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conuly
(No luck yet, btw.)
(I really ought to just go and learn French, I know.)
Today, I hit wikipedia in the end, and you know how that goes, one thing leads to another... anyway, what's interesting is that in the process I discovered that many of the expressions my mother uses that she picked up from her mother, in English or in French, are specifically Belgianisms. Which isn't that surprising, given that my mother's mother is Belgian, of course, but my mother converses in French regularly enough (admittedly by "regularly" I mean "on the phone with her mother so her brother can't listen in" and occasionally "with cab drivers to show off", so it's not really a wide social group there, but she's not me, she can actually understand and speak the language), and I would've expected her to have a few more international expressions there.
Although I can't believe that nobody else in the world tells impatiently hungry children to eat their hand and save the other for tomorrow. Maybe if they do they simply never post about it online, the only instances of it I see are either *me* saying it or a very few other people saying it in Walloon to give an example of a phrase they've heard.
On the subject of phrases that I can't find, there's such-and-fuch. My father said that. I can remember him saying it, I can hear his voice. And yet, if I google the phrase, I find only a few links to me saying it online. Nobody else.
It makes me feel almost lonely, really.
(I really ought to just go and learn French, I know.)
Today, I hit wikipedia in the end, and you know how that goes, one thing leads to another... anyway, what's interesting is that in the process I discovered that many of the expressions my mother uses that she picked up from her mother, in English or in French, are specifically Belgianisms. Which isn't that surprising, given that my mother's mother is Belgian, of course, but my mother converses in French regularly enough (admittedly by "regularly" I mean "on the phone with her mother so her brother can't listen in" and occasionally "with cab drivers to show off", so it's not really a wide social group there, but she's not me, she can actually understand and speak the language), and I would've expected her to have a few more international expressions there.
Although I can't believe that nobody else in the world tells impatiently hungry children to eat their hand and save the other for tomorrow. Maybe if they do they simply never post about it online, the only instances of it I see are either *me* saying it or a very few other people saying it in Walloon to give an example of a phrase they've heard.
On the subject of phrases that I can't find, there's such-and-fuch. My father said that. I can remember him saying it, I can hear his voice. And yet, if I google the phrase, I find only a few links to me saying it online. Nobody else.
It makes me feel almost lonely, really.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:29 pm (UTC)I googled it and found some more -- but those seem to be mostly digitalisations of scanned books, so are probably scannos for "ſuch-and-ſuch" (with long s)
I can't believe that nobody else in the world tells impatiently hungry children to eat their hand and save the other for tomorrow. Maybe if they do they simply never post about it online, the only instances of it I see are either *me* saying it or a very few other people saying it in Walloon to give an example of a phrase they've heard.
A search for "mange ta main guarde l'autre pour demain" produces thousands of hits, many of them from .fr domains -- so it would seem to me that this phrase is wide-spread in France, too.
Have you also heard the expanded version? Mange ta main, garde l'autre pour demain, Mange ton pied, garde l'autre pour danser. ("Eat your hand, save the other for tomorrow; eat your foot, save the other for dansing.")
See e.g. http://environnement.ecoles.free.fr/proverbes-dictons-faim.htm (a list of proverbs about hunger) or http://raf-proverbes.blogspot.com/2009/01/80-proverbes-ou-dictons-avec-le-mot_3581.html (a list of proverbs containing the word "tomorrow".
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:43 pm (UTC)I cannot tell you how relieved this makes me. And no, I haven't heard the expanded version :)
There apparently is an effort to standardize Walloon in order to preserve it - it's a lot easier to save one standardized dialect, teach it and whatnot, than it is to save three different ones.
There are apparently Walloon-speakers in... um... Michigan. They probably don't speak fluent French, all of them, but I doubt they speak exclusively Walloon either.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 06:05 pm (UTC)Makes sense to me.
There are apparently Walloon-speakers in... um... Michigan.
Huh! Whodathunkit.
Not just Finns and Swedes, then.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 03:15 pm (UTC)OH!! Well, looking it over now, it makes *total* sense why it is not popular in English, Connie: it RHYMES in French :-). It's all sing-songy, and that just doesn't translate too well.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 05:35 pm (UTC)And anyway, I meant to say that I could only find me saying it in English or other people saying it in Walloon, and I couldn't find anybody saying it in French at all!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 05:43 pm (UTC)Does too: "pied" is pronounced "pié", and "danser" "dansé".
no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:30 pm (UTC)Pronunciation: [ka say lay pyay]
danser: IPA: /dɑ̃.se/, SAMPA: /dA~.se/
no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:34 pm (UTC)Moving to a Walloon-speaking area might do the trick (immersion learning), but that probably wasn't what you were thinking of.
(And I wonder how easy it is to find a Walloon-speaking area these days where they don't also speak French.)
Oh, and -- I don't know how standardised Walloon is in the first place, so I can imagine that it's not possible to learn "Walloon" per se; you'd have to learn "Walloon as spoken in X place/region", I suppose. (Where do your ancestors come from?)
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:29 pm (UTC)I googled it and found some more -- but those seem to be mostly digitalisations of scanned books, so are probably scannos for "ſuch-and-ſuch" (with long s)
I can't believe that nobody else in the world tells impatiently hungry children to eat their hand and save the other for tomorrow. Maybe if they do they simply never post about it online, the only instances of it I see are either *me* saying it or a very few other people saying it in Walloon to give an example of a phrase they've heard.
A search for "mange ta main guarde l'autre pour demain" produces thousands of hits, many of them from .fr domains -- so it would seem to me that this phrase is wide-spread in France, too.
Have you also heard the expanded version? Mange ta main, garde l'autre pour demain, Mange ton pied, garde l'autre pour danser. ("Eat your hand, save the other for tomorrow; eat your foot, save the other for dansing.")
See e.g. http://environnement.ecoles.free.fr/proverbes-dictons-faim.htm (a list of proverbs about hunger) or http://raf-proverbes.blogspot.com/2009/01/80-proverbes-ou-dictons-avec-le-mot_3581.html (a list of proverbs containing the word "tomorrow".
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:43 pm (UTC)I cannot tell you how relieved this makes me. And no, I haven't heard the expanded version :)
There apparently is an effort to standardize Walloon in order to preserve it - it's a lot easier to save one standardized dialect, teach it and whatnot, than it is to save three different ones.
There are apparently Walloon-speakers in... um... Michigan. They probably don't speak fluent French, all of them, but I doubt they speak exclusively Walloon either.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 06:05 pm (UTC)Makes sense to me.
There are apparently Walloon-speakers in... um... Michigan.
Huh! Whodathunkit.
Not just Finns and Swedes, then.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 03:15 pm (UTC)OH!! Well, looking it over now, it makes *total* sense why it is not popular in English, Connie: it RHYMES in French :-). It's all sing-songy, and that just doesn't translate too well.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 05:35 pm (UTC)And anyway, I meant to say that I could only find me saying it in English or other people saying it in Walloon, and I couldn't find anybody saying it in French at all!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 05:43 pm (UTC)Does too: "pied" is pronounced "pié", and "danser" "dansé".
no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:30 pm (UTC)Pronunciation: [ka say lay pyay]
danser: IPA: /dɑ̃.se/, SAMPA: /dA~.se/
no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 05:34 pm (UTC)Moving to a Walloon-speaking area might do the trick (immersion learning), but that probably wasn't what you were thinking of.
(And I wonder how easy it is to find a Walloon-speaking area these days where they don't also speak French.)
Oh, and -- I don't know how standardised Walloon is in the first place, so I can imagine that it's not possible to learn "Walloon" per se; you'd have to learn "Walloon as spoken in X place/region", I suppose. (Where do your ancestors come from?)