John Martin's Dunno humor: April Fools Day, the French connection

April Fools Day: The French connection

It has come to my attention that April Fools Day might have had its origins in 16th century France.

This could explain why I wasted four years learning French at high school. It was a joke, right? A load of merde.

I am an "April Fool!" (as well as February, March, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December). Or, as the French might say, "Je suis un Poisson d'Avril!" (et Janvier, Fevrier, Mars, Mai, Juin, Août, Septembre, Octobre, Novembre et Decembre)

I have to say I have nothing against the French.

I also have to say I have to say I have nothing against them because I live quite close to the Pacific Ocean and you just never know when a French pilot might - oops, pardon! - drop a nuclear test bomb in close proximity to your head, or a couple of French agents might be despatched from Paris to blow up your troublesome yacht on nearby Lake Burley Griffin.

I can imagine my wife Katherine shaking me awake on April 1 to break the horrible news.

"Get up, get up. They've blown up our yacht, the Rainbow Worrier!"

"What! THE SILK STOCKINGS FULL OF DUNG! (I borrowed that from a famous little Frenchman, Napoleon Bonaparte, who uttered the same line of abuse to a lieutenant who dared to beat him at chess, though I imagine he said it in French). How dare they! I loved that yacht!"

""Poisson d'Avril!" Katherine would say in her best French accent. "We HAVEN'T even got a yacht!"

This is true but the fact I do not own a yacht is no less a mystery to me than why the French say "Poisson d'Avril" instead of April Fool.

Poisson d'Avril means April FISH!

Go figure!

My theory is that the French, forever paranoid about English words sneaking into their language, have banned the word "fool" from official correspondence.

A French culture minister tried in 1996 to preserve French language in common parlance by banning words like "hamburger", "sandwich" and "weekend." But his legislation, which was passed by the Academie Francaise, was generally disregarded. Lately, however, there has been a push for French civil servants, who CAN be controlled, to steer clear of certain English terms.

The French Finance Ministry's economic terminology commission has already replaced "magnet" with "aimantins" and "pins" with "epinglettes" in an attempt to preserve the French language in the workplace.

And now it has come up with a list of French alternatives for financial and computer-based English terminology.

According to a report from Agence-France Presse, alternatives are to be published in the government's official gazette for words such as "start-up", "stock options", "world company", "business plan" and "marketing manager". The word "e-mail" will be replaced with "courier electronique".

And I suspect April Fool has been redefined just to remind the French people who's fish, er, boss.

I did try very hard to find out why the French are so obsessed with fish on April 1, but to no avail.

Luckily, I can still recite fluently the first page of my first French text in my first French class in grade seven.

Unfortunately, I am unable to write it down because I forget how half the words are spelt but roughly translated (and that's about all I can do because I remember absolutely nothing from the rest of that book or further books over the next four years; the only other French I have retained is the word merde, which, again roughly translated, means shit, but I learnt that after I left school - from a French Canadian in Greece), it was about a girl named Chantal looking out a window for a cat named Mimi.

In hindsight, I suspect it was April - and Chantal feared for the safety of her poisson gold.

It was a joke, right?

There WAS no cat?

Just like there's no logical explanation for poisson d'Avril.

Merde, eh?

Go fish.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it