Current mood:

exanimate

Un Petit d'un Petit
This was immediately a favorite of mine when I first discovered it 30 years ago. I even memorized the verse presented here, and can still recite it[1]. Reciting it aloud, of course, is entirely the point. Try it, before looking at the solution. Hint: you don't need to know French, just be able to pronounce it reasonably well.

In the original text, each verse is accompanied by elaborate parody footnotes -- witty in their own right, but especially funny if you've spent any time at all festering in academia.

Long out of print, I've ordered a used copy thru Amazon, and will reproduce some of the footnotes here when it comes.

I gave a lot of thought, once, to what it must have taken to create these -- to English speakers they are a miraculous tour-de-force. But could I, with native English fluency but only moderate French (or moderate German, Italian, or Spanish), do the equivalent in reverse? And which language pairs lend themselves best, in which direction, to this treatment?

Take the French phrase "les jeux sont fait" ("the game is up" or "the die is cast"). Possible phonetic transcriptions into "English" are: "ledge us off hay" or "lay juice off, eh?" The "scholarly" explanations for these garbled lines would have to be pretty far-fetched. And indeed, I suspect the French versions in Mots d'Heures are equally far-fetched. It is only the typical reader's "approxi-French" (like my own) that permits her to yuk[2] it up at the Academie's expense.

But damn, these are so very, very clever.

[1] Which is really, really funny.

TWL          SOWPODS

yock         yock
yocked       yocked
yocking      yocking
yocks        yocks
yoicks       yoick
yok          yoicked
yoks         yoicking
yuck         yoicks
yucked       yoicksed
yucking      yoickses
yucks        yoicksing
yuk          yok
yukked       yokked
yukking      yokking
yuks         yoks
             yuck
             yucked
             yucker
             yuckers
             yucks
             yuk
             yukked
             yukking
             yuks