Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I was listening to a cassette in the car earlier, the music competing with road noise and wind, since the weather was nice enough to try to air out the car a bit (there's still some of that cigarette smell to it). The volume was up, but it wasn't the optimal listening environment. Still, I found the following just a little bit startling.

I heard the melody for "Belle Quie Tiens Ma Vie", a familiar song. After a couple of verses as an instrumental, voices joined in -- high voices with those extra-round singer vowels that I find sometimes get in the way of making out the words. I turned up the volume a notch, but the words still didn't make sense. I listened harder, wondering which verse they were singing, but I couldn't place it. Finally, on the word "eyes", I realized why I couldn't figure out which verse it was or make the words intelligible.

The problem was that they were singing in English.

My native language, but not the language in which I know that song. It was definitely a "buttered popcorn flavoured jelly bean"[1] moment, failing to recognize a lyric because it was in my language. (It was, in case anyone's wondering, the first verse.)

Belle qui tiens ma vie
Captive dans tes yeux
Qui ma l'áme ravie
D'un sourir gracieux
Viens tot me secourir
Ou me faudra mourir
Viens tot me secourir
Ou me faudra mourir

I can translate the meaning (and will do so if folks want), but I'll have to go back out to the car and listen to it again to get the exact phrasing of the translation the singers used.

[1] Jelly Belly makes buttered-popcorn jelly beans. These have become the canonical example of cognitive dissonance. They are extremely tasty, and the flavour is very convincing, but the mouth feel, of course, is that of a jelly bean. A delicious mindfuck.

"God's given us two eyes, two ears and two arms and two hands, but only one heart. And it's in the center and a little bit to the left." -- An archbishop in South America quoted by yesthattom 2003-12-30