French Speakers Live in a Surreal World Now Thanks to Chat GPT

[GreatGazoo]

English tech terms like "Chat GPT" get adopted into other languages without translation but phonetically Chat GPT sounds exactly like you are saying "chat j'ai pété" which means "Cat, I farted."

So French speakers hear newscasts saying things like:

"White collar workers are increasingly worried about being replaced by cat I farted."

"Lawyer caught using cat I farted."

"Schools making new rules due to cat I farted."

[AloeVera]

1. Thanks for the much-needed laugh.

[FM123]

2. Oh mon dieu!

[BlueSpot]

3. I expected it to be funny, but

That definitely exceeded expectations. Cat, I farted.

OTOH, I guess if the French person saying or hearing it doesn't also speak English, it doesn't really matter. Otherwise the news readers would be cracking up.

[GreatGazoo]

4. They are saying it deadpan which makes it even funnier

French-speaking cats must have very mixed feelings about this.

[Igel]

5. French "chat" has no final [ t ].

It does in "chat PT".

Rather like, "I did as my teacher wanted" and "I dicked as my teacher wanted."

ou-o-a ou o oi. Oops, "Consonants count for something."

#2. (Not that crap is involved.) A number of French acronyms have "PT" ... And only the occasional benighted "I'll be hitting puberty soon/hit it last week" kid, mostly XY, thinks it means "farted."

There's a socialist workers party, "The Farteds"--PT, partie de travailleurs. I guess DU farts in socialists' general direction? Gotta hurt their polling. "Hey, we are allied with BS. We're the PT--"the Farteds."

Really. But, no, really?

You Seamus. Oh ... Who knew that "Seamus" was out to shame us?

I get puns. I heart puns. I see a billboard, every day I commute from work (I get to work before Don does, so maybe that lawyer likes Don ... Ahem ... But my dialect likes open-o and says Don =/= Dawn). Still, "I love Dick" when the lawyer's surname is "Dick" tends to be an attraction getter. (Does Attorney Dick love dick? ... Wood dent, no. Yet it's really a play on slang/hypocoristic, and I don't suffer slangs of outrageous fortune, well ....)

Shoo, cabbages! But some are amusing. But if I have a Muse to go a-musing with, that's not a Muse I want to mine, nor, um, my pick.

Puns good. Obvious screwing around to make a puerile point (often pueri have points, ahem) ... Not my stile, and I won't be tolled by the mere attempt to play upon words ... They're not conscious and since they can't give permission ....

Still, punts aren't not how we understand fluent speech.

Czech out syntagms. Verbal collocations. (Two utterly non-modern, geographically distinct but conceptually similar ideas, at least in part. LLMs sittin', a door, them.)