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

[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!