I was thinking how I learnt stuff at school back in the Sixties and early Seventies that had no bearing on my life whatsoever. Even more, I had no idea what they meant.
Alouette is a good example. We must have sung this French song every week. I could the words with my eyes shut. I just didn't know what any of it meant. I could probably say that about any of the language lessons I had and most of the maths lessons too. It all left me a bit cold and in he end school wad a chore. Like Allouette the song, it had no meaning for me. If I was told, I don't recall!
In later life I became a keen birdwatcher and found out that Alouette meant skylark in French!
Are there any words you knew as a kid and only found out what they meant later on?
Alouette is also a series of French helicopter designs. What do you expect from an aviation enthusiast ?
ReplyDeleteHa ha. Interesting. And then of course we had the British wine make, Hirondelle. Further birds in French!
DeleteApparently, its about plucking the feathers from a skylark, body part by body part (head, beak, wings etc)
ReplyDeleteRather macabre, I'd say.
That's funny! We used to sing that Alouette song too and to this day don't even know why. My grade school only had Spanish lessons (made possible by a television rolled into the classroom and the public broadcasting station). So where the heck did a French song come into play? In our family we always said "Gesundheit' when someone sneezed, as well as a smattering of German and Croatian words. I figured that German stuff out much later LOL
ReplyDelete