Skip to main content

star trek - Is Picard actually fluent in French?



Let me throw out a few examples and potential evidence either way:


We have heard Picard utter isolated words and phrases in French ("merde", "maman") and, in "11001001":



PICARD: "Incroyable! Vous êtes Parisienne?"
MINUET: Au fond, c'est vrai, nous sommes tous Parisiens.
PICARD: Oui, au fond, nous sommes tous Parisiens. The spirit of that city can always enchant my soul.



Alas, this only really shows a working knowledge of French (tourist-level), especially since he sort of just parrots Minuet's line back to her and then switches back to English Federation Basic.


We also have "Code of Honor", where Data refers to French as "an obscure language called French", which suggests that some people may not even know what French is. (!)


On the other hand, we certainly get the impression from "Family" that Robert and Jean-Luc Picard's parents were rather traditional.



Plus, we are led to believe that in the future, we have advanced to point that people have such good learning and retention, that if Picard decided to sit down with a book on French grammar and a dictionary in his spare time for a couple weeks, he would suddenly be fluent. And this seems like the sort of thing that Picard would consider important to do.


So, bottom line:




Related questions:




Answer



Picard speak fluent French. Not only was he born and raised in France but we see him speaking French confidently with a French accent, swearing in French under his breath and singing French songs on multiple occasions.


In the pilot episode for Star Trek: Picard, he spends a considerable amount of time speaking in French to his dog.




Je sais que tu penses que tu amènes ça dans la maison, mais c'est hors du question! Ne fais pas semblant de ne pas parler Français. Nous avons pratiqué.


STP: Remembrance




In TNG, the longest instance of Picard speaking (what appears to be fluent) French is from TNG: 11001001



MINUET: Aren’t you going to introduce me?


RIKER: Captain Picard, this is Minuet. Minuet, Captain Jean-Luc Picard.


MINUET: Enchantée. Comme c’est merveilleux de vous voir ici.


PICARD: Incroyable ! Vous êtes Parisienne ?



MINUET: Au fond, c’est vrai, nous sommes tous Parisiens.


PICARD: Oui, au fond, nous sommes tous Parisiens. The spirit of that city can always enchant my soul.



Notably, he recognises her accent as being "Parisian" rather than just "French" which suggests a reasonable degree of experience of French regional accents, presumably as a result of his having been born and raised in Labarre, France.



He uses a little bit of French in TNG: Elementary, Dear Data


Picard says


(and again in TNG: The Last Outpost).



In TNG: Chain of Command, Part II he states that his family would sing songs in French each week.




PICARD: Sur le pont d’Avignon, on y danse, on y danse.


MADRED: Wake up. Where were you?


PICARD: At home. Sunday dinner. We would all sing afterward.




He sings Frère Jacques in TNG: Disaster



PICARD: I’m afraid I don’t know that one. I know. Frère Jacques. That’s a song I used to sing when I was at school. Patterson, do you know that one? Good. It goes like this. “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?”


ALL: Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines, ding ding dong, ding ding dong.



PICARD: Very good. Now, keep singing.


ALL: Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, dormez-vous? Dormez-vous? Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines. Ding ding dong, ding ding dong. Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, dormez-vous? Dormez-vous? Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines. Ding ding dong, ding ding dong. Frère Jacques, frère Jacques…




He sings Auprès de ma blonde with his brother in TNG: Family



PICARD(S): Auprès de ma blonde, qu’il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon… Dum, dum, dum…




Moving down the canon scale, in the EU novel A Time to be Born, Picard’s mother carries on a conversation in French with a teenaged Jean-Luc at home. It’s not clear what language he’s speaking since the conversation is translated for the reader, but he definitely understands her.




“Here, Jean-Luc, eat your lunch,” said a feminine voice speaking French.
He whirled around to see his mother carrying a tray of food into the room; she set it on his desk and smiled at him. He glared at the wall where the picture window had been in the cabin, because he assumed they were watching him. “I know that’s not my mother.”



The novel What Lay Beyond confidently states that French is his mother tongue:



“May I help you, Captain Picard?”


Startled, the captain looked at the interface and saw its expression had not changed. The words were in French, his native tongue.


“Yes, you may,” he said in the same language. “How do I disengage the gateways?”




The novelisation for Generations states that his conversation with his wife and children in the Nexus is in French (with the proviso that this is a weird alternate dimension where weird things happen).



“Go on....” A soft voice at his elbow took him aback. He whirled, and saw his gentle captor—golden-haired, straight, slender—smiling at him with the same indulgent love in her green eyes.


He had never met her; yet he knew that this beautiful creature was Elise, his wife of the past sixteen years. And she had spoken to him in French.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...
Post a Comment
Read more

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.
Post a Comment
Read more

star wars - What "exactly" happens when someone turns to the Dark Side?

When I saw the original Star Wars saga as a kid, the concept of the Dark Side imprinted in me was quite simple. You did a bad thing, so you're a bad person so you go to the Dark Side and keep doing bad things. Now, obviously this doesn't hold true in reality. In my mind it is perfectly reasonable for Luke to kill the Emperor and Vader and then just flee the Death Star and rejoin the Alliance. After all they are at war, those are enemy officers that have captured him and are taunting him by threatening with death of all loved ones and the whole operation was intended to kill the Emperor anyway. The same would hold true for Anakin. He could have killed Mace Windu to save the Chancellor and Padme but that doesn't mean he's going to then go mad and kill all Jedis including children. It doesn't add up from a merely psychological point of view. He had a set of objectives and that made him want to keep the Chancellor alive (quite valid by the way, Mace Windu is quite clums...
Post a Comment
Read more

star trek - Warning regarding forward saucer section in Nemesis?

In Star Trek: Nemesis , just before the Enterprise rams into the Scimitar, Picard sends a text message from his captain's chair arm pad to Troi — who is manning the helm in lieu of the crewman who was just blown out through what was once the view screen — indicating that she should put full impulse on standby. (Literally, if you watch the scene closely, Troi's console prefaces the order with "TXT MSG" !) My question is: Did Picard also somehow warn crew members in the forward saucer section about what was about to happen? The ramming of the Scimitar was a heat of the moment decision. Considering that he also resorted to calling the auto-destruct sequence shortly after (which ended up being offline), he probably was of the mindset that any losses would be acceptable in order to hault Shinzon's march to Earth. Still, I'm curious. Answer The original script indicates that he called for the crew to " brace for impact ". Whether that call (or the comma...
Post a Comment
Read more