( Judging from the substantial page-view response to our
essay of earlier today, La plaisanterie du Président, it seems to have
fallen to our lot to serve as a helpmeet in the socio-linguisto-political
interpretation of France and of America, the one to the other. Accordingly, we expand upon the
linguistic aspects of that recent post, to which we refer the reader for
scene-setting particulars.)
While France is absorbed in such insipid distractions as the
latest entry in the palmarès of “The
Wit and Wisdom of François Hollande” (which, however, next to the Tweet that Riveted the Morons of America, towers in the annals of diplomacy) -- some
genuine events are unfolding in Françafrique, following in the wake of much bloodshed, and
heralding more bloodshed to come:
Plusieurs milliers de musulmans,
sympathisants de l'ex-rébellion Séléka, ont manifesté dimanche à Bangui contre
l'opération militaire française Sangaris, après la mort le matin même de trois
combattants Séléka dans un accrochage avec des soldats français lors d'une
opération de désarmement.
A reader comments, calmly but ominously:
On y est, guerre de religion et les
français sont les Croisés. Le djihad va être déclaré en France. Êtes-vous prêts
?
Another reader wisecracks:
Bangui? Dans quelle ville se trouve
cette citée?!
And here you might desire some linguistic assistance.
Going only by your high-school French, or rust-encrusted memories
of L’Etranger in college, you might be nonplussed at this: The fellow seems to be asking, with
regard to Bangui, in what town that city is. Which would be either indicative of profound mental confusion,
or else a roundabout ironic way of scoffing that Bangui is BFE (Beyond Effing
Egypt, in military slang), so why get involved there; and while the latter is indeed the consensus among
Frenchmen, e.g. (comments from the
same page)
Voila pourquoi aucun président
normal n'a voulu se mettre dans ce bourbier...
--
Sortons nous de la bas! Aucun
intérêt à y rester, que des coups à prendre. Laissons ces gens la régler leur
problèmes et rentrer dans l histoire à leur manière.
that is not the sense of our wiseacre’s remark, which points
rather to the opposite: Not, that
the French soldats in RAC are (to
resort once again to an expression familiar in the history of our own overseas
armed services) “F*cked and Far from Home”, though indeed they are that as well, but rather, that the tense French - African face-off
far off in the jungle, is
reproduced much closer to home, in the very banlieue of Paris. For, these days, cité (as it is properly spelled) refers not to a “city” in the
American sense, nor to “the City” in the London sense, but to high-rise
subsidized public housing, in and around the major metropoles of France,
occupied largely by Africans, and which have become each a world
apart, and dangerous no-go zones :
reports of a hostile anti-French demonstration by thousands of Muslims,
could just as easily be pulled from the local fait-divers, as from foreign
headlines.
Note:
Realizing that cité might be
one of those notorious faux-amis ever
lurking in the semantic shadows for the undoing of the unwary American, our
hypothetical ex-collegian might have reached for, say Mansion’s Shorter
French and English dictionary, which for many years was the only French
dictionary I owned. There he would
find, in addition to “city”,
cité ouvrière workmen’s garden city
Nostalgically redolent of another age! But the contemporary translation
would be: the Projects.
~
Further socio-semantic Gallic chestnuts to crack :
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