Month: December 2015

Charlemagne (allegedly) said that “To have another language is to possess a second soul.” Countless people have expressed similar sentiments.  Fellini: “A different language is a different vision of life.”  Delacroix: “The individual’s whole experience is built upon the plan of his language.”

I’ve always thought that this kind of thing was bullshit.  However, on Christmas night, my (limited) French skills did, indeed, show me a new world.

At the Studio Galande, a tiny movie theater on a little back street in the Latin Quarter–almost across the river from Notre Dame (42 rue Galande, 75005)–you can see the Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday and Saturday nights.  The movie has French subtitles (crappy translation, actually), and–more importantly–a highly rehearsed group of people who act out the movie, singing along with it and offering non-stop commentary, almost entirely in French.

Of course, there is the usual throwing of rice, although the water pistols of my teenaged years and their gentle sprinkle have been replaced by 2-liter bottles of water and some serious soaking.  When I was a teenager, going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show meant knowing a few things to shout in unison with the rest of the audience at appropriate times–today, that’s basically a semi-professional production, and that’s what the highly rehearsed group of people do.

In Paris, this was a far more surreal experience than it is in the US, and it’s pretty surreal in the US.  I’ll try to paint the picture.  Since it’s me that’s doing the painting, it’s mostly a picture of language.  Here’s what you have: (a) the movie, in English.  (b) The subtitles, in French.  (c) The performers (I’m not actually sure what to call them) doing their accompaniment in French.  (d)  The performers also doing their accompaniment in heavily accented English.

It’s an incredibly rich linguistic hodgepodge, and it all comes at you in this confused, non-stop torrent.  It was far too much for me to be able to retain very many data points for you, but here’s a nice example of a way that the humor combined English and French.  There’s a point in the film that shows a map featuring a city called Denton.  So, you’ve got “Denton” splashed prominently across the screen.  Now, if “Denton” were French, it would be pronounced like dans ton–“in your.”  Right at that point in the movie, one of the performers holds up a sign with the word cul right next to the name “Denton.”  Cul means “ass,” so now you have dans ton cul–“in your ass.”

If I may be permitted a bit of hubris: the thing that I was proudest of came during the Time Warp.  If you haven’t seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show: there’s a big dance number featuring–yes–the Time Warp.  (It’s just a jump to the left, and then a step to the right.)  At various points in this, it would not be inappropriate to yell “ooh-ah.”  So, at one of those points, one of the performers says Et maintenant, on va dire ooh-ah en verlan: ah-ooh.  What that means: “We’re going to say “ooh-ah” in Verlan now–“ah-ooh.””  Why I was so proud of catching that–it requires some cultural knowledge, which is: what is Verlan?  Verlan is the name of a kind of French slang that originated in the banlieus défavorisées (bad neighborhoods, mostly surrounding Paris) and has since become pretty broadly popular.  Words are formed in Verlan by reversing things–verlan is itself l’inverse, “backwards,” reversed.  So: what would ooh-ah be in Verlan?  It would be ah-ooh.

So, that’s my bit of hubris.  Hubris is always followed by a fall, and no doubt my hubris will be followed by me not understanding however it is that someone will say “good morning” to me tomorrow.  As Brad says in the French subtitles to his song in the floor show scene: ça me dépasse–“It’s beyond me.”

An evening at the Rocky Horror Picture Show would be an unforgettable and unique Parisian experience, and I recommend it highly.  I’ll leave you with two pieces of advice on the subject.  (a)  If you haven’t seen the movie before, the whole evening will mostly be lost on you, but if you have, this is an experience that you are unlikely to forget; (b) don’t, don’t, don’t sit in the front row (rang 1).  Trust me on this.

• le travesti : transvestite.  At one point in the movie, you are to shout Garçon, garçon, il y a un travesti dans ma soupe–waiter, waiter, there’s a transvestite in my soup.  In the context of the film, it makes perfect sense.
• travesti (adj.): disguised; in fancy dress; in costume.
• Ça me dépasse: it’s beyond me.

I’ve been exploring the back streets of my neighborhood.  This being France, that means a lot of houses of worship (for a very interesting reason, in this very secular country–another time, perhaps), and this being Paris, they are quite diverse.  When you think France, you think Gothic, but the other day, I visited an Art Deco church down the street from my house.  (Turns out Art Deco comes from France–who knew?  The name is short for arts décoratifs.)  On Saturday morning, I went to services at a shul (synagogue) a few blocks from my apartment.  I don’t have a religious bone in my body, but I like to sit in a synagogue every once in a while and be surrounded by the murmur of one of the languages of my childhood, and I find it interesting to see the varieties of Judaism in different countries.

France has tremendous importance in the intellectual history of Judaism.  This is due to the work of the medieval scholar Rashi.  He lived from 1040-1105 in Troyes, in the Champagne region of France, and is thought to have made his living as a vintner (wine maker).

Rashi’s importance comes from the set of commentaries that he wrote on the Bible and the Talmud, a 62-book set of volumes that is one of the central texts of Judaism.  His commentaries are clear and insightful.  They always serve to clarify, but also often form the basis of complex interpretations by later scholars.  In a traditional Jewish context, it would be strange to study either the Bible or the Talmud without consulting Rashi’s commentary–if you have a traditional religious education, you start with him as soon as you start studying the Bible in grade school, and continue with him until you die.  Rashi’s commentaries sometimes incorporate translations into Old French from a time when that language was not written very often, so they are one of the sources that scholars of Old French have for the pronunciation and lexicon of that language.  As an American kid, you just kinda gloss over those, but from my perspective as an adult and a linguist, I realize how precious they are.

So, yes–I went to services the other day.  The congregation that I went to is associated with what’s called the Conservative movement, which, despite the name, is the progressive movement in Judaism.  The people were about the same as what you would find in a typical Conservative shul in the United States–mostly white, a couple blacks; the main difference was that in the US, there would have been some Chinese girls, while here in France, there were quite a few North Africans.

A common courtesy in a shul is to offer a visitor an aliya–the honor of saying a blessing during the reading of the Torah (bible), and I was offered one.  More on this later.

A prominent feature of the Conservative movement is a strong commitment to gender equality, and the Torah readers included a little old French lady who was so tiny that she had to be helped up on a stool to be able to reach the upper part of the scroll.  She was helped up politely, and then her pronunciation while reading was corrected just as diligently as that of the men.  (Torah scrolls are written without vowels, and two people on either side of the lectern follow along during the reading in regular books that do have vowels in order to make sure that there are no pronunciation errors.)

So, back to the worst thing about being Jewish: the worst thing about being Jewish is that sometimes you have to stand up and sing in public.  No karaoke, no musical instruments accompanying you–it’s just you and your voice, and I truly can’t sing.  Assuming no genocides, the Jewish male has three trials in his life.  Number one: eight days after birth, he gets circumcised.  Number three: at his wedding, he has to stomp on, and break, a glass, with everyone watching and without slicing a tendon.  Number two: in the middle, at the age of 13 (12 for girls in those communities in which girls do this), he has his bar mitzvah, which means that he has to stand up in front of everyone and chant and sing.  (Totally different tonal systems, and you have to do both.)

Now, one of the problems with visiting congregations other than your own is this: the tunes are different.  I sound different from most Jews to begin with, since when I read Hebrew I have a Yiddish accent, while most Jews today read Hebrew with a Middle Eastern accent, and that is definitely the case in France, where there is a very heavy North African presence in the Jewish community.  (In turn, about 10% of Israelis speak French, again due to the large number of North Africans there.  I think it’s the third-most-studied foreign language in Israeli schools, after English and Arabic.  See Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow’s The story of French for the numbers.)  You can fake the tune OK in a different congregation if you’re lost in the crowd and you know the words already, but if you have to stand up and sing then you stand out, and that was exactly what I had to do when I said the blessing during the bible reading–stand up in front of the congregation and sing alone.  So, what to do about the different tunes?  I couldn’t possibly fake the French one, so I knew that I had to do the American one.  And, in case I haven’t been clear about this: I can’t sing a note, and I hate to do it in public.  Happily, my long and pathetic history of losing judo matches has made me comfortable with looking like an idiot in front of crowds, so I went up to the lectern, gave my name and my father’s name when asked (easy in French), and got ready to do my thing.  I fixed my eyes firmly on the siddur (prayer book) so that I wouldn’t see all the pretty French girls and get any more nervous than I already was, and belted it out–in my heavily Yiddish-accented Hebrew, and with the American tune.

“You’re American?”, asked the guy doing the reading–in English.  Bien sûr, I answered.  “I could hear it,” he said.  Oh, well.

Zipf’s Law comes up in a house of worship as much as it does anywhere else.  Consequently, here are some of the words that I had to look up later:

• l’office (masculine noun): religious service.
• Moïse: Moses.
• le cercueil: coffin, casket.  (Pronunciation from WordReference.com: [sɛʀkœj].)  The sermon was a long analysis of the significance of the close conjunction in the Torah reading of two occurrences of the Hebrew word aron with its two different meanings: ark, and coffin.  Oddly, the French word also refers to some kind of beverage made by just dumping a bunch of different kinds of booze together.

Some days the bear will eat you,

Some days you eat the bear.

–Joan Armatrading, Eating the Bear

There’s a store in my little neighborhood whose sign has always puzzled me somewhat.  In order to understand it, I needed to learn bear-related vocabulary in French:

• l’ours (nom masculin): male bear; boor, curmudgeon.
• l’ourse (nom fémenin): female bear.  Pronounced [urs], not [urz].
• l’ourson (nom masculin): bear cub; teddy bear.
• le nounours: teddy bear.  Pronounced [nunurs]–the s is not silent, as you would expect it to be.

L’ourson (teddy bear) is not to be confused with:

• l’oursin (nom masculin): sea urchin.  Yes, they are eaten in France, not just in Japan.

Some of the words meaning “bear” are used in idiomatic expressions:

• un vrai nounours: “a real teddy bear.”  The French Etc. web site explains the expression like this: “un vrai nounours means ‘a real gem’…un vrai nounours is used to describe a person who is really sweet, going along with everything easily.”
• un vrai ours: “a real bear.”  French Etc. explains it like this: “‘a real boor’, a person who isn’t sociable.”

“Bear” has some interesting slang meanings in English.  Here are a couple:

• A difficult situation or thing.  “I have to finish a project proposal by New Year’s Eve–it’s a bear, because I have to find a way to smoothly integrate high-throughput assay analysis and theoretical linguistics.”
• A gay man who is big, bearded, and hairy.

Yesterday mid-afternoon I stepped into a cafe with a friend.  Good day–an espresso and an Americano, if it pleases you, I requested.  (If it’s in italics, it happened in French.)  My intent was to get my friend a café americano, or an espresso with hot water added–it’s something like American brewed coffee.  Careful, the waiter said–an américain [American] is a cocktail.  If you want an “Americano,” you have to ask for a café americano.  He explained to me that an américain is a sort of very dry martini with Campari.  Lesson learnt!

• le café Americano: espresso with hot water added.  I’m not sure what the difference is between this and a café (r)allongé.
• un américain: a type of cocktail.  No French Wikipedia entry for this, so no picture.

American Republican party presidential nomination candidate Donald Trump says that if he were elected president, he would repeal the  guarantee of American citizenship for anyone who is born in our country.  Even the right has mixed opinions about this, and certainly the left is opposed–citizenship for anyone born here is a national absolute, enshrined in the Constitution.  Dual citizenship is a bit more complicated; becoming an American citizen involves renouncing allegiance to any other country, but the United Kingdom does not recognize this as a way to lose UK citizenship. You can lose your American citizenship for committing certain acts involving allegiance to another government, but they have to be committed with the intention to relinquish US nationality–see the link in the caption to the screen shot from the State Department web page on the subject.  American Republican party presidential nomination candidate Ted Cruz held dual Canadian-American citizenship until 2014, even while serving in the Senate.

Related issues have come up in France since the 13 November attacks.  Of course, this brings Zipf’s Law into our lives.  The word of the day in France is déchéance.  It was all over the news this morning, and is going crazy on Twitter.  This word has a number of meanings, but the one that’s relevant here is “loss” or “forfeiture,” as in déchéance de nationalité, or loss of citizenship.  Three days after the murder of 130 people by Islamic State terrorists, Hollande announced that terrorists or people acting contrary to French values with dual citizenship would be stripped of their French citizenship, even if they were born here.  It’s back in the news because Hollande has backed off on the idea–it quickly became clear that there would be no agreement about this abrogation of rights (which would require a change to the French constitution), and it was seen as an “ideological gift” to the far-right National Front party.  In the name of national unity, the idea has been officially dropped.

Here is WordReference.com’s discussion of the word:

• la déchéance: (physical or moral) decline, degredation, degeneration.
• la déchéance: (loss of rights) loss, forfeiture.

Interestingly, the concept also brings Zipf’s Law into our lives with respect to English, unless your vocabulary is a hell of a lot better than mine.  In particular, we meet the verb to expatriate, which Merriam-Webster defines as “banish, exile” (transitive); “to withdraw (oneself) from residence in or allegiance to one’s native country” (transitive); “to leave one’s native country to live elsewhere; also :  to renounce allegiance to one’s native country” (intransitive).

I’m the son of an anthropology major, and have strong memories from childhood of a poster on the wall of the Department of Anthropology at the college that my parents attended of the evolution of the human foot.  Being a geek, I’ve remained fascinated ever since with the morphology of the body and how it changes over the course of evolution.  So, I was happy when recently, after a long closure for renovations, the Musée de l’homme (Museum of Man) in Paris just reopened.  As a connoisseur of museums of anatomy and anthropology, I have to say: this is a good one.

The main exhibits are framed around three questions: who are we, where do we come from, and where are we headed?  The answer to the first question is framed around the duality of the facts that we are all pretty similar to each other, and yet all unique.  A brief discussion of genomics is followed by a number of exhibits on human anatomy, especially those aspects of it that are unique, as those aspects contrast with those of other species.  (Apparently we’re the only species whose ears can swell in response to emotion.)  It covers the human as physical being, mental/spiritual being, social being, and language user.

The second question is a good overview of human evolution, featuring lots of good skulls and/or skull casts.

Verdict: if you like science museums, you’ll probably like this one.  Things to be aware of: (1) as of the date of writing (December 2015), the museum has just recently reopened, and there is likely to be a line to get in; (2) there is very little English on the displays, and if you can’t read French, you’re going to have to do a lot of guessing. On that note: see below for more vocabulary from the exhibits.  Click on the pictures to see the Zipf’s Law words in the captions.

There’s a nice exhibit of wax anatomy models going back to the 1700s. La cire: wax. Photo source: me.

L’essor (n.m.): rise, development. In a literary sense: flight. Photo source: me.

La proie: prey. Photo source: me.

La mâchoire: jawbone, jaw. Photo source: me.