Kilo Lingo

French song

Alouette

The Lark

The choir opens every couplet with the refrain and sings each "Je te plumerai..." line twice - we print each line once; the words are the ones you will hear.

Lyrics

Refrain

Alouette, alouette,

Alouette, .

Couplet 1

,

, ,

Alouette, !

Couplet 2

,

, ,

, ,

Alouette, !

Couplet 3

,

, ,

, ,

, ,

Alouette, !

Couplet 4

,

, ,

, ,

, ,

, ,

Alouette, !

Couplet 5

,

, ,

, ,

, ,

, ,

, ,

Alouette, !

Couplet 6

,

, ,

, ,

, ,

, ,

, ,

, ,

Alouette, !

New words in this song

Comprehension drill

3 questions on what you just read. Get one wrong and the story will show you where it says otherwise.

Anonymous French-Canadian folk song, first attested in print in an 1879 Montreal student songbook. Transcribed from Chants de France (Boston, 1922), which credits both words and music as author unknown. Source text. Translation ours.

One sentence frame, one new word per verse, and each verse repeats everything that came before, newest first. That structure is why Alouette has survived since at least 1879: it is a memory game disguised as a song, and by the last verse you have recited the bird's anatomy six times without noticing you were drilling.

The grammatical gift is - "I will pluck you". That final -ai is the future tense, and this song will plant it deeper than any conjugation table, because you sing it about thirty times.

A warning about the subject matter, in case the jaunty tune misled you: the singer is cheerfully itemising which parts of a lark they intend to de-feather. French Canada sang it while plucking birds for the pot. Folk songs are like this - see also the English one about the cradle falling out of the tree.