Talk:jinx

Hello, in french

for somebody or something who brings you "la malchance" , apart from the oldish "porte-malheur" (bad-luck bearer) , we have now :

-" guigne, guignon" ( a kind of little sour pale-red cherry) , or even simply "cerise" (cherrry) , as in : "Ce trouillard m'a collé la guigne" ("that funky boy stuck me the cherry = gave me the jinx"). Has been used a lot in Eugène Labiche, Georges Feydeau & Georges Courteline. Title of a well-known book by Eugène Boudard ( whose works are quoted in WP:fr as "one of the best of french post-war literature" ) : "La Cerise" (1963). Still in use in well-bred circles.

-"porte-poisse" : for ex. "Cette cravate verte est un porte-poisse" ("that green tie is a stickypitch bearer).

-"jonas" has been brought to us by US comics in the '50 (I remember it was sketched as a little man clad in black, kind of clergyman with a bowler-hat...).Ex. : "Ce jonas m'a mis dans la merde" ("that jonah made me fall into a shit*-bucket").

In "France profonde" ("french deep country"), an owl is even nowadays believed to be "un oiseau de malheur" (" a misfortune bird" , name given also to a jinx man or a woman) able to "lancer le mauvais oeil" ("cast the evil eye"). So, not so long ago, this Tyto alba ("dame blanche" , = "white lady") could frequently be seen nailed up onto barn-doors, a practice now forbidden by law.

-une "scoumoune" (often pronounced "shcoumoune") is even more dangerous : "Barrez-vous, voilà la scoumoune !" ("Scram, here's the deadly jinx"). From peri-mediterranean vocabulary , has invaded whole francophony, mainly thanks to the José Giovanni's 1972 movie with our then sex-symbols JP Belmondo & Claudia Cardinale : Bébel, nicknamed "La Scoumoune", killed all of his foes as if they were doomed...

• "shit" : in french, though, we use to wish luck to friends before an exam. or any difficult task by saying "I wish you a big heap of shit" , or simply by saying sternly while shaking hands "Et...Merde !". Seems quite gross, but retraces back to the times when you could judge if a play was successfull by the piles of dung the coaches horses left in front of the theater...

And anyway if you want to remain polite, you can use a periphrase : "I wish you the Cambronne's word" , you'll look deliciously obsolete.

T.y. (and if somebody remembers that little black jonas , may he tell me in which comic it was ?) Arapaima 15:36, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

This looks like hello in English to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:37, 27 April 2010 (UTC)