirate? I like Mary Knickle, whom I found about from one of Marc Gunn's celtic podcasts. I'm also very fond of The Duhks.

[annathepiper]

"Maudite Moisson" is good and I have several tracks I listen to repeatedly on it! Important note about that album, though: it's Le Vent du Nord's first studio album and they've swapped out two members since it came out. The two studio albums they've done with the current set of members are the ones I favor. :)

I was unaware of either Coeur de Pirate or Mary Knickle, and shall be delighted to check both of them out! The Duhks I think I've heard of but I haven't checked them out either. Thanks for the recs!

By way of exchanging recommendations, if you check my quebecois music tag, I just did a bunch of recommendation posts about the six Quebecois trad bands I've been following and what my current recs are for them albums-wise and such. Check those out if you like. :)

[filkferengi]

Very cool; thanks!

[annathepiper]

You're most welcome!