If you’ve been following my blog posts this past year, you know that I love a good song. And what’s a good song, other than a story set to music? And who doesn’t love a good story? The 1980’s was the heyday of good story-songs and they are a great tool for learning language and culture.

Juste une mise au point by Jackie Quartz, a French singer who spent part of her youth in my beloved Bretagne before moving to Paris to start a career as a singer-songwriter, is one of my favorites. In the coming weeks, I’ll share two more of them with you and I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I do … and learn some new vocabulary and grammar in the process! Don’t forget to review the notes at the end of the post.

* ‘le blues’ is singular (as opposed to plural) despite the ‘s‘ at the end because in this case ‘blues’ is a collective noun refering to ‘the blues‘ from the American musical form. ‘Les bleus’ (plural, and spelled a la francais) is the familiar name of the French national soccer (football) league.
** ‘couplet’ is the same word in French and English. A couplet is two lines of verse generally using the same rhyme and meter scheme.
*** ‘un bar-tabac’ or a ‘café-tabac’ is an establishment that sells cigarets along side drinks and light food. Every neighborhood in France has it’s local bar or café-tabac even today when smoking – while still common – is much less common than at one time.
+ ‘Il y a‘ means ‘there is‘ or ‘there are‘ as noted in the next note, the French are not sticklers for including every letter . . . or even every word! . . . when speaking and singing
**** ‘Je le connais . . . ‘ and ‘Je peux . . . ” as previously discussed, spoken and sung French often elides letters. Being able to understand a French speaker (or singer) when they run all their words together is a true art!
***** ‘merde’ is a surprisingly common word in French . . . at least as far as Americans are concerned. The French are generally more comfortable with ‘les gros mots’ (‘the big words’ / ‘swears’) than Americans and some other speakers. A typical French speaker will sprinkle their speech with this . . . and many, many other . . . colorful words.
^ ‘ringard’ is a great adjective! I’ve translated it here as ‘dorky’ but it can mean ‘old’, ‘dumb’, ‘hick’, and more. It’s a great all-purpose word that means “not cool” in so many ways.
^^ ‘une chandelle’ is a ‘candelabra‘ . . . this experssion refers to a single person who is along with a group of couples . . . as a soloist 😉
^^^ ‘se tirer’ means more than just ‘to leave’. ‘Quelqu’un qui se tire . . . ‘ is leaving in a huff, not simply leaving, but storming off.

Locations:
# rue de Clichy is a street in the 9th Arrondissement not far from the Gare St. Lazare.
## rue des Bernardins is a street on the left bank of Paris near le quartier Latin.
### place Gambetta is in the 20th . . . not far from the Père Lachaise Cemetary