Le quatrième jour de Noël, mon amour m’a donné : quatre merles…
(On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: four calling birds…)
I’m starting to think I could be a pop star. Or I’m drunk. Awkward!
quatres merles
(four blackbirds)
1. un merle is a blackbird. A what?! How is that a “calling bird”?! I hear you scoff.
Well, see, it turns out “calling birds” is an Americanisation of the original lyric “colly birds” which are actually… *drumroll*
…blackbirds. (You guessed, didn’t you? You clever thing, you.) Colly was an old word for coal, which is black.
So, if we wanted “calling birds” more like those in the picture, you know, meh-generic-Christmas-cardy birds, we could go for oiseaux chantants (literally “singing birds” but in the sense of “song birds” not “birds that are singing right now” – this is a very subtle distinction that can be rather problematic. More on this later.)
I rather like merles but if you prefer to use quatre oiseaux chantants – just be aware that chantants is an adjective here, as in “song bird”; it doesn’t mean singing.
I’m thinking of applying for QI.
Seriously.
And X Factor.
2. One last thing: notice that it’s quatre and not ‘quatres‘ – numbers don’t “agree” in number (pluralise) like adjectives.
More: 3rd Day | The 12 Days of Christmas | 5th Day
Author info
[Follow on Twitter: @gruffdavies] Despite the very Welsh name, Gruff is actually half French. Nowadays, he's a tech entrepreneur (and some-time novelist) but he used to be a physicist at Imperial College before getting hooked on inventing things. He has a special interest in language learning, speaks five languages to varying degrees of fluency and he often blogs about language learning, science, and technology. As well as co-founding Kwiziq, he is the author the Amazon best-selling SF thriller, The Looking Glass Club and the inventor of the Exertris gaming exercise-bike and Pidgin, a free online tool that makes drawing flow charts and relationship diagrams as quick and easy as describing them in pidgin English.
Laura is a French expert and Kwiziq's Head of Quality Control. Online educator since '99, Laura is passionate about language, travel, and cooking. She's American by birth and a permanent ex-pat by choice - freelancing made it possible for her to travel extensively and live in several countries before settling permanently in Guadeloupe. Laura is the author of Lawless French, Lawless Spanish, and other websites and books on French, Spanish, Italian, English, and vegetarianism. She spends most of her spare time reading, playing with food, and enjoying water sports.