Hangovers and linguistics

Buddy Boy was very hung over this morning. He had some friends over last night, and they consumed a lot of alcohol, one of them actually ending up losing the contents of his stomach dating to last week by the length of time he took and the sounds emanating from the bathroom. I actually sat up with them while this poor fellow entertained us with his upchucking, not that you really want to hear about that. But, once again, I have to admit I prefer to hang out with my kids and their friends than, well, my friends. Sigh.

Anyway, as a result of his being hung over, it was pretty difficult getting him moving this morning to catch the 10 a.m. bus to Montreal. It was especially scary when we were a minute away from the terminus and the striped arm descended and a very long train proceeded to move slowly along the level crossing. The bus was leaving in five minutes. Hubby turned around and took an alternate route which took him over the railway line and we got Buddy Boy on his bus with two minutes to spare. My son has inherited his father’s tendency to miscalculate the amount of time needed to complete a task or get to a destination. He’s doomed.

He called from the Montreal depot because he was bored, having a wait of one and-a-half hours, and told me he was still slightly hung over. I have no sympathy, sorry. He should be arriving at his destination in about an hour. Now that’s a long day of traveling.

At the restaurant where we played jazz yesterday, Kevin O said the nicest thing a guy can ever say to a girl, so take note boys. He said, “I bet you’ve never had to bother with dieting your whole life.” Wasn’t that sweet?

Speaking of yesterday, as Hubby was loading his gear into the bassist’s van, Guy moved one of his own instrument cases out of the way so that my husband’s guitar would have more room, saying that he didn’t mind, since it was all déchrisé. He proceeded to show us where the corner of the case was chewed up. I immediately had to translate déchrisé into an equivalent English adjective, and came up with the phrase “piece of shit”.

Now the reason why this is interesting from a linguistic point of view is that déchrisé literally translates as “made devoid of Christ”, or “godforsaken”. We would not say that a musical instrument case is godforsaken. We would say it is a piece of shit, or all fucked up, or something like that. But not in Quebec. The curse words here all profane the sacred. Chalice (communion cup), hostie (communion wafer), tabernacle (Eucharist coffer), and of course Christ himself are all used singly and in combination depending on the emphasis needed. I recommend the Canadian film Bon Cop, Bad Cop for some beautiful examples of Québecois swearing.

My son, who knows these things, says that there are also examples where more anglophone-style swearing is utilized. For instance, where we would say that something is a fucking piece of shit, a Québecois might say putain de merde, where putain literally translates as prostitute, but has also come to mean fucking.

Now, wasn’t that interesting and strangely liberating?

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