Tish! That’s French!
Wait, are you sure it doesn’t mean something like “milk the caribou?” Nope, you’re right… I was thinking “Pump le moose”
Carry on!
You are dangerously close to being whacked with the pun stick.
Is it worth mentioning that I’ve had to post out information to two different people in Mauritius who live in Pamplemousses? :dubious:
Larousse sez: “from Dutch pompel, large, and limoes, lemon.” It also defines the word rather endearingly as “fruit de pamplemoussier.”
If you change the audio from English to French, the dialogue for this scene is NOT “La grenouille mange le pamplemousse”. Can anyone tell me what the French version says, and how that translates into English? Just wondering how they went about translating the joke for a French audience.
Until 3:06 ago, I had not heard of this group. Yes, they are awesome.
So zen zees ess ze fey-moos pamplemousse of love?
[French Teacher]
La grenouille mange le pamplemousse - the frog eats the grapefruit. Graprefruit is masculine (clearly!)
Le roi est mort. Vive le roi! - The king is dead. (Long) live the king!
“le roi” is masculine.
[/French Teacher]
I found this YouTubeversion (which is really hard to understand) but the phrase spoken seems to be "Le roi François mangeoit boule de chapeau. " which is a complete nonsense phrase in French. The first three words translate as “The king, Francois”. “mangeoit” isn’t a correct conjugation at all for the verb “manger” - to eat. Perhaps it’s “mangait” (imperfect) or “mangerait” (conditional present) but it doesn’t sound that way to me. “boule de chapeau” translates literally as “ball of hat” or “hat ball”. It could be plural as “boules de chapeaux” but to the ear there’s no way to really tell other than context, but it’s nonsensical.
It seems to me* that French translations of English TV shows often take the stance that while the dialogue is in French, the assumed language spoken by the characters is English, and so any French in the show is either left as-is (or with a more exaggerated accent to emphasize it’s different-ness) or is changed for something nonsensical but vaguely French, especially when what is spoken is intended to be clearly incomprehensible to the main characters.
*I generally watch shows and movies in their original language, though, so I could be wrong, but the latter is clearly what they did for the Simpsons.
Now wait a minute, astro. You Googled on “pamplamousse” and found nothing about it being the French word for “grapefruit”? Are you using a different Google than I am? When I put the word “pamplamousse” in Google, it goes out of its way to try to correct my spelling to “pamplemousse” and show me a page of results, the second from the top of which is the dictionary entry for “pamplemousse” in French.
… will you do the Fandango?
Check the date of the OP. I’m not sure that Google was that efficient then.
Sorry, you’re right. I didn’t notice that this is a zombie thread that someone revived several hours before my post.
I kinda doubt the Simpsons’ writers checked that far, but the “-oit” conjugation is actually an old form of the French simple past. Old as in “ye olde Frenche”. It sometimes crops up when a French speaker wants to ape how people of the past talked, like English people will resort to “thou speakest”.
Old French also often omitted definite articles, so “mangeoit boule de chapeau”, while still nonsensical in its meaning would not be automatically incorrect semantically, least not in that regard. It still should be “boule de chapeaux”, plural ;).
I haven’t bought the 12th season of The Simpsons yet, so I can’t check what the French audio (Quebec version) says at that point. This said, in the spirit of Gaudere’s law: mangeait. 
I never watch King of the Hill in French on purpose, but I’ve caught part of some episodes (once again this would be the Quebec version) and it seems to me that we’re supposed to believe this takes place somewhere in Quebec and ignore the overwhelming texanness of the whole show. I think the cognitive dissonance itself is the main reason why I don’t watch the show in French.
This is actually exactly what they did here (and it wasn’t the Simpsons writers, but the French (France) translators). The teacher, after saying he doesn’t know who Miss Hoover is, clearly says “moi, j’enseigne le vieux françois” (“I teach Old French.”)
I believe the plural of “boule de chapeau” should be “boules de chapeaux”, if I remember my grammar rules correctly.
My wife ordered every book in the series she could get- actually sent overseas for some. For some reason she was not amused by my referring to him as “Monsieur PimpleJuice”.
pom·pel·mous n. See shaddock. [Dutch pompelmoes (influenced by pompoen, gourd and Portuguese limoes, lemon) probably ultimately from Tamil pampalim³su.]
Citrus - Citron, Grapefruit, Lemon, Lime, Orange, Shaddock …
CITRUS plant identification description, photos, and information on potting, growing, propagation, varieties, and region of origin.