That should work well
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I made a phonetic first verse & chorus of the Marseillaise for singers at #EngvFra pic.twitter.com/EcL2dAzI0F
— India Knight (@indiaknight) November 17, 2015
November 17, 2015 @ 7:49 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Found in translation
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I made a phonetic first verse & chorus of the Marseillaise for singers at #EngvFra pic.twitter.com/EcL2dAzI0F
— India Knight (@indiaknight) November 17, 2015
November 17, 2015 @ 7:49 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Found in translation
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Phillip Minden said,
November 17, 2015 @ 8:10 am
Gnnh.
Neal Goldfarb said,
November 17, 2015 @ 9:50 am
Say for-me-dobble. Juh lemm boku. Veev laugh-rawnce.
BlueLoom said,
November 17, 2015 @ 9:54 am
+ 1000 M. Goldfarb!
Aaron said,
November 17, 2015 @ 10:17 am
I'm bothered less by the mangled phonetics than by the fact that she didn't bother to turn off the automatic spell-checker.
Dr. Decay said,
November 17, 2015 @ 10:31 am
Great. I know this had to be put together quickly, but now I want one in the spirit of the D'Antan Manuscript "Mot d'Heures: Gousse, Rames" (see the Wikipedia article) perhaps it could begin:
A lawn sent fondle. Lop a tree…
Too busy for this now.
SP said,
November 17, 2015 @ 10:32 am
A little background for those not aware of the connection to football/soccer:
http://www.theguardian.com/football/picture/2015/nov/17/david-squires-on-england-v-france
Avinor said,
November 17, 2015 @ 10:36 am
Why do native English speakers seems to think that [e] can be replaced with [eɪ]?
Phillip Minden said,
November 17, 2015 @ 11:06 am
By "ate", she might mean [ɛt].
JR said,
November 17, 2015 @ 11:22 am
Sung to the tune of "Greensleeves", right?
Julian said,
November 17, 2015 @ 11:41 am
Avinor, probably because English speakers don't know that [e] and [eɪ] are different and English doesn't really distinguish them
Jonathan said,
November 17, 2015 @ 12:08 pm
Y'all know you're engaging in linguist nerdview, right?
Mark F. said,
November 17, 2015 @ 1:38 pm
I'm guessing India Knight is American based on the syllable-ending uh's and eh's, where I imagine a non-rhotic speaker putting in r's.
john burke said,
November 17, 2015 @ 3:03 pm
But doesn't "Abb re-ver" for "abreuve" suggest a non-rhotic speaker?
Terpomo said,
November 17, 2015 @ 3:07 pm
My understanding, at least, was that /e/ and /E/ (pardon my X-SAMPA) are effectively in complementary distribution in English, with /e/ being the form that /E/ takes before /j/. I could be wrong, though.
Narmitaj said,
November 17, 2015 @ 4:00 pm
I am not sure exactly how India Knight actually self-identifies, but she comes over as thoroughly British both in print and on the telly (where she was one of the Grumpy Old Women in four episodes). But as you'll see from her Wiki entry, her mother was of Indian background and her father Belgian, and she was born and lived in Brussels, moving to the UK when she was nine. Presumably she picked up some French in Belgium, though I am aware Belgian language/community politics is tricky.
Knight is the surname of her first step-father Andrew, editor of The Economist (her next step-father was the architect Norman Foster).
David Morris said,
November 17, 2015 @ 5:26 pm
The British radio program 'My word' had the two resident wordsmiths Dennis Norden and Frank Muir improvise lengthy and elaborate puns on words, phrases, quotations etc. One of them told a story that one of his fruit trees was ailing, so he called in a Spanish psychic healer for plants, whose technique was to gently caress the tree. The punchline was his instruction to him: 'Alonzo fondle my pear-tree'.
January First-of-May said,
November 17, 2015 @ 7:53 pm
@Avinor
From an earlier (April 25) comment of mine:
"I've always found it silly how so many foreign words with what I perceive as an "eh" sound seem to be transcribed with "ay", which in my mind comes out to /eɪ/~/ej/ (especially word-finally).
However, it's apparently a question of vowel quality, that is, the difference between the vowels /e/ and /ɛ/ – which is phonemic in French and some dialects of English, but allophonic in Russian (and the words in question, mainly French or Spanish, have the /e/ sound)."
Bob Ladd said,
November 18, 2015 @ 3:53 am
In all the linguistic nerdview and enjoyable silliness in the comments, nobody seems to have noticed that she got quite a few of the words wrong.
janet betham said,
November 18, 2015 @ 8:02 am
… and she had no bra! …
john burke said,
November 18, 2015 @ 10:37 am
@Bob Ladd: I noticed "lancez vos bataillons" for "formez vos bataillons," which generations of Francophone schoolkids have sung as "fermez vos pantalons."
Pflaumbaum said,
November 18, 2015 @ 12:04 pm
The notion of [eɪ] as the FACE diphthong is one of many hangovers from old RP. For southern England at least, it's [ɛi] nowadays, smoothed to [ɛː] in some positions. And in many cases the first vowel is considerably more open than that, verging on [ɐi].
So yes, a pretty terrible model for French /e/.
Geoff Lindsey points out that a far better approximation is the KIT vowel, which is extremely close to /e/ in the vowel space:
"The KIT vowel is probably no further from cardinal 2 e than the START vowel is from cardinal 5 ɑ." (See here under 'KIT, FLEECE', with sound files included).
Phillip Minden said,
November 18, 2015 @ 12:09 pm
Ignoring the other important factor, convention.
Phillip Minden said,
November 18, 2015 @ 12:10 pm
Ignoring the other important factor, convention.
Phillip Minden said,
November 18, 2015 @ 12:10 pm
Ignoring the other important factor, convention.
Bill W said,
November 18, 2015 @ 4:28 pm
Shouldn't it be Ay-gorge-ay no FEES ay no com-paaaah-nyuh?
Bill W said,
November 18, 2015 @ 4:29 pm
FEES — sorry, typo for FEESS.
Mark S said,
November 19, 2015 @ 9:16 pm
Un petit d'un petit
S'étonne aux Halles
Un petit d'un petit
Ah! degrés te fallent
Indolent qui ne sort cesse
Indolent qui ne se mène
Qu'importe un petit d'un petit
Tout Gai de Reguennes.
See http://www.aescon.com/aesconsulting/french/num1.htm