Saturday, June 23, 2012

I Learned Somthing, Maybe

The Bourbons, so Talleyrand is said to have said, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.  I've heard that one most of my adult life.  But just now for the first time I saw it in print in French:
Rien appris,
Rien oublié

Hey!--my thought was--it rhymes!  Ah, but wait--note the acute accent over that final e, almost invisible to Anglophones.  It seems to change the pronunciation.  

Or does it?  Would a Francophone slur this into a rhyme, so as to enhance the joke, or leave it subtly unrhymed as it seems to be?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

didn't al jolson say "it aint what you say, it's the way that you say it."?