Every now and then I'll come up with something I think is a successful pun or a play on words in French, only to be told that it doesn't really work for native French speakers. My French friends sometimes do the same in English. It just serves to underline how different the phonology can be between two languages, even when we're basically understanding each other and being understood.Here's an example of this phenomenon on an ad in the Paris métro. It's for a play called "Public or not Public." (The word public in French, by the way, means 'audience'.) It took me a while to realize that this title is supposed to be a play on "To be or not to be." The reason is, well, there are two reasons. The first is that the vowel sounds in public are not the same as those in to be. (For you IPA aficionados, public has /ʌ/ (hmm, that's not displaying right, it should be like an upside-down "v") and /ɪ/, while to be has /u/ (if not reduced to a schwa) and /i/.) The second problem is that the stress in public falls on the first syllable, while the stress in to be falls on the second.
Because of these two reasons, public and to be are not sufficiently similar in English for one to be able to stand in for another in a play on words.
10 comments:
"public would be pronounced with the same vowels as to be"
Surely "public" (the French word) has /y/, whereas I reckon "to be" would (in a French accent) have something more like either /u/ or /ø/ (depending on how accurate they were being)?
Anyway, an example of the inverse for ya: Stephen Clarke's latest book Dial M for Merde :-)
You have to take into account that "or not" is not french :)
Many french people heard for the first time "or not" in "to be or not to be? that is the question"
So you can freely play with that. I could be in a restaurant wondering "dessert or not dessert? that is the question" (with a french accent).
Ha, you caught me JUST as I was adding "likely" to that sentence and republishing!
We'll have to ask our native speaker consultants on this one... I'm not sure they wouldn't use a /y/ here (for non-IPA folk, that's the same vowel as in French tu). Mostly I would expect to hear either /u/ or /y/ rather than /ø/, at least in stereotypical French-accented English (I have many French friends and colleagues who are fine with unstressed syllables and schwas, so we're definitely talking about stereotypical French-accented English).
If either /u/ or /y/ is ok, then we could say that it's the pronunciation with /y/ that goes with the French pronunciation of public. If only /u/ is ok, then it must be that /u/ and /y/ have enough in common here to make the public/to be pair a felicitous play on words.
It might be fun to figure out when two words/phrases are "close enough" in different languages. I saw a métro ad for a tutoring agency called "Keep school" - which I supposed must be intended to be a play on "keep cool" (?) but it didn't work in English (for me, anyway) and I didn't really know why, except that cool and school are different parts of speech... but surely this isn't a general requirement. What's that Radio 4 show where the contestants at the end tell a story whose punch line is a horrible pun on a proverb?
So Daniel, what you're saying is that the phonological requirements on "X or not X" are much looser in French than in English... or rather, are non-existent. That's interesting.
In English, you at least need the to... and if you're really making a pun/play on words rather than a snowclone I think you really do need the /i/ as well.
I believe the phonological requirements don't really exists in french for "X or not X" yet it can be better with as in "toubib or not toubib"
As for "public or not public" I think you to see it as a french sentence so public is a french word
so the u is definitely /y/
I think Daniel's hit the nail on the head there. "X or not X" could easily turn up in an English sentence without being any kind of reference to anything, so puns can't afford to stray too far from the original. To non-Anglophones, however, the Shakespeare quote is probably the only association their brain has with a construction of that type, so more variation is allowed.
An inverse example which springs to mind (I seem to be in a mood for those today!) is "moi non plus", a very everyday phrase in French of course, but which immediately makes many an anglo-saxon think of that irritating Gainsbourg song! :-/
As for the Radio 4 show, not sure about proverb puns at the end, but mention "Radio 4" and "pun" in the same sentence and it's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue which comes to mind...
--K.
As Daniel underlines, the pun has nothing to do with phonology ("public" in French and "to be" with a French accent sound nothing alike ("too bee" and "p/y/bleek")) but it relies on the "or not" which associated with the same word before and after it, will reference to the Shakespeare quote for any "typical" French person, which for some reason is almost overused in French.
Bien entendu. In this case, of course, if phonology doesn't matter in the French examples, we are dealing with a snowclone rather than a pun. And note that the English phonology still does matter if it is to be a pun.
More on snowclones:
http://www.good.is/?p=13907
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