In high school, my dad (who is French) studied Greek for some time, mostly because that way he didn’t have to take German. He told me that the only thing he ever learnt was οὐκ ἔλαβον πόλιν. For some reason, my dad thought it was very funny, but I didn’t get it… But I just bumped into whole piece, and now I know what was so funny. For those of you who know French:
οὐκ ἔλαβον πόλιν· άλλα γὰρ ἐλπὶς ἔφη κακά.
Various internet sources claim that the line is from Xenophon. For some reason, I’m a bit doubtful…
The only French I know is from speaking with my wife. I knew enough to get the first part of the joke sentence, but had to look the rest up (although with κακα it was easy to guess). But I can’t find the original source or age, beyond that characterization “calembour artificielle est un grand classique.”
It did, however, make an appearance in Finnegan’s Wake, which locks it down somewhat.
“Où qu’est la bonne Pauline? A la gare, elle pisse et fait caca!”
“Where’s good Pauline? At the railway station, pooing and peeing!”
You shouldn’t blame your French teacher for not getting it, you should actually thank him/her! That’s not a proper way to speak French… In addition to the dubious content, “où qu’est” isn’t exactly good French and Markos is right to ask “où est le kappa?”… Children might say things like “où qu’il est le bébé?”, but “où qu’est Pauline” is even below that, I don’t know if it’s archaic in addition to being childish, or just plain half-nonsense.
And I don’t know about the Greek either, if it’s any better. Is it good Greek to make ἐλπὶς subject of ἔφη? And what do think about not using the article with πόλις?
No, the Greek is barely tolerable Greek. The joke is well conceived, but not well executed. “Zeta ate a theta” is the most famous English equivalent, I guess.
Isn’t this a nice demonstration of how Greek pronunciation varies according to nationality? Only a French speaker would render this Greek in such a way that it sounded like this French.
