Franglais! and randomness
For whatever reason, I’ve noticed that when this blog gets spam comments, it’s overwhelmingly targeted at the “American Food Chains In Paris” post, which must have some oddly alluring combination of keywords for spambots. Anyway, some pretty pictures of Paris in the Springtime:
In the dorm complex area by the street.
Closeup of grass, note pretty blue flowers somewhere.
I’ve been, for a while, amused by the not-quite random use of English or English-esque words in advertising here. Movies, of course, often keep their English title, subtitled in French (e.g. Watchmen (les gardiens)); then there’s the odder stuff like LOL (laughing out loud), which seems about the equivalent of titling something for an English-language market RSVP (Répondez s’Il Vous Plait). I mean aren’t people going to be more familiar with the terms that are actually used than with the words they stand for?
Then there’s the signs and ads. Some of them go for a kind of thematic approach that doesn’t actually say much:
Others are even more cryptic. I’m not really sure I want to know what this sign is supposed to mean:
And then there’s my favorite, Nike’s ad campaign for its new jacket:
And the annotated version:
A: French for “Really, we speak English!:
B: Too small to read clearly, this is a little footnote to (A): “Le Ve de la victoire,” French for “All right, we don’t all actually speak English.”
C: French for “We want to evoke Winston Churchill and/or Japanese tourists, but we didn’t quite do the research.”
