Why didn’t I know sooner that the Québec government has a New England office?
Gonna brush up my French for the next few weeks, and go to the Association of Québecois in New England pre-party for the Fête Nationale on Georges Island – I think the ferry from Boston is $14 round-trip, or free if you RSVP.
Official announcement below the fold. Continue reading →
I logged into Google Reader for the first time in months, finding a sleek new interface, containing a new Anne Archet entry, containing a new word: ut.
Et puisque les murs sont aussi minces que du carton d’emballage, on peut tout entendre, des premiers soupirs au contre-ut orgasmique — fuck, on entend presque tes sous-vêtements tomber sur le sol.
Apparently it was the original name for C in solfège (you know, do-re-mi-fa-sol), taken by Guido d’Arezzo from the first syllable of Ut queant laxis, a chant for John the Baptist. In the 18th century people decided it was hard to sing and switched to do, but in French ut is still used for phrases like “contre-ut,” which I’m pretty sure means “high C”.
Here’s a recording of that chant (gets a little weird after the first round):
'If you're a believer ... the most dubious thing becomes possible. Your faith and your aggression should be limitless.' (Josh Axelrad)
This work by Zach Alexander is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.