Tag Archives: French

The day before yesterday

Posted ago by John Gray

Nuestro mañana será más luminoso [sic] que nuestro ayer y nuestro hoy. Pero ¿quién pondría la mano en el fuego en cuanto a que nuestro pasado mañana no vaya a ser peor que nuestro anteayer? [Our tomorrow will be more …

Root, route and rout

Posted ago by John Gray

The words ‘root’ and ‘route’ are homophones in British English (in other words, they are pronounced in the same way), whilst most Americans would pronounce ‘route’ to rhyme with ‘out’ or ‘shout’. The root is that part of a plant …

The Troubadours 2: a poem in 5 languages

Posted ago by John Gray

Here is a poem, or rather a song, which is written in five languages, with one verse each: Provençal, Italian, French, Gascon and Galician. The sixth verse is written in all these languages, in the same order, with two lines …

The Troubadours 1: entrebescant los mots…

Posted ago by John Gray

Thanks to my local library, I have been reading the medieval Troubadours. (The Wikipedia entry is in this case excellent, so I recommend you head there if you want a more in-depth overview.) The troubadour tradition had its origins in …

Lifting, footing, looping

Posted ago by John Gray

In Budapest, all of the 24 hour shops advertise themselves as ‘Non-stop’. A Hungarian friend of mine said, in English, something like ‘don’t worry, I’m sure there’ll be a non-stop we can go to’. Apparently in Hungarian these shops are …