It’s officially springtime in Paris! My peacoat has been stashed away for good, which is lucky because the lining is about to give out, due to constant messenger bag friction on my left hip, but I’m not going to worry about replacing the lining right now because it is WARM outside! Yesterday, I was too warm in a sweatshirt. And the nighttime was comfortably cool. That’s how I measure if it’s really spring or not — whether I can perambulate outdoors at night in just a sweater.
FUN FACT ABOUT THE FRENCH: In English speaking countries, we notate music following an A-B-C-D-E-F-G scale. In France, their scale it Do-Ré-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si-Do. (Apparently it’s Si and not Ti.)
I am not joking! If you were in a music lesson, your clarinet or perhaps French horn teacher would tell you, “Now play me Fa.” And if someone asked you how to play Hot Cross Buns, you would say, “Si La Sol, for about a million measures.”
A#, or A sharp, is translated as La Dièse. The same note as B♭ or B flat is Si Bémol.
So maybe you already knew that. But I had no idea until my conversation buddy Céline informed me yesterday at an Irish pub, where I had cranberry juice (typical).
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you = mignonne
April 8, 2009 @ 8:55 pm
I really don’t know what to say about the music…thankfully I watched the Sound of Music so it at least sounds familiar? Idk.
In book 3 of HP, Professor Flitwick ordered the equivalent of a Shirley Temple with an umbrella while at the 3 Broomsticks and his buddies all had stiff drinks. Go Flitwick.
April 9, 2009 @ 4:20 pm
You use do re mi fa so la si do in Polish too. And it just so happens that the middle three notes, FA SO LA, spell out the word for string bean. So there’s a Polish children’s band called Fasola — more or less translatable as “The String Beans” — and its a cool pun when, as a kid, you suddenly one day realize the name has a double meaning.
April 10, 2009 @ 3:40 pm