For Madame Horgan

[magid]

Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrive.
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'etendards sanglant est leve,
L'etandards sanglant est leve,
Entendez vous dans les compagnes.
Mugir c'est feroces soldats!
Ils viens jusque dans nos bras,
Egorgez nos fils, nos compagnes.
Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos battailons!
Marchons, marchons, qu'un sang impur,
Abreuve nos sillons.*

Happy Bastille Day.**

* A couple of typos in there (worst is viennent), but it's a tribute to my high school French class that I could do this from memory 25 years later. Hats off to Madame.
** Bastille Day sameach*** is just wrong. Bad brain.
*** I seem to have only one active "other language" track in my brain. I wish I were more actively polyglot.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Bastille Day sameach! Hee hee! Not "bad brain" -- creative brain!

Yom Ha-Bastille sameach, perhaps?

I seem to have only one active "other language" track in my brain.

Well put! Something similar happens to me, too. I try to speak Spanish, and the brain knows to be in "other language" mode, but fills in the blanks with Hebrew.

Ah, half a lifetime ago it was my dream to be a polyglot. Still is, but now more in a regretful rather than planful way.

I like your phrasing of "actively polyglot."

[magid.livejournal.com]

Creative brain that in high school, when I was taking four languages at once (to some extent or another), would come up with sentences that mixed English, French, Hebrew... and Latin.

I have so many linguistically talented friends who can use whichever language; I envy them. Like you: I was at the border crossing into Quebec, and found myself replying to the guard's French questions in Hebrew... I still have passive French, in that I can read (somewhat; I'm definitely rusty through disuse) and understand some.

Linguistic tangent: it's "bilingual" or "polyglot," but never "biglot," and almost never "polylingual." I wonder why. (Other than "looking wrong" sorts of things.)

[(Anonymous)]

Swap French for Spanish, and during a couple of high school years I was taking same four (yes, to some extent or another). Yay for creative sentences made of many languages!

I share in your envy. Was the guard mystified?

Hmm, I think it is an issue of Greek and Latin; try "diglot" and "multilingual" instead. I like linguistic tangents!

[magid.livejournal.com]

The guard seemed just a bit confused, but not upset or anything. I switched to English, obviously.

"Multilingual" is fine, but "diglot" doesn't go into my brain right. I keep wanting it to be some technical descriptor of how the mouth makes sounds or part of a psych evaluation.

[(Anonymous)]

Whatever else it might bring to mind, "diglot" is indeed the Greek-rooted synonym for the Latin-rooted "bilingual."

In case it was not clear, the answer to your question of why not "biglot" and "polylingual" lies in the mismatched Greek and Latin roots.

[scholargipsy.livejournal.com]

Or as W might say (assuming he could speak two languages, rather than the one he merely half-speaks), "Après moi le deluge!"

Maybe we need an M. Guillotine here as well.

[magid.livejournal.com]

At Shabbat services, there's a prayer for the government of the US and its constituted officers and such, and I admit I have not said amen to that wholeheartedly in almost eight years...

I keep hoping we haven't dug ourselves too far into the hole to be able to get out (environmentally, monetarily, civil libertarily, etc.).