highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (Default)
highlyeccentric ([personal profile] highlyeccentric) wrote 2010-06-02 05:31 am (UTC)

It's Old French - Se je t'en oy parler jamais translates as "if I ever hear you speak of this" - "jamais" has suffered from linguistic drift in the last 600 or so years, but in 1280-something it meant "ever" or "ever again". "Oy" means listen, hear - I've actually forgotten the modern French for the same thing, I see the Old so often. Anyway - "je" is the subect of "oy", and what I'm hearing is "t'en parle", you speaking of this, with Se... jamais meaning "if ever".


Je n'y aura fort que tu en fuisses or Y'a n'y aura fort que tu en fuisses where "y'a" is slang for "il", as in 'it', not as in 'he'.

[I but strongly suggest that you flee from it] or [There is but strong reason that you flee from it] I think "fort" just provides emphasis


Thank you! A couple of people over on LJ have pulled the modern french translation apart - apparently it means "you will only have to flee", ie, then fleeing will be your only option (rather than only then will you have to flee), but that renders... weird, and doesn't do anything with "fors" or "en". I like the translation pf "fors" as "fort", although I should check that - it could be a derivant of latin "fers", meaning to carry... could be acting as a modal verb of necessity.

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