FRENCH SLANG.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 22, 26 January 1935, Page 1 (Supplement)

FRENCH SLANG.

A FEW COLLOQUIALISMS.

SOME IDEAS IN COMMON.

(By SAFDAR JANG.)

All slang is metaphor, Chesterton once wrote, and all metaphor is poetry. He might have gone further and said (as perhaps he did) that in a nation's slang you can read not only its character, but a good deal of its history as well. French slang, for instance, is full of slighting and often unquotable references to foreigners —most of them relics of past wars. Compare our "Froggy,'"

"Chink," "Boche," "Yank," and "Dago," I which may be contemptuous, but are innocent enough. A large proportion of our metaphors, as Chesterton calls them, are borrowed from the sea. French is rich in borrowings from the Army. In France the wit is more pointed (we describe thin legs as "sticks"; they say they are "flageolets"). Descriptive words are more exact (where we call a watch a "turnip," they call it an "onion"). They have, if anything, a greater fondness for preserving baby words and inventing words for their appropriate sound alone ("mimi" for cat, "tonton" for uncle, "gaga" for halfwitted, "toe" for brummagem, the last being meant to express the dull sound "iven out by copper or baser metals. A blockhead, for the same reason, is said to be "toc-toc.")

Yet it is astonishing how many ideas, and even words, are common to England and France. To track them down is a fascinating task. Take for instance, "juice," as applied to electricity or petrol. The French say it, too, only spell it "jus." One used to hear countrymen in the North of England speak of potatoes as "potates." The French slangily call them "patates." And is there any connection between our "cheeky" and the French "chique," meaning pretence or swank, as in II fait trop de chique" (he's too swanky)? We sometimes hear a man say that he has been "done brown." The French say "Je euis chocolat" (I've been fooled). Our "You've said it" and the American "You've said a mouthful," finds an almost exact counterpart in "Tu paries." Where we say a person is "cracked" the French say he has a fissure. To speak of having 'Toeil Americain" (the American eye) means to keep one's eyes "skinned," from the old use of the word "American" among "apaches" to designate a swindler who pretends to have come from America with a mint of money. (When America lias collected all her war debts the phrase may gain a new currency!) To sleep soundly is "Dormir a poings fermes" —a healthy child, it seems, keeps its fists closed during sleep. Midinettes, or Parisian work girls, are so called because they are to be seen at midi (noon), when they come out for their dinette (little lunch). Commonplace works of art are sometimes described as "pompier" (fireman). There is a delightful explanation for this: "In artists' slang 'faire son pompier' consists in painting a large picture representing some Roman or Greek hero in full armour, with shield, lance or sword, and suggesting a fireman."

Of the many charming ladies who wear toupets, how many realise the grim associations that cling to the word? Its literal meaning is forelock, and its colloquial meaning ("cheek, impudence, sauce"), originated "by illusion to the Italian hired assassins of former days, who wore a big toupet under a broadbrimmed slouch hat; when they had committed a crime they would draw the forelock over their faces to avoid recognition."