For Sure (3 page)

“Ee told us dat story I don't know how many times! I can't believe you've gone and forgot it!”

The letter
b
might very well blush with pride at the number of colours that begin with
b
in pourpre.com's chromatic dictionary: 26, or 9 percent, of the names of colours defined as real on the site. Together, the letters
a
,
b
, and
c
begin 107 of the 281 colours in this dictionary. Which amounts to saying that, in French, 38 percent of the colours listed in that particular dictionary begin with 12 percent of the letters of the alphabet. According to Wikipedia,
a
,
b
, and
c
are the first letters of 200 out of 869 names of colours in English, or 23 percent. Thus, in English, it appears the first three letters of the alphabet carry 15 percent less weight in introducing colours than in French.

The second time Terry sang for his children happened one evening while he was scribbling something at the kitchen table, waiting for the kids' bedtime. When Étienne approached him to ask what he was doing, Louis Aragon's
Blues
sprang to mind. Hearing the first notes of the song, Marianne joined her brother, and as Terry got to the bit
We can't all be Cézanne / We'll settle for much less
, he could feel his children were as enthralled as they'd been the first time. He delivered the lines
Young man what do you fear / You'll grow old no matter what…
in the benevolent tone of a father instructing his offspring, and carried that attitude through to the end of the song.

“Youse like it when yer dad sings, don't ya?”

The two kids stood wide-eyed and waiting for more.

“Well, it's our secret, OK? A secret just fer de tree of us, right?”

And to make sure the children had understood him, he kneeled down to their height to explain again how it was their secret and that they couldn't tell anyone about how he sang for them.

“Sometime soon, I'll be singin' to surprise yer mum, see, but in the meanwhile, it'll be our secret, right?”

Marianne signalled her agreement by hopping up and down. Étienne, for his part, did not seem to want to commit himself one way or the other. Terry leaned closer:

“It's on account of me wanting to learn a special song just for yer mum, see. One dat's not a bad bit nice . . .”

This seemed to satisfy Étienne, who allowed the secret to take root within.

According to the web site of the Department of Statistics and Computer Data Processing, University Institute of Technology of the Pays de l'Adour — at Pau in France — statisticians are indispendable collaborators of decision makers in any modern economy. Statisticians apply their mathematical expertise to analyze problems and propose solutions to real situations, as well as create models and digital analyses of these solutions, which are then used to produce reports accessible to the layman.

“Take de word
good
. Bugs me the way dey writes the Chiac for
bien
as
b
-
e
-
n
. Why don't dey spell it
b
-
e
-
i
-
n
? Dat's de way we says it? And dat way it'd match up wid
rein
or kidney, what sounds jus' like
ben
.”

“I suppose it's on account of
ben
spelled
b
-
e
-
n
is what's in de dictionary.”

“
Ben
spelled
b
-
e
-
n
: dat's in de dictionary?”

“Well, sort of. Nowadays dey calls it an old slang expression, but back in de old days
ben
was a real word. Comes from de Latin
bene
don't it, like in benefit, benevolent . . .”

. . .

“Anyways, even
rein
for kidney used to be written
r
-
e
-
n
. Wot makes good sense, on account of de adjective's
rénal,
isn't it?”

Francis Thibaudeau's classification of typefaces opened the way to several other systems, including, in 1954, a classification devised by Maximilien Vox, which was adopted by the Association typographique internationale (International Typographic Association) or ATYPI. The Vox classification includes 11 categories of letters: Humanistic, Garaldic, Transitional, Didonic, Mechanistic, Lineal, Incised, Script, Manual, Black Letter, and Non-Latins.

“Did ya see dis, Marianne? De potatoes is comin' up.”

Marianne was walking hand-in-hand with her dad. A pink line encircled her smile, while the lollipop she was transfering from one side of her mouth to the other occupied all her attention.

“And o'er here in front, dose are beans.”

Terry was not blind to Marianne's lack of interest.

“All along back der are de onions.”

Marianne took a bite out of her lollipop.

“Over on de udder side're de animals. Let's take a look what's o'er der.”

Marianne finished off her lollipop, and offered Terry the chewed up white stick.

“You wants to plant lollipops? Good idea. Go ahead, den, and plant 'em.”

Marianne buried the stick among the turnips, stood and, seeing that the stick was leaning to one side, bent over again to straighten it.

“Der ya go! We'll come 'round in a couple o' weeks, an' see what comes up.”

In fact, the innovation in printing we can attribute to Gutenberg was not moveable type per se — the Chinese had already invented that — but rather the lead letter melted in a mould designed to house all letters ranging from the narrow
l
to the wide
w
. This particularity opened the door to the casting of raised metal type by melting soft metal, most commonly lead. Hence the invention of hot lead printing. Hence, also, the development of fonts or typefaces, that is, collections of melted type — letter, numerals, blanks, punctuation — all in the same style and body, assiduously distributed in the fixed order of the wooden case. Once all these elements were perfected, type-founders became distinct from printers. Eventually, cases of metal type were produced and delivered on demand to printers in a hurry to provide editors with copies of a given author's work.

“And like before,
cte
became
c-t-apostrophe
in front of any word what begins with a vowel or a silent
h
.”

“So would ya say
cte homard-icitte
fer “dis here lobster” or c
t'homard icitte?
”

“
Cte homard-icitte
, I figure.”

“Well dat sounds right fine to me.”

First coincidence. The goal of the survey conducted without the slightest preparation whatsoever among students at Université de Moncton was to determine their perception of the colours of vowels, but because it wasn't properly designed, that goal was never clearly stated. The letter
a
is both the first vowel and the first letter of the alphabet. Admittedly, a weak coincidence, but a coincidence none the less.

“Dad, what does ‘whatever'll be ‘lbe' mean?”

“Will be. ‘Whatever will be will be', not ‘lbe.'”

“But you says ‘lbe.”

“Well, it maybe sounds like I'm saying ‘lbe', but really I'm sayin' ‘will be.' Whatever will be will be.

. . .

“Means wedder you likes it or not. No two ways 'bout it, it's gonna happen, wedder you likes it or not.”

Le Petit Étienne turned toward Chico:

“See, din't I?
1
‘Ats what I was meaning.”

In her novel
1953: Chronicle of a Birth Foretold,
the Acadian author France Daigle makes no mention of the classification of typefaces created that year by Maximilien Vox.

Real colours (as opposed to imaginary colours). The web site pourpre.com offers the opportunity to browse a dictionary of imaginary colours (anyone can contribute to this collection, so long as they include a brief explanation of the suggested nuance). In addition to real and imaginary colours, there are also medical colours (albugineous, purpurine), as well as some names that are not colours per se but suggest colours (no examples come to mind).

“Had no idea what I's going to do, did I. Anyhow, I puts my C.V. about, here an' der, with de province, de université, de Radio-Canada, and l'Assomption Insurance. After a wee bit, de university called. They's lookin' fer a body to write exam questions, somebody creative, or so dey tells me.”

Still on the subject of Scrabble, a pivot is a letter that doubles or triples in value twice, first in a horizontal word and then in a vertical word. A quadruple occurs when a player succeeds in placing a word so that it covers two word-counts-double squares, which quadruples the value of the word. The same principle applies for the nonuple, except that in this case the word created falls on two word-counts-triple squares and is worth nine times more.

Terry's family name was widely known in Dieppe because of Thibodeau's Auto Body Shop. Proud of their achievement, Terry's father and brothers were happy to share the Thibodeau name with the children of the family's youngest and least conformist member.

“Yer sure ya don't want to name dem Després-Thibodeau or Thibodeau-Després?”

Carmen felt that giving the children the father's name was a way to evoke a paternal counterpart to the umbilical cord.

“No. Just Thibodeau's fine. It'll bind them closer to you that way. I'm their mudder, and dat's plenty.”

Carmen's decision made Terry feel proud, though he tried not to show it.

“Are ya sure, den?”

“Totally.”

“Cross yer heart and hope to die?”

Carmen burst out laughing, but Terry still wanted an answer:

“Wot I'd like to know fer sure, is weder you'll stick up fer me when folks go 'round sayin' I don't give a hoot fer yer name.”

“Cross me heart, I'll stick up fer ya.”

“OK. Cross me heart'll do. Anyways, I never did understand de hope to die part.”

In the case of the two responders who claimed they could see no colour associated with the
a
, we cannot assume they saw the same no colour. Because whether we proceed by addition (in which adding the three primary colours produces white, and the black is treated as an absence of colour) or by subtraction (in which the addition of the three primary colours produces black and the absence of colour is white), both the all and the nothing can each be represented by black or by white. At least this is what was generally believed until two scientists undertook to discover the colour of the universe. Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry calculated the dominant colour of more than 200,000 galaxies and concluded that the colour of the whole tends toward white. According to them, if we could enclose the universe in a box, we would see a pale yellowish ivory, a shade they baptised cosmic latte, after calling for suggestions over the Internet. The two researchers declared they chose this suggested name over all the others because it had the added appeal of reflecting their own predilection for coffee.

“Well, it's pretty basic, really: ya got Barbie, Hot Wheels 'n Fisher-Price.”

“Is dat it den? Wot about Playstation an' all dem gadgets?

“I'm talkin' 'bout de real toys, dose dat you plays wid fer real. Computers an' de like, dat's a whole udder department.”

“What've ya done wid Lego, den?”

As a matter of fact, Terry had forgotten Lego.

“Good question.”

The difference between a font and a typeface has become so subtle today that the two terms are almost synonymous. At one time font used to mean the characters themselves, whereas a typeface was the complete set of characters in a font.

“Seems some folks way back 'round Molière's time, complained his French was too colloquial-like, not refined enough, if ya please.”

“How come den, dey're always sayin' “la langue de Molière” when dey're meanin' French, like ee was de mucky-muck of de French language?”

“Most likely on account of ee became famous. Could be ee was de first French fellow to become famous.”

. . .

. . .

“What else've you learned den?”

“Well, Molière was alive 'round de same time l' Acadie was startin' up. 'Tween 1600 and 1700, what we calls de seventeenth century.”

“Well, ain't dat weird. I tot we was descended from dat udder fellow, Rabelais?”

“Dat's de truth. I didn't tink of it.”

. . .

“Well, I suppose dat means I'll be goin' to the next class.”

“De whole ting'd drive me round de bend. You goes to university, you tinks you've learned a ting, den some boy asks a simple question, and ya don't know anymore. De whole ting's a ripoff, ya ask me.”