fox | it's not just us

la_rainette, I'm sorry to make you suffer through this, but I hope you will in order to confirm or refute what I'm concluding. WE LOVE NATIVE SPEAKERS yes we do.

rahalia_cat recommended googling for Jean Cocteau's Amour d'Ete. I'm not sure why, but when I googled "amour d'ete", the first hit I got was this.

It's a site for French poetry, but it seems to be more of a bulletin board than a database -- possibly it has both, for all I know, but the best I can figure is that these kids are posting their own stuff.

This poem is as follows:

Toi que j'ai rencontré
A la fin de l'été,
Je ne sais pas comment
Je pourrai t'oublier...
Tu as su illuminé mon coeur
Et je pense a toi a chaque heure...
Des que je ne te voi plus,
Je pourrai fair nimpote koi pour te revoir !!!
Je sais qu'un jour je te reverrai,
Mais je ne sais pas si je pourrai
Attendre longtemps sans venir
Te chercher pour te conjuguer
Le verbe AIMER...

translation:

You who I met
At the end of the summer,
I don't know how
I'll be able to forget you...
You discovered how to lite up my heart
And I think about U all the time...
Since I don't C U NEmore,
I could due NEthing to see you again !!!
I know 1 day I will see you again,
But I don't know if I'll be able
To wait long without coming
To find you to conjugate for you
The verb TO LOVE...

I assure you it's as wretched in French as the English translation suggests. It doesn't scan, and a couple of the rhymes are (charitably) approximate. It is also replete with misspellings and, apparently, French netspeak, of both of which I have tried to give a sense in the translation.

The comments left after it are also instructive:

Sk8ergirl says: Très beau poème mais essais de ne pas mettre d’abréviation car ça gâche toute sa beauté. Moi, j,ai bien aimé! Bonne continuation pour toi! ("Very nice poem but try not to put abbreviations because this wrecks all its beauty. Me, I liked it! Good luck to you!")

to which the poet, Krystel, says: merciii bicou et pr les abreviation ok je v chanG sa...

As best I can render it into English netspeak, this says: "thanxx alot and 4 the abreviationz ok ill chanj em"

merciii = merci 'thank you'
I can't figure where the extra i's come from.

bicou = beaucoup 'much'
I had to look at this for whole minutes to figure out what it was supposed to be. It seems to be a phonetic spelling, but it strikes me as a strange one. (But what do I know -- I'm no native speaker.)

pr = pour 'for'
Which I rendered as "4", in netspeak style.

abreviation = abréviation 'abbreviation'
With les, Krystel should have used the plural abréviations, I think, and in any event she needed the acute accent on the e.

v = vais 'go'
chanG = changer 'to change'
je vais changer 'I will change' or 'I am going to change'; spelling vais as v and changer as chanG is phonetic, since the names of the letters are pronounced the same as the words or syllables they're being used to replace. It's the precise French equivalent of spelling "you" as "U".

sa = ça 'that'
THIS IS WHY NETSPEAK AND ILLITERACY (deliberate or otherwise) ARE TEH EBIL. :-) sa is a different word in French. it means 'his, her, its' when the object is of the feminine-gender noun class. It would not be unreasonable for a French speaker to see this sentence -- je v chanG sa -- and ask, changer sa quoi? -- change its what? Using sa for ça seems to be a similar problem to the English issue of where to put the blasted apostrophes.

The abbreviations Sk8ergirl referred to do, in fact, wreck the poem's "beauty":

illuminé = illuminer, 'light up'
Krystel needed an infinitive here. It would have sounded the same as the form of the verb she did use, but been spelled differently. Phonetic spelling: never a good solution.

je pense a toi a chaque heure = je pense à toi à chaque heure, 'I think of you in every hour [all the time]'
Again, a and à are not the same word. Without the accent, a means 'has'.

Des que je ne te voi plus = Dès que je ne te vois plus, 'Since I don't see you anymore"
Dès que means 'since' or 'as soon as' or 'due to the fact that'. Des que means nothing. The s on the end of vois is silent, but voi is not a word.

Je pourrai fair nimpote koi pour te revoir !!! = Je pourrai faire n'importe quoi pour te revoir 'I could do no matter what [anything] to see you again'
Oh, god. Okay. Faire 'to do' has a silent e on the end, like many infinitives; fair is not a word. Similarly, the apostrophe in n'importe is silent, but the r isn't, so spelling it nimpote is a mystery to me. But koi for quoi ... the Academie Francaise must be shitting a pickle. (This website is actually full of this phenomenon, so I don't think it's just Krystel being dumb. From the FAQ: Pour les Duos il faut ke une seul des deux perssonnes poste le pèmes 'For Duos only 1 of the two ppl can post the pomes.' Et moi g rien compris 'And me I dint understand anything.')

And the last comment is from joiedevivre66: ben abréviation ou pas tres beau poème ("hey abbreviation or not very nice poem")

In every language, there's always someone who's Not Helping.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

*hyperventilates*

The French is absolutely abominable, and Fox is a genius (because, honestly? The correction you make require a bloody good knowledge of the French language. Basically, the whole thing is a grammatical nightmare).

Also, all the je pourrai (future) should be je pourrais (conditionnel). The missing r in nimpote might be a typo. The missing apostrophe is missing because they truly do not know better *weeps*

Where on Earth did you find these?

Duh, am moron. Have clicked link and found site.

et voila ce qu'on trouve aussi:

Je t’ai rencontré
Un bo jour d’été
Et la c former un belle amitié
Ki n’est pas prete de se terminé. . .
Meme kan tu partira
Tous la ba
Je ne toublirai pa
Dans mon coeur tjr tu sera. . . .
Chak foi ke tu reviendra
Pense a moi. . .
Je ve ke tu sache que
Je serai tjr la pr tecouté
T’épauler et te conseillé. . .
Des ke tu as un probleme
Apel moi ou connecte toi
Et parle moi. . .
Tu es mon meilleur ami
Et cela pr lontem
Entre nous il ni aura aucun souci
je tadore telemen. . .
Ne m’oubli pas
La ou tu va
Et sache ke tu pe comter sur moi
A n’importe kel momen. . .

A mon meilleur ami ke jadore enormémen. . . .

*winces* It's even more hideous than the first one. It's as if they use netspeak in the off hope their linguistic inadequacies will go unnoticed, but lo, there are just too many of them!

i keep hoping you'll say no, this is a dialect that's been gaining legitimacy recently, the words are actually pronounced slightly differently, the language is a little rougher, it's happening in paris and the larger cities with algerian populations (or something -- i'm making the analogy with african-american vernacular english in my head, i guess), it's a sort of creole ... but then i see "je v chanG" and all my hopes for "kel" and "enormemen" come tumbling down.

*g* Oh, I wish you were right, but no, no, this is all just. Plain. Wrong. *bites keyboard*

I mean, some of it is netspeak that you might read on chat or in emails (kel, kel, bo, c), not that you would ever use it outside the net, but you know: it's like kewl and d00d. But then, the verbs, the adverbs and the spelling in general are just abysmal. *shudders*

on a US qwerty keyboard, it wouldn't be so hard to inadvertently leave out the r in nimpote, i guess, since it's right next to the t -- are the letters nearby one another on french keyboards as well?

would you have pourrais in "comment je pourrai t'oublier" as well as "je pourrai fair nimpote koi"?

god, it hurts me just to type like that.

Yes. *nods* In both cases, it's a "could", not a "will" ;)

*g* it does hurt, doesn't it?

Egads!

It's like fingernails on the chalkboard -- with an accent. I can't echo enough how painful reading that is.

Kudos to you for being able to stomach the whole thing. I would've given up after the first line or two.

i actually started with the comments, and then i had to go back and see what they were talking about. but i didn't enjoy it! :-)

(i enjoyed having done it, though. and is it bad that i'm thinking Hey, i wonder if there's a paper in this?)

As I said in my comment--if someone hasn't already written the paper, you totally should.

Likewise--wow, even my basic "five semesters of french six years ago" can tell how bad that is. Eek.

Though the French netspeak amuses me greatly. I think it's fascinating, and someone should write a paper (well, someone probably has, i want to read it) on netspeak in different languages. Now I wanna read spanish netspeak. Though at least, unlike French and English, spanish is more phonetic. Probably more of the stuff like "v. v. good" or v for vais, I should think.

::speechless::

it's not just us

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