Daily French Exercise: Les Phillies Résistent

It has recently come to the author’s attention that he’ll be relocating soon — for a not insubstantial portion of the next year, it appears — to Paris, Goddamn France. While the city is noted for excellent cuisine, impressive architecture, and perpetual nudity, its residents (in the manner native to that irascible people) have systematically replaced, in both speech and the extant literature, all of the English words that already exist with a series of (sometimes similar-looking) words which contain random collections of silent vowels and are only pronounced with great difficulty.

With a view both to acquainting himself with this entirely new lexicon and also fulfilling his obligations to the present and absurd weblog, the author has resolved to publish in this space a brief, daily French exercise concerning base-and-ball — a maneuver which critics are already calling “a monument to self-interest” and “nearly useful” and also “unlikely to actually last three days.” The exercises will likely be directed at people who are familiar with language acquisition, generally, but who are not masters of French, specifically. (Because the author himself is and is not those things, respectively.)

What follows is a flailing first attempt at such an exercise. For each paragraph of the article in question — a brief summary from Le Journal de Montréal of a recent Colorado-Philadelphia game — the author has included a couple of notes that were of some use to him.

Scroll over each paragraph for the author’s (potentially flawed) translation of same.

LES PHILLIES RÉSISTENT

John Mayberry a frappé un circuit de trois points, dans une victoire de 5-4 des Phillies de Philadelphie contre les Rockies du Colorado.

The verb form a frappé is a common past-tense construction called the passé composé, which is composed (generally) of the verb avoir and the past participle (in this case of frapper, meaning “to hit”).

The word circuit appears to be a common expression for “home run.”

Les Rockies sont revenus dans le match avec des poussées de deux points en septième et huitième, mais les Phillies ont tenu le coup pour signer un deuxième gain de suite.

The expression des poussées derives from the verb pousser, meaning “push.”

The expression ont tenu le coup (ont tenu being the passé composé form of tenir) comes from the verb tenir (“to hold”) and masculine noun coup. Together as a phrase, they appear to mean “cope” or “withstand.”

Ethan Martin (2-2) a mérité la victoire après avoir accordé seulement deux points mérités en six manches et un tiers, tandis que Jonathan Papelbon a mis fin à la rencontre pour décrocher son 21e sauvetage.

The word manche can mean “sleeve,” but is the word in French used for “inning,” as well.

The expression tandis que is a conjunction meaning “whereas” or “while.”