Oyez! Oyez!

RonButters at AOL.COM RonButters at AOL.COM
Sun Feb 18 13:00:54 UTC 2007


In some North Carolina courts, the Law French "Oyez! Oyez!" has come down to
us as "Oh yes! Oh yes!" They should of course have translated it as "Listen
up, y'all!"

The opening of court thus sounds a little like the middle of a porn film.

In a message dated 2/16/07 2:27:00 PM, jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM writes:


> > OT: Those who consider French the ideal legal language can take heart in
> the knowledge that England continued to use French for law courts (Oyez!
> Oyez!) long after the educated classes in England had, for all other purposes,
> given up Norman French in favor of that ungainly hybrid known as
> English.
>

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