Author: zipfslaw1

As I write this, most of the US has been under confinement for going on two months. For me, it has been two months, ’cause I spent the week before everything went to shit isolating myself voluntarily–I was coughing like crazy, with what turned out to be whooping cough–and I didn’t want to get stoned to death on the Washington DC Metro.  (Lapider–to stone. Such a beautiful word for such a horrible way to kill someone.)

So, the other night I’m watching a new apocalyptic series on Netflix.  The crisis is not realistic, the most unrealistic of the characters is especially irritating, and…well, in general, it’s just an irritating show.  I put down my iPad in frustration, step out on the porch, and light a cigarette.

I light my cigarette, and I’m thinking about what’s going on in the real apocalypse: people dying. People’s jobs disappearing. And all of it far worse than it has to be, because the Liar-In-Chief is characterologically incapable of seeing that the way for him to handle this is not by incessantly lying through his fucking teeth, but by telling our country the truth. By putting federal dollars into testing, not by claiming that there are plenty of tests available for everyone, which is manifestly false–all while having himself and his suppôts tested daily, while front-line medical personnel go without.  Asshole.

I light my cigarette, and I’m thinking all of that, and I realize: escaping for a little while into the space of an unrealistic apocalypse would feel far better than thinking about the real one…and back into the night I go.

The unrealistic apocalyptic Netflix show to which I am now completely addicted is called Into The Night (Dans la nuit in French).  It’s in French, and in a particularly interesting French, because many of the characters are not natively francophone, so they have accents, and that fucks me up totally.  For my fellow amerloques, here’s a bit of the vocabulary that I had to look up in the first episode.

The passport control guy in the Brussels airport recognizes one of the main characters, sees that she’s flying to Moscow, and asks her:

• Tu vas mixer ? 
  • “You spinning there?” (from the English-language subtitles, ’cause I couldn’t find mixer in the dictionary)
  • “You DJing there?” (from the British English soundtrack, ’cause see above, plus there’s no American English soundtrack)
• Non, c’est juste une apparition.
  • No, it’s just an appearance.  (subtitles)
  • No, just publicity. (British English soundtrack, and by the way, non-Americans never believe me when I say that Americans don’t necessarily understand spoken British English, but it’s nonetheless true)

One of the characters is buying a last-minute plane ticket, and the clerk says to him:

• Le prix s’élève à 4.235 euros.
  • The price comes to 4,235 euros.
• Je prends.
  • I’ll take it.

s’élever à: to come to, to amount to. You use these expressions in English primarily when a price has multiple components.  So, if you buy a hamburger, and a hamburger costs $5.00, then the kid at the cash register might say: ok, that’s $5.00.  But, if you add cheese at $1.00, a slice of tomato at $0.50, and pickles at $0.50 (I have no clue what the actual prices are–who orders a hamburger at a place like that?? Not that I haven’t worked in a couple of ’em), then the clerk might say: ok, that comes to $7.00.  When do you use s’élever à in French? I have no idea–Phil d’Ange?

Here one of the characters–a Flemish dude with heavily accented French, so I don’t know how correct this is–sees people boarding the plane before him, and says the following.  What I didn’t know the meaning of was ça, alors !

• Oh, on peut monter avant les premières classes ? Ça, alors !
  • I didn’t think anyone got to board before first class. (subtitles)
  • Looks like some people are better than first class.  You know?  Huh? Huh? (British English soundtrack)

WordReference gives a number of meanings for it, all of which are expressions of surprise.  Of them, the best translation for this case is probably well, I never! …which would typically have some connotations of a disagreeable surprise. Like, someone does something totally rude to you, or tells you a story about something shitty that someone did to them–Trump’s replacement for his original Attorney General just had the charges dropped against a guy who had already pled guilty twice of lying to the FBI about his interactions with the Russians during the transition. –Well, I never!  Of course, that conversation implies that an American exists who can still be shocked by Trump’s betrayals of America…

…and I put out my cigarette, and back to Episode 5 I go.

Conflict of interest statement: I don’t have any conflicts of interest.  I pay for my monthly Netflix subscription just like everybody else, and the tobacco industry sure as hell isn’t giving me any freebies.

One of the most delightful books I have ever read in French is named Les Mots et la chose–“Words and The Thing.”  “The thing” is a euphemism for “sex.”  The conceit of the book is that an actress who earns her keep by dubbing pornographic movies has grown weary of the limited vocabulary that her job calls for, so she writes to a retired linguist who specialized in words for la chose to ask for suggestions.  He comes through in spades, with separate chapters for all of the relevant body parts, and of course for l’acte itself.  My favorite: Le détroit des Dardanelles,  the Strait of the Dardanelles, for that part of your body where poo comes out and where, between friends, other things might occasionally go in.

I keep seeing all of these articles in the paper about how to fight coronavirus-quarantine-related boredom.  I don’t get it–I haven’t been this busy in ages.  Telecommuting; reminding my father to eat, to take his medicine, and to let me do his laundry; making masked food runs to the grocery store; eating half of a chocolate babka in a single day (damn it, Zipf); sitting on the front porch smoking cigarettes and petting the dog–I barely have time to learn my 10 words per day of French vocabulary.

Of course, none of that has stopped me from spending inordinate amounts of time looking up French-language covers of classic American songs.  For example, Fiche le camp, Jack is a cover of Hit the Road, Jack, a favorite from before my childhood (and hence, a long fucking time ago).  A cover differs from a dubbed version in that where dubbing involves an original video version whose audio track is replaced, a cover is a de novo production.  So, if there is a video involved, too, then it will be shot anew for the new version.

So, the above-mentioned French actress is dubbing movies so that they have a French-language soundtrack, while the video below shows a version of Hit the Road, Jack, nicely covered by Richard Anthony and some great back-up singers. I hope that it brings a smile to your quarantine day.  Scroll down for the English notes if you are so inclined–today we will talk about some idioms involving the verb to hit, as well as discuss American Evangelical beliefs about what’s going to happen to us sinners.

English notes: idioms involving the verb to hit

In the following examples, note that hit is an irregular verb: its present tense, past tense, and past participle are all hit.

to hit the books: to study.

I can’t go to the party tonight–I gotta hit the books.

Gotta is colloquial language for to have to.

to hit the road: to leave.

This has been a great party, but it’s time for me to hit the road–I gotta go study for my stupid linguistics exam.

to hit bottom: to reach a/the really terrible part of your life. It is often used in conjunction with alcoholics and drug addicts–the belief is that before you can get dry (alcoholics)/clean (drug addicts), you have to “hit bottom.”

God had left her alone with the sinners, so she would sin.  But, she hit bottom after going on a drunken binge with two men she met at a Catholic-sponsored conference on Poverty in the World of Change.  She woke up naked in a hotel bathtub.

—The Forsaken, Book Two of The Apocalypse Trilogy.  This is an amusing series of American Protestant fundamentalist fiction about The Rapture, an event in which non-sinners will be whisked up to Heaven, while the rest of us are left on Earth.  (I think that we get damned to eternal Hell at some point.)  The extract is fascinating to me, in that in three short sentences it evokes so many of the tropes of American Protestant fundamentalism: anti-Catholicism, resistance to social services for the poor, and of course loathing of sex.

to hit the sack: to go to bed.

I’m gonna hit the sack–I’ll study for that stupid linguistics test tomorrow.

to hit the hay: to go to bed.

Well, Jack finally hit bottom. He went to the party, but he hit the road early to go home and hit the books.  But, instead, he hit the hay and didn’t study at all.  So, he flunked the test, which dropped his final grade in the course, which dropped his overall GPA, so he lost his badminton scholarship.  He went to his professor and asked him to raise his grade, but his professor said “Surely my course isn’t the only one in which you earned a lower grade than you needed?  Why not go to one of your other professors, and ask them to raise your grade?”  I guess you gotta hit bottom before you get sufficiently motivated as to get your shit together.

I have changed some details to protect the guilty.  But, yeah–I was the professor.