"Poop on my knee...Mustard my hole:" What is this wordplay technique?

Factual Questions
1

Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames, by Luis d’Antin van Rooten, is a soundplay take-off from the English children’s book to similar sounding French words, regardless of their meaning in French. E.g., the title, is, in sound==“Mother Goose Rhymes.”] (Van Rooten gives wonderful fake commentary “justifying” the meaning of the French words). Another example from the book is “Un petit d’un petit,” which, if you loosen your cognition for a while, is a sonic translation of “Humpty Dumpty.”

A similar book in German with the same premise is called “Morder Guss Reims”[==Mother Goose Rhymes, but using the “cognitive,” real German words “Murderer, Gush, (the city Reims)”]. When you understand French or German, it’s kind of a mind-f to read this; you can’t figure out what the hell they’re trying to say, but when you realize what you are actually sounding out it’s hilarious.

For the title of this thread. On YouTube, one guy, buffalax,is a specialist in doing this with sound-sense subtitles to many different videos in foreign languages (see if yours is there…) :wink:

One of the best music videos, with a very good song (IMO)–although not done by buffalax himself–begins each verse with “may he poop on my knee”; and each long chorus w/ “would you mustard my hole with a genie babe.” I don’t know the original language from which it is taken.

  • What is this phenomenon (game) called??* :confused:

I’ve looked up “misprision,” and that meaning, even its rare occurrences for misunderstanding because of sound–isn’t quite on the money.

FN1. One of the primary techniques in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is equivalent to this procedure.

FN2. The phenomenon has an important place in manuscript transmission from oral to written communities in music codicology of the Middle Ages. I shit you not.

2

I’m not sure there is a name that uniquely identifies this kind of wordplay. Perhaps you can name it after yourself and become famous.

Technically, it is heterographic substitution. Catchy name, huh?

Incidentally, it has been around a long time. I once gave a talk that featured this kind of wordplay, and afterwards a reletivaly elderly lady came up to say she could remember hearing similar examples in her youth, shared with her by her grandmother. So it’s about time it did have a name.

3

I don’t know what it’s called, but I have seen a similar French book, the author uses English words to write French popular songs.

Here is a site with some extracts from the book
http://pybertra.free.fr/bazar/lordch.htm
Quelques extraits des Oeuvres complètes de Lord Charles
annotées par John Hulme (Éd. La Découverte - 9 bis, rue Abel Hovelacque 75013 Paris)
© John Hulme, 1984

For example: Alouette, gentille alouette, alouette, je te plumerai
becomes
Al, who ate her ? John tea Al, who ate her ?
Al, who ate her ? Shut up loom, hurray !

4

Just before the Battle of Trafalgar, Napoleon sent an emissary to Nelson’s boat, as was the custom of the time, to wish the British Navy a fair fight.

Nelson received Napoleon’s emissary with dignity and invited him into the officer’s mess. He poured them two glasses of rum. The emissary refused this and instead requested a glass of water. He raised his glass, looked Nelson in his one good eye, and proposed a traditional Naval toast: To the water. It is the hour.

“A l’eau, c’est l’heure.”

5

:smack: :slight_smile:

6

Pas d’elle yeux Rhône que nous.

7

And Nelson said “That’s water, there”. (est l’eau cela)

8

I don’t think there’s a particular name for it because it’s so rare. *Mot d’heure" Gousses Rames * was pretty much conjured up by van Rooten out nowhere.

9

Homophonic translation?

10

One word for this kind of wordplay is “macaronic”.

Charles Aznavour had a song called “For me, Formidable” which has numerous charming examples of the kind of wordplay you’re asking about. In the song he is addressing an English girl but knows very few English words. The song is a mix of French and English, but some of the English words double up as syllables of French words. Until the end, when a French word “canaille” becomes the English words “can I”.

11

Some Latin based ones:

Caesar aderat forte
Pompey adsum jam
Caesar sic in omnibus
Pompey sic intram
and
O sibile, si ergo.
Fortibus es in ero.
O nobili, deis trux!
Vates enim? causa an dux!
Also, a telegram about when a woman was carsick: Sic transit gloria mundi.

12

That’s the stuff, OP. I first encountered it in “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut,” reprinted in, if I remember right, my parents’ copy of some iteration of The Whole Earth Catalog or some damn hippie book like that.

13

I’m still following this w/great interest, bros and broettes.

'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy.

14

Homophonic translation, it’s also called soramimi.

15

And of course: Ubi, o ubi, est meam sub ubi?

16

Or our own Cecil Adams’ discovery that Marie Antoinette, while tripping on LSD, realized that “the theme is quest.” :stuck_out_tongue: