Talk:jinx

Hello, in french
for somebody or something who brings you "la malchance", apart from the oldish "porte-malheur" (bad-luck bearer) , we have now :

-" guigne, guignon" ( a kind of little sour pale-red cherry), or even simply "cerise" (cherrry) , as in : "Ce trouillard m'a collé la guigne" ("that funky boy stuck me the cherry = gave me the jinx"). Has been used a lot in Eugène Labiche, Georges Feydeau & Georges Courteline. Title of a well-known book by Eugène Boudard ( whose works are quoted in WP:fr as "one of the best of french post-war literature" ) : "La Cerise" (1963). Still in use in well-bred circles.

-"porte-poisse" : for ex. "Cette cravate verte est un porte-poisse" ("that green tie is a stickypitch bearer).

-"jonas" has been brought to us by US comics in the '50 (I remember it was sketched as a little man clad in black, kind of clergyman with a bowler-hat...).Ex. : "Ce jonas m'a mis dans la merde" ("that jonah made me fall into a shit*-bucket").

-une "scoumoune" (often pronounced "shcoumoune") is even more dangerous : "Barrez-vous, voilà la scoumoune !" ("Scram, here's the deadly jinx"). From peri-mediterranean vocabulary, has invaded whole francophony, mainly thanks to the José Giovanni's 1972 movie with our then sex-symbols JP Belmondo & Claudia Cardinale : Bébel, nicknamed "La Scoumoune", killed all of his foes as if they were doomed...

And anyway if you want to remain polite, you can use a periphrase : "I wish you the Cambronne's word", you'll look deliciously obsolete.
 * "shit" : in french, though, we use to wish luck to friends before an exam. or any difficult task by saying "I wish you a big heap of shit", or simply by saying sternly while shaking hands "Et...Merde !". Seems quite gross, but retraces back to the times when you could judge if a play was successfull by the piles of dung the coaches horses left in front of the theater...

T.y. (and if somebody remembers that little black jonas, may he tell me in which comic it was ?) Arapaima 15:36, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This looks like hello in English to me. Mglovesfun (talk) 15:37, 27 April 2010 (UTC)