+ 33 (0)6 25 31 08 81 Uri Sluckin Tradwell uri@tradwell.com

Si vous comprenez l’humour vous maîtrisez l’anglais. If you pardon the pun.

Eh oui, si vous souriez, mieux, si les plaisanteries et jeux de mots dans une langue étrangère vous font éclater de rire, cela confirme que votre maitrise est complète. Les plus grands humoristes ont souvent eu recours à la boutade, trait d’esprit faisant souvent appel au paradoxe. Les anglais sont connus pour leur humour double entendre. In French, Raymond Devos disait : « J’adore être pris en flagrant délire.» En anglais, the play on words was used a lot by Shakespeare « That dreamers often lie» the pun is that dreamers lie in bed but also lie about dreams. Lisez les puns (boutades en jeux de mots) gagnantes du récent Dave’s Leicester Comedy Festival ci-après pour vérifier si vous avez de l’humeur (sic).  offre des explications gratuites à ceux qui s’y perdent ! Get it ? Start laughing now My English teacher recently recovered from a bowel cancer operation… and he tried to show me a semi colon. What’s the difference between a hippo and a zippo? One is really heavy and the other is a little lighter. I’ve got a joke about a fat badger, but I couldn’t fit it into my set. I work in a paper factory, where my responsibilities are twofold. Last week I called a lady a watering hole but I meant well.. I got caught up in a freak accident last year when I knocked two bearded ladies off their tandem bike. I saw a sports car being driven by a scantily clad sheep. It was a lamb bikini. I sent a food parcel to my former wife. Fed Ex. This government thinks that flood defenses are a...

Ce n’est pas tes oignons ! or Mind your own business !

Not the oignon, s’il vous plaît: fury as France changes 2 400 spellings and drops some accents. French linguistic purists have voiced online anger at the removal from many words of one of their favourite accents – the pointy little circumflex hat (ˆ) that sits on top of certain vowels. Around 2 400 words can be spelt differently, although it’s not mandatory. Traditionalists, including Tradwell will stick to the original spelling. Read more The idea is to make it easier to learn seemingly difficult words. Tradwell has always persisted in spelling weekend without the hyphen in its French travails. The circumflex will be removed from above the letters I and U where the accent does not change the pronunciation or meaning of the word. The far-right Front National waded in with party vice president Florian Philippot declaring “the French language is our soul” and the centre right mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi calling the reforms “absurd”. Tradwell is voicing its doubt as to Christian’s ability to write correctly what he says, circumflex or not. Florian’s protests hardly concern those familiar with writing. No such debate over the Channel, but what about English words spelled one way and pronounced the other? How about Wednesday spelled and becoming Wensday when spoken? It’s all down to Woden, an Anglo-Saxon god associated with both fury and poetic inspiration. He also had a career in curing horses and carrying off the dead, and Wednesday is his day. Shakespeare tried to match pronunciation with his very reasonable « Wensday, » it didn’t work. Woden got to keep his ‘d’ and his day. Receipt: when the word came into English...

New words in English for 2015

Significant new words of the year 2015 have been published by Collins Dictionary, with ‘dadbod’, ‘manspreading’ and ‘transgender’ featuring prominently. But with new ways of registering, downloading and streaming of your favourite series it’s not surprising that ‘binge-watch’ has been chosen as the Word of the Year for 2015. Read more Significant new words of the year 2015 have been published by Collins Dictionary, with ‘dadbod’, ‘manspreading’ and ‘transgender’ featuring prominently. With new ways of registering, downloading and streaming of your favourite series it’s not surprising that ‘binge-watch’ has been chosen as the Word of the Year for 2015. Dictionary compilers have seen a huge increase in its usage as a survey found that almost all of us conceded to « binge-watching » – watching more than the two nightly episodes of a series in one sitting. The CollinsDictionary.com definition of the in-word: « To watch a large number of television programmes (especially all the shows from one series) in succession. » Netflix or Watch Series, or Canal + digital video recorders make it easy for fans to watch what they want, when they want, for as long as they want. New kinds of internet-inspired series, such as House of Cards or Breaking Bad are being viewed entirely without the thrill of waiting for the weekly installments and then discussed and digested ad nauseam on the social media. The new, controversial UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn inspired a term based on his far-left economic policies: Corbynomics. A regime of « clean eating » refers to avoiding processed foods and eating a lot of raw, untreated and unrefined produce. Male binge-watchers who do not adhere to this diet...

French political knickers in a right (wing) twist

Tradwell doesn’t do politics; well not unless politics infringe upon its hereditary right to dispense transcending translation tips, known as triple t within the corporation. This is just the case with the farce being played out at this very moment, a play so comically brilliant that it deserves a chapter. A communication coup so violent that we need to calm the reader by comparing what’s going on in France to what Shakespeare taught us about power and corruption, as in act 5, scene 2 of Hamlet. In the very last scene, the violence, so long suspended, erupts with dizzying momentum. Characters drop one after the other, poisoned, stabbed, and, in the case of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, executed, as the theme of revenge and justice reaches its conclusion in the moment when Hamlet finally kills Claudius. Read more At the end, the arrival of Fortinbras effectively raises the question of political legitimacy once more. In marked contrast to the corrupted and weakened royal family lying dead on the floor, Fortinbras clearly symbolises a strong-willed, capable leader, though the play does not address the issue of whether his eventual rule will restore the moral authority of the state. I let readers place the actors in the roles we see as interchangeable with 3 main royal political families testing the various means of mutual destruction: Les Républicains, erstwhile known as UDF and led by the has been but destined to become once again French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the PS led, we use the term sparingly, by the actual French president François Hollande, and the far right party driven by an older, yet...

La différence entre Gone Girl écrit et filmé…

Ma femme, mon fils de 19 ans et moi avons regardé le film Gone Girl ; les parents ont lu le livre en anglais et David s’est pris au jeu. Il n’y avait pas de bon match de foot ce soir. Bien que le film de David Fincher reprenne les intrigues et que les complots et personnages soient repris assez fidèlement tout en ayant la marque de fabrique du directeur, il y a beaucoup de changements et oublis, principalement faits pour contenir la longueur de l’œuvre. Par exemple, le fait que Nick va sur la plage le lendemain de la disparition de sa femme, Amazing Amy, dans le livre il s’esquive pour passer du temps avec Andie et pour lire des magazines d’hommes dans un garage abandonné. Ça dégoûte le spectateur, on apprend à détester le personnage. Read more Puis, l’actrice Noelle Hawthorne arrive quand la police effectue la première fouille la maison. On a bien lu qu’Amy a passé du temps à préparer Noelle pour qu’elle accuse Nick de meurtre. Les rôles des 2 policiers, Boney et Gilpin sont gonflés dans le film, c’est sans doute pour ajouter une pointe d’humeur à cette histoire sombre et rocambolesque. La scène qui se déroule dans le centre commercial abandonné a aussi été modifiée ; certes assez fidèle au livre en ce qui concerne l’ambiance générale, c’est n’est pas Nick qui y va avec son père, armés de bats de baseball mais la police. Ils racontent plus tard qu’Amy cherchait à acheter un flingue. Les arguments entre Nick et Amy sont différents dans le film : par exemple on ne voit pas...

Gazon Maudit or Lady Garden

Pour marquer le lancement de la campagne du Gynaecological Cancer Fund  pour collecter des fonds #LadyGardenCampaign, Tradwell vous propose de briser le tabou et parler de noms utilisés dans la langue du Shakespeare pour décrire le vagin. Sur le web il y en a des sites qui vont jusqu’à 238 noms, mais lesquels sont tolérés dans une conversation mondaine, plaisanteries entre amis ou à apprendre aux enfants pour que un bambin ne cri pas « vagina ! » devant la belle-mère. Read more When you were growing up, your parents might have had their own special names to describe le zizi, both male and female, in order to shelter you from the adult world for as long as possible. In English the list of names is virtually endless. There are the cute ones to be used around kids, such as Minnie (confusing if you like Minnie Mouse), Front Bottom (very middle class), Foo Foo (probably from French foufoune), Mary (don’t ask me!), Lady bits (very upper middle class), Flower (as in flower power?), Noonie (again, it’s out there, but why?), Nether regions (but not always cold), Downstairs (with upstairs for décolleté?), Fanny (except that it means bottom in the USA)… The “hedonistic” ones, used by boys out drinking together, such as: Bearded oyster (une huître barbue, can you imagine?), Hippo’s yawn (depends on the lady you’re with), Meat or Beef curtains (a bit bavette), Baby or Money maker (true in a lot of cases), Twat (or the other one beginning with a “C”) this one is used more as a “friendly” insult these days, Pussy (still n°1 but not accurate if Brazilian...