Did you know that in French, there is no word for "seventy," per se? Instead they say "soixante-dix," (soixante rhymes with croissant, which I'm not even going to get into, and dix is pronounced like a vampire might say "this") which literally means sixty-ten. Seventy-one is actually sixty-eleven, and so on. OK, so here's the part I love most about French. After sixty-ten comes four-twenties, and after four-twenties comes four-twenties-ten. Perhaps my favorite French number is quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (pronounced cot[insert guttural hacking up a hairball noise here]-ven-dees-noof), or 99. The literal translation would be "four-twenty-ten-nine." Love it. Although, I must admit that I'm a bit perplexed by the fact that a people who can't even be bothered to pronounce half the letters in their words would exercise such verbosity when counting. I'm just saying.
Sometimes I like to purposely mispronounce French words and misuse them. Like I might sing the following song:
SOIX-aaaaaante. You don't have to put on the red light.
SOIX-aaaaaante. You don't have to wear that dress tonight.
Soixante/Put on the red light...Soixante/Put on the red light
But that's just me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Notice: Neither Sting nor the Police were notified of the butchering of their song, so just zipit. Capeesh?
6 comments:
I think Kristi has struck upon a message for us to consider very carefully. First, there is the clear implication that girls generally think it's adorable when folks from foreign cultures do simple things in ways that seem unnecessarily complicated, excessive, or wasteful of effort. The moral here for me is that the next time I talk to a female in person, I should pull out a walkie-talkie and give the other one to the female in question, then speak to her through the walkie-talkie while faking an accent. Or maybe I will just count out loud from one to a hundred (in a fake accent) and then say whatever it is I'm going to say afterwards. Based on what Kristi's blog said, I believe this would be endearing. But the great thing about Kristi's blog is that you can interpret it in other ways as well. What do you think Kristi meant today?
I don't know about that, but I do know this...
My h.s. french book, while teaching me this idiotic way of counting, showed me that swiss french or belgian french does it a lot more intelligently, i.e.
70 = septante
80 = octante
90 = novante
Why do I remember this? Because my anger is eternal and carves deep grudge-based memories for inefficienct terminology such as what you describe. Besides, the method I describe above is most correctly aligned with the excellence of Spanish. Good old Spanish. You won't catch THAT language doing idiotic things with super-combo-chain compound number additions as one term, or having ridiculous syllable ommisions, as seen in 'worcestershire sauce'. I think that's pronounced 'salsa' in Spanish, bringing you a syllable-cost reduction of eleventyhundred percent by my calcu-ma-lations...
Who are your anonymous commenters? They are too funny!
Personally, i enjoyed your little French lesson. I took German and Spanish in high school and don't remember either of those languages being so complicated.
You are a funny girl!
Dear Anonymous, or dare I say, bankruptcy infotape guy, the notorious b.i.g, or MR. Big,
I must say your translation of 'worcestershire sauce' to 'salsa' in Spanish is simply genius. I can't wait to order my taco bell grande with a side of 'worcestershire sauce.' And then when the friendly taco bell attendant looks at me funny, I shall clarify--- with the following: oh yes, in espanol,that would be a side of salsa. I look forward to your future comments. Your analysis of the Kristus' blogs really helps me understand Kristus' messages to the world on an entirely new level.
Much love,
Kristus' blog reader
I do believe "Kristus" is actually "Kristis," which is the lazy man's version of "Kristi S."
To me, "Kristus" seems to come from "Christ is," and I happen to be a very lazy man.
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