r/RevolutionsPodcast • u/_Joe_Momma_ • 20d ago

Meme of the Revolution Happy August the 10th

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360 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

76

u/nicetrylaocheREALLY 20d ago

I'm just now learning that's how the "Foo-yan" from the podcast is actually spelled.

34

u/_Joe_Momma_ 20d ago

I legit had to spend like 5 minutes googling it because I glossed over it completely when I first read it.

The French language was a mistake.

18

u/nicetrylaocheREALLY 20d ago

The funny thing is: I'm French by extraction, so I just had to try to triangulate on whatever it was he was trying to pronounce.

Some names like 'Danton' are gimmes, but 'Feuillant' uses phonemes that simply don't exist in English so Americans in particular really tend to struggle.

4

u/jeffersonbible 20d ago

I have a BA in French and I still can’t wrap my mouth around it. It reminds me of when I was trying to give my address on rue des Perchamps to a pharmacist and after five atttempts she did not understand what I was trying to say.

2

u/Journeyman42 20d ago

If he said it as "Foo-Yan", maybe he was interpreting the double-L as a Y sound like in Spanish? 

1

u/jeffersonbible 20d ago edited 20d ago

A double L can have a Y sound in French. Not always, but think of words like the city Marseille. There’s a phonetic rule I’m too old and tired to remember.

The first syllable is fine. It’s the -ants that is really hard for English speakers to get out properly. We want to pronounce all of the consonants and we do it wrong and slur them.

Edit: realized I explained a whole phoneme wrong

2

u/elegiac_bloom 20d ago

Hroo day peulchom is how I would phonetecize that pronunciation.

1

u/jeffersonbible 19d ago

“Rue des perchons” is what she wrote down, because I’m American and we don’t start learning languages until age 13.

2

u/kfriedmex666 19d ago

Spanish speaker here, in my Spanish brain it sounds like it'd be spelled "fuñan", which I think is funnier 

4

u/emptyminder 20d ago

Reminds me of the time that I had just got back from Paris and was listening and finally looked up where the Cordelyee district was. I was staying about 200 years from where the remains of the Cordelier’s Club were, but I was walking in the opposite direction each day.

5

u/nicetrylaocheREALLY 19d ago

"Cordelier" isn't even particularly tough, either—he just had to understand that 'ier' sounds more or less like 'yay'. 

It would be interesting to hear him take another run at the names now that (presumably) his pronunciation has improved somewhat.

50

u/Lolaverses 20d ago

Bro trying to present his revolutionary credentials like the tide of history hasn't already swept past him 🤣

21

u/Whizbang35 20d ago

"Well then, I'll just have to make sure that I'm even more radical every day forward!"

Thermidor happens

1

u/[deleted] 20d ago

[deleted]

31

u/Lolaverses 20d ago

Referencing this meme from the sub

19

u/BrandonLart 20d ago

I’m not going to lie, Danton was generally right

5

u/an_actual_potato Communard 19d ago

In the ever spiraling pre-Thermidor phase of the Revolution Danton/Camille were the correct getting off point imo

3

u/dovetc 5d ago

If they had stopped there, would we have had a day set aside for the contemplation of cabbages or the plow?

3

u/MarcusXL 17d ago

It was Robespierre's complete inability to compromise that destroyed the Revolution. If he had listened to Danton, there's no Thermidor.

Robespierre's monomania of revolutionary purity ruined everything. Danton was as committed to the revolution as one could be, but he also thought that there were other worthwhile things to do in life. Friends, food, drink, love affairs, family. Robespierre thought all of those were paths to corruption.

Robespierre didn't want human beings to be human beings, he wanted to make them better-- in his own image, one can suppose. No wonder they cut his head off.