A savoir comment

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on October 3, 2014 at 12:50pm

A cracker of a song!

I wouldn't be surprised if it could mean  different things in different contexts.Here I might translate it as "How to know or be able to?" or "it is a question of..".

Maybe "How on earth...?"

A coups de pourquoi is different  and the "a " can just be translated as "with"  ,"by" or similar.

You can try to find online translations  but for a song  they can be very loose.

Of course "a savoir" doesn't have an exact or even really close parallel in English(you have to find an alternative expression).

When you have such a "small" word/phrase  it seems to kind of "melt into"  the surrounding words.

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Permalink Reply by Hermano Lustosa on October 3, 2014 at 1:50pm

Thank you very much for your reply. 

I think I understood now what it means, but I still don't know what the letter A is. Is it the preposition "À"? Or in french the letter A by itself means something? I know the verb Avoir can be conjugate Il/Elle a, but I don't think that's the case.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on October 3, 2014 at 2:44pm

Yes it is a preposition here.It normally is spelt  "à"  rather than "a"  but because it is capitalized in both cases  the accent is not normally written.

In the first case "à"  is followed by "savoir" ( a verb , the infinitive actually)  and in the second case by "coups de pourquoi" ( a noun  or a phrase standing in for  a "thing" )

You are right that  the "a" in "il/elle a " is completely different and there is no accent either.

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Permalink Reply by Grégory on October 7, 2014 at 5:09am

To forget the time / Of the misunderstandings / And the time lost / (à) Knowing how 

To forget those hours / Which sometimes killed / By "whys" blows  / The heart of the happiness

Perdre du temps à attendre = To lose time _ waiting 

Tuer à coups de hache = To kill by hammer blows ( > to kill by "whys blows")

 

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on October 7, 2014 at 11:10am

@ Grégory

Perdre du temps à attendre = To lose time _ waiting 

Oh yes I didn't see that  "Et le temps perdu à savoir comment"  went together .

thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Hermano Lustosa on October 7, 2014 at 1:53pm

Thank you for the replies. 

Well, I took a look at google translate, and these are the possible translations for savoir:

know; see (in a sense of understanding, "e.g. I see your point"); realize; be aware; figure out; sort out.

So, I think that we could translate:

Et le temps perdu à savoir comment

As:

The time wasted in "figuring out" how.

It makes more sense to me that he's talking about the time it took them to learn or discover how to forget about the hours that killed the heart of happiness by using "blows of why".

I may be wrong, but I never think about the verb to know as a synonymous for discovering or figuring something out. But it could be the case in french. Savior also could mean: to get to know, or to learn or to figure out something.

Thanks again.

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on October 7, 2014 at 3:09pm

Don't forget these are lyrics for a song.They don't have to be  everyday language  -so long as they get across a meaning.

We are not the first to have asked the question.

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1811456

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Permalink Reply by Grégory on October 7, 2014 at 4:55pm

Yes, here 'savoir' means something between to wonder, to search and to understand. I think he chose 'savoir' to maintain the rhythm : five syllables for each verse.

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