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Water Terms from 1752

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EAU. Here is a huge entry......there must be 18-20 entries in the Dictionnaire Comique, Satyrique, Critique, Burlesque, Libre et Proverbial for the French word meaning WATER. I am not a fast enough reader of French to find out if there is an entry about a water truck in the time I have available this foggy, yet busy morning, but I do quite a few expressions listed, some of which are: Battre l'eau. Pour dire, travailler inutilement. One is said to be fighting water when one is not making any progress. Faire venir l'eau au moulin. Pour dire, faire venir l'argent à la maison. One is said to make water come to the mill when one is supporting a house financially. In English, we might say bringing home the bacon. Porter de l'eau à la mer. C'est à dire, donner à quelqu'un des choses dont il n'a déjà que trop. To carry water to the sea is to give something to someone who has enough of that thing already! Not having any trouble reading these entries, all of wh...
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I'll make that four more hot coals.

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Romance, Machine Translation Style Run this quatrain through Google Translate and see what you get. Baise m'encor, rebaise-moi et baise; Donne m'en un de tes plus savoureux; Donne m'en un de tes plus amoureux, Je t'en rendra quatre plus chauds que braise. It comes up Baise m'encor, rebais and kiss me; Give me one of your most delicious; Give me one more of your love, I'll make that four more hot coals. The first line is not of much help, it seems, as the words baise and rebais don't actually have any meaning in English. Nor is the rest particularly true to meaning. "Give me one more of your love" does not even make sense. So I seriously would not recommend sending the machine-generated translation of this Louise Labe verse to your love on Valentine's Day. No, a better translation would be Kiss me again. And again. And again. Give me one of your most sensuous. Lavish me with one of your most romantic. And I will return to you, four kisses warm...
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La Pomme

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If you studied some French in school, or if you have learned a little for a trip you made at some point, you are going to know how to say APPLE in French. Who doesn't? But if you are like me, that is about as far as your apple discussion can go. J'ai un pomme. Est-ce que tu voudrais manger la pomme? Où est la pomme? Qui a la pomme rouge? Or maybe it gets even worse. Maybe you are nervous, like I was, when I sat down in a little cafe in Quebec, and ordered something very strange. I was remembering when you talk about apples, you have to be quite careful not to say "potato" instead.......the words are pretty closely related. Anyway, I had both mulling around in my head when I wanted a glass of tomato juice, which is the juice I ALWAYS have when I eat breakfast out, if I can. But this day, I just could not remember that tricky term (TOMATE)---difficult, right? Yes, I should have known it, but the mind gets flustered when you feel like you are on stage. So I changed and...
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