"cross-language homophonic poetry" -- or something

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 1/18/06, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> On another list, someone asked:
> >There's been a conversation on our family list about _Mots
> >D'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript_, by Luis
> >D'Antin Van Rooten ... who produces poems that look like French
> >but sound like English (that is, when read aloud they make sense
> >as English sounds).
> >
> >What is that form, joke, or whatever it is called?  I know of it
> >because Jonathan Swift did it with Latin and English, but at the
> >moment I can't even find any of those jeux in my library or on
> >line (much less in my memory), and my hope (nay, expectation) is
> >that someone on this learned list has the noun at the tip of her
> >tongue, or fingers.

The general category of burlesque verse in which one language
masquerades as another is called "macaronics" or "macaronic verse."
But I've never come across another example of macaronics with the
precise phonological mapping found in __Mots D'Heures: Gousses,
Rames_.

More on macaronic verse here:

http://www.library.northwestern.edu/collections/garrett/frivreadings.html


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org