My late friend Allan, who had French friends, used to love to say “Allons-y, Alonso!” I was delighted to hear it used in Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (you can see the clip here), and Godard, a magpie for colloquial speech, used similar expressions such as “Tu parles, Charles!” and “je fonce, Alphonse!” (both from Breathless). I decided to google to find out if there was a comprehensive list, and I see I’m not the only curious searcher; michelmanu, under the heading Relax, Max, said:
Je trouve plutôt amusantes ces expressions bâties sur des assonances :
Tu l’as dit, bouffi ;
Tu parles, Charles ;
Cool, Raoul ;
C’est parti, mon kiki ;Mais je peine à me souvenir d’autres ; en connaissez-vous?
Manu
Responses included À l’aise, Blaise; T’as raison, Gaston !; Tu m’étonnes, Yvonne !; Ça glisse, Alice !, and others. Like Manu, I enjoy this form of wordplay, and am curious if anyone knows anything about its history and geographical spread. Do people still use these bits of linguistic flotsam (like “cool” in English), or are they redolent of a previous generation (like “groovy”)?
I’m not sure about the French version specifically, but overall it sounds like the kind of thing that could easily be (semi-)independently (re)invented many times. Если ты Силантий, то с моей лошади слезантий!
In particular, it immediately reminds me of this xkcd (which is of course calling out a previous version in a different genre).
[EDIT: I guess one significant point shared by the French version and the xkcd version, and not by most other variants I’ve heard of (including the Russian one I quoted), is that they’re uplifting (no pun intended) – the obvious context this kind of rhyming would come up in is mocking, which doesn’t seem to be the case this time.]
[EDIT 2: also, now that I think about it, the phonology of French would be particularly convenient for this – final stress everywhere, so you only need one syllable to rhyme, and there’s a lot of reuse of the same syllables in different spellings. In most other languages you’d commonly run into traps like the aforementioned Russian case.]
Finito, Benito!
And slightly different, but I knew someone who’d say “What’s the issue, Mogadishu?” when her toddler was acting up.
I love it!
See ya later, alligator!
Afterwhile, crocodile!
Okey dokey artichokey
Easy peasy lemon squeezy
Paul Simon, in his sardonic lyrics for Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, offered a few:
You just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Ooh, slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
You just listen to me
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Шпрехен зи дейч, Иван Андрейч.
I’ve never encountered any such thing in French, but German goes for complex etymological figures: I’ve read Alles klärchen? Wunderbärchen! and repeatedly heard So-der mit Himbeer.
I hope I’ll find time to explain them tomorrow.
Awesome.
Шпрехен зи дейч, Иван Андрейч.
Now that’s weird: Google Translate gives “Sprechen zi deutsch, Ivan Andreich.” I was asking for English. Presumably it’s such a well-known fixed phrase, GT has it down pat(?)
Guay de Paraguay, me piro, vampiro!!
In fact I’ve just realized I’ve heard one several times today in Polish: Spoko loko!
The examples in the linked post are unremarkable, but do show that such things exist en español.
https://rimascortas.net/rimas-con-nombres/
Aside from “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” as cuchuflete mentioned, there’s “That’s/It’s the
truth, Ruth!” in English, (though maybe “That’s
a fact, Jack!” came first), which is a Big Bopper
song, also used in Do The Right Thing. A friend
used to always come up with nonce variations
like “It’s no fable, Mabel!” or “It’s legit, Schmidt!”
Mañana, iguana! (Spanish words, but used along other English reptilian valedictions.)
Plus, there was the radio DJ (played by Samuel Jackson) on Do the Right Thing, whose signature phrase was “…and that’s the truth, Ruth!”
(ed.: Jinx!)
No way, José!
“See you later, alligator” first occurs in the song, popularized by Bill Haley but written and recorded by Bobby Charles a little earlier. I haven’t found any earlier occurrence of the phrase, and nor has Green’s Dictionary of Slang. Bobby Charles was Cajun and grew up listening to Cajun music. Maybe it was ultimately inspired by the French wordplay?
Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?
There’s also “au contraire, mon frère,” but I think that’s strictly franglais.
Worth mentioning: Boris Vian translated his splendid song “Va t’faire cuire un œuf, man” as “Go and walk a plank, Frank,” which also contains the memorable line “Go and boil your head, Ted.”
In the 1980 Egyptian movie El-Batneyya, Nadia el-Gindi played the saucy hostess of a hashish parlor whose catch phrase was “Salam, ya bitingan!” — Hello, eggplant! It seemed to be something like Texas Guinan’s “Hello, suckers!”
Eggplants seem to be considered odd in Egypt. When somebody contradicts himself in speech, somebody else is likely to say “Adi zaman el-bitingan,” “Here comes eggplant season.”
Now that’s weird: Google Translate gives “Sprechen zi deutsch, Ivan Andreich.” I was asking for English. Presumably it’s such a well-known fixed phrase, GT has it down pat(?)
The first part is Sprechen Sie Deutsch? (i.e. the German for “Do you speak German?”) transliterated into Russian; the second part is a shortened form of “Ivan Andreyevich”. Both are slightly misspelled (at least compared to how I would have spelled them out of context) to fit the rhyme, and I’m mildly surprised that GT had actually translated the result as recognizably as it did.
Paul Simon, in his sardonic lyrics for Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover
…which is of course the song that the xkcd comic I linked above was ripping off.
Unrelatedly(ish), now that I think about it, Hermes Conrad’s catchphrases (Sweet manatee of Galilee!) are not too far off the same general concept.
Te conozco bacalao, aunque vengas disfrazao…
https://youtu.be/V3CykMsgDd0
–Касым!
–А?
–Пойдём поссым!
–А, вот ты где! Тебя ищет Хаким.
–Какой Хаким?
–Хаким, вот с таким! (accompanied with the appropriate gesture)
Happy, Pappy?
I dont know about history or geographical spread, but, while understandable, these are definitely « last generation » to my 50y.o. years.
that said, i can’t resist two more:
– « Dans le cul, Lulu » (pardon my French, as it where; to be used to describe a losing situation)
– « en voiture, Simone » (i.e : let’s go – although there’s no rhyme in this one)
Let me mention “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House”, recorded by Cab Calloway in 1948.
Have a banana, Hannah
Try the salami, Tommy
Get with the gravy, Davy
Everybody eats when they come to my house
Try a tomato, Plato
Here’s cacciatore, Dory
Taste of bologna, Tony
Everybody eats when they come to my house
There’s a lot more of it, but you get the idea.
Mom’s line, uttered on occasion as a compliment, “You’re a poet and don’t know it.”
Not exactly the pattern, but close: Quand je pense à Fernande
the obvious context this kind of rhyming would come up in is mocking
“— Очень мне нравится, что фамилия у меня не дразнительная. Не то что, например, Иванов или там Петров.
Дядя Фёдор спрашивает:
— Чем это они дразнительные?
— А тем, что всегда можно говорить: «Иванов без штанов, Петров без дров». А про Матроскина ничего такого не скажешь.”
(Prostokvashino, book 1, chapter 2)
[Approximate (GT-based) translation, without trying to preserve the rhymes…
“– I really like that my surname is not teasing. Not like, for example, Ivanov or, say, Petrov.
Uncle Fyodor asks:
– Why are they teasing?
– It’s because you can always say: “Ivanov without pants, Petrov without firewood.” But you can’t say anything like that about Matroskin.”]
Мы с Тамарой
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2QfwkBxTU8
I dont know about history or geographical spread, but, while understandable, these are definitely « last generation » to my 50y.o. years.
Thanks, that’s exactly what I wanted to know!
Иванов без штанов, Петров без дров
“Федот, да не тот” is an actual thing.
Geez Louise, in like Flynn, even Stevens
Slightly different are Silly Billy, Plain Jane, and Gloomy Gus
Мели, Емеля, твоя неделя
Mom’s line, uttered on occasion as a compliment, “You’re a poet and don’t know it.”
My mom added: “Your feet show it. They’re Longfellows.”
In a recent tv show called “The Outlaws”, starring Stephen Merchant and Christopher Walken, Walken indulged in a few constructions like these. The most memorable for me was “What’s the agenda, Brenda?” I’m making an effort to incorporate this into my own usage.
None of these are quite the same thing, but I still recall from high school (51-55 years ago):
1. Already mentioned in slightly different versions: “He’s a poet, but he don’t know it. His feet are Longfellows.”
2. “There’s a fungus among us.” (or “amungus”? – hard G)
3. An expression for “tough shit” was “T. S., Eliot.” No rhyme, but it assigns an appropriate fake name to the addressee.
Humongous perhaps?
I’m reading Prishvin’s Кащеева цепь (1924), and I just got to “Затвердил Якова, одного про всякого” — a nice companion to the “Федот, да не тот” D.O. cited above.
“What’s Your Story Morning Glory”
(or: What’s the Story Morning Glory)
Gero arte Bonaparte!
Agur Ben Hur!
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement’s.
(etc)
“Федот, да не тот”
Енот, да не тот
“Tiguidou, mon minou”
There’s a fungus among us.”
“— Kill it before it spreads.”
In the days before the Internet made it easy to look up all sorts of obscure facts, my father sometimes mentioned the 1958 novelty song “There Was a Fungus Among Us” and his inability to remember all the lyrics of the opening. He knew, “fungus among us” and “static in the attic,” but, “There was a rumble in the jungle,” was blocked by the association of the name “Rumble in the Jungle” with the 1974 Ali-Foreman title fight in Zaire. The song also uses a number of common rhymes, which makes me wonder whether “rumble in the jungle” was a preexisting phrase, or whether it was originated by the song.
You’d never know it,
But buddy, I’m a kind of poet…
From One for My Baby (and One More for the Road), lyrics by Johnny Mercer (and music by Harold Arlen).
Coincidentally or otherwise, the Jethro Tull song “Bungle in the Jungle” (which rhymes exactly) was per wikipedia released the same month (Oct. ’74) as the Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” (which rhymes only approximately) took place. But the completion of the recording of “Bungle” occurred the prior February and the lyrics may have been written some time before that. I don’t know how many months in advance the fight was first announced and whether or not that nickname was already attached to it from the beginning of the promotional build-up.
My grandmother used to say, in moments of stress, “Ach gott, farsicht mein kompot!”, which never made any sense to me, but it rhymes. Perhaps Yiddish speakers here may recognize this phrase, or know of similar ones
¿Me entiendes Méndez, o te explico Federico?
From a Telegram channel:
Прощай немытая Россия!
Сын Жириновского – Гарсия!