December 12, 2004

Harry Potter...
I'm reading Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu (Harry Potter and the Cup of Fire, en français) at the moment (along with various textbooks).
One cool thing about reading it in French, is that you learn all sorts of useful (and useless) words, such as "Moldus" is the French word for "Muggles" (which is a made up English word).
Some of the more useful words that I've learned are:
louche - shady, shifty, fishy, suspicious (chelou is the verlan)
pêle-mêle - any old how
la pacotille - cheap junk, trash, showy stuff
glousser - to chuckle, cluck (péj.)
narquois(e) - sardonic, mocking, derisive
échevelé(e) - wild, frenzied (i.e. hair)
brouhaha - hubbub
maussade - glum, gloomy (avoir l'air...)
effondrer - to gobble up, gulp, wolf down, engulf (bouffer)
une lubie - fad, hair-brained idea, craze

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

heyyy that's pretty cool. after a bad experience w/ messed up french novels in 1st year french (think sex w/ dogs and other weird sex scenes which supposedly constituted "french literature" haha... we don't read nething like that in english lit), i haven't picked one up. hmm english translations mite be interesting esp if i've already read the english...

gluck w/ finals!

Anonymous said...

salut, ça va? (or in the ch'ti accent, "sho vo?")

I've been meaning to do this for the longest time, but i've been crazy busy...I just wanted to say "thanks" for visiting my humble little blog...it's nice to know that a past assistant is reading it, and I really appreciate your insights and anecdotes about your time in Lille...

take care, and if you're ever in the lille area, let me know! on peut prendre un verre!

Stephen said...

I can see why you were a bit, um, put off by French lit. Harry Potter is great in French, but it can be hard w/ some of the made up words (think all the potions, magic creatures, etc.).