Jan. 29th, 2015 09:07 pm
Un p'tit coup
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muckefuckI may have found a way of overcoming my ordinary resistance to buying books new: ordering them directly from small presses. My latest virtuous acquisition is Tonnerre mes chiens! from Renouveau Publishing in Ville Platte, LA. In retrospect, I'm happier not knowing that Amanda LaFleur is a serious linguist, since what I received was a much more scholarly and professional treatment of Louisiana French idioms than I'd been expecting.
Some of these expressions were already familiar to me from the grand Dictionary of Louisiana French but others are completely new. For example, avoir une tete de poule for "have a poor memory" or avoir les foies blancs for "to be long-lived" (part. of a woman who has survived two husbands).
The second one is especially interesting to me because it literally means "to have the lungs" and literally literally means "to have the white livers". "White liver" may seem an odd term for "lung" but I suppose it makes more sense if you've seen both these organs come out of a dead animal. (In ordinary usage both in Louisiana and Newfoundland, it refers only to the lungs of an animal, like "lights" in English.) An equivalent term exists in Ladin, fià bianch.
The same expression exists in France, too, but with a totally difference meaning, viz. "to have fear". (LF equivalents would be avoir une cache and avoir froid aux yeux.) Nowadays, this is found in the abbreviated form avoir les foies, which makes it even more puzzling.
Some of these expressions were already familiar to me from the grand Dictionary of Louisiana French but others are completely new. For example, avoir une tete de poule for "have a poor memory" or avoir les foies blancs for "to be long-lived" (part. of a woman who has survived two husbands).
The second one is especially interesting to me because it literally means "to have the lungs" and literally literally means "to have the white livers". "White liver" may seem an odd term for "lung" but I suppose it makes more sense if you've seen both these organs come out of a dead animal. (In ordinary usage both in Louisiana and Newfoundland, it refers only to the lungs of an animal, like "lights" in English.) An equivalent term exists in Ladin, fià bianch.
The same expression exists in France, too, but with a totally difference meaning, viz. "to have fear". (LF equivalents would be avoir une cache and avoir froid aux yeux.) Nowadays, this is found in the abbreviated form avoir les foies, which makes it even more puzzling.
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