Reminders of Corsica in Nice

[Corsaire]

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

...
One thing I've noticed over the years in my travel to France is, you can be asking someone in France about a multi sylable word and be one octave off in one sylable of your pronunciation, and it's like you're speaking gibberish to them. They can't relate the very close pronunciation to the exact pronunciation ( Sorry Bigdan and Corsaire, but that's the way it's always seemed to me.).
...

Hey Scruffy!

Hope you are having a great time over there!

As for the incapacity of French people to recognize something close to the exact local pronunciation, you talk to Bigdan about that! We do not have this problem in Québec.

Incidentally, I had the exact same thing happened to me in... Barcelona!
Years ago, I traveled throughout Portugal, Spain and France and when a drove from Madrid to Barcelona, I just couldn’t get to the inner city. I kept driving around Barcelona, unable to get in (construction, detours). At some point, I decided to stop by a gas station that must have been less than a km from the city. A man was standing outside, so I came out of the car and asked him for the direction to Barcelona in my best Spanish (which is quite rudimentary, but my pronunciation is not that bad). I kept repeating Barcelona, but the man just kept scratching his head. I must have pronounced Barcelona in 5 or 6 different ways, including French, English and Spanish, plus some variations in between. This was not working, so I returned to the car, pulled out a map and pointed the city. The guy immediately gave me a big grin and said: “Ooahhh! Bearrrztholownoea!” (some kind of weird pronunciation unlike even Catalan). I laughed so hard the guy must have thought I was crazy. I mean, there I was, obviously a lost tourist, trying to find one of the most beautiful city in the world which was less than 1 km away and that guy could not understand where I was trying to get to.

[FanDeAliFee]

Originally Posted by Criss_pl

You don't even have to translate it, in French it's the same possible meaning ("Avoir des relations sexuelles avec une personne.").

That is what I mean. It gets worse every minute!

Originally Posted by Criss_pl

Oh, Men, you are crazy

True. But at least I remembered to include a Polish version of Pigalle for our Institubes friend Rebecca Zlotowski!

Originally Posted by Bigdan

Stop chasing after young frenchs girls !!

Yes, leave some for the rest of us to chase after!

[Fenris]

Have fun Scruffy. I have been to Nice two times and i love this city.

At the moment i'm thinking about going there again for Jenifer's concert in April, but i doubt i'm going to make it this time.
A few pics of my latest stay in October 2010:

https://picasaweb.google.com/Fenris6...eat=directlink

[Bigdan]

We still don't know the answer to the thrilling enigma !!

Does they know Alizée and Mylène, yes or no??

[Scruffydog777]

This morning I took a ride up to Digne-Les-Bains, a place about 100 miles from here that took 3 hours up and 3 hours back. I got back to the hotel about 3 pm. Unfortunately the first girl who spoke English well was not there, but the second girl was. So I showed her a video from Alizee singing L'Alize en concert and it's funny the first word out of her mouth was Enfoires, then she said Alizee, then I showed her a clip of one of Mylene's performances and right away she recognized her.

The problem being she spoke very little English. I tried asking her questions like how long has she been a fan and was she a big fan and I wanted to see if she could name any of her albums, but it was a complete exercise in futility. Hopefully tomorrow I'll see the other girl and we will have a good conversation.

Edit:

Well I'm finding more things that remind me of Alizee, not only when I see them as with this,



But when I hear them too. They're having a big carnival here in Nice this weekend. They have a section of the city walled off and you have to pay 10 euros to get in. I went to one of the shows last night. It was okay, but seems to be mainly geared towards kids ( I'm still picking that spray string out of my hair.).

After coming back from Dignes this morning, after stopping back at the hotel, I decided to go to a Virgin Megastore I spotted on my way back. On my way over, I could hear the music from another show the carnival was putting on.

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FodKf3r-bE8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Turned out to be one of the songs they played during this years Enfoires. So I went over to the fence they have set up, walling in the festival and found a gap to record some of the performance. The audio on my digital camera isn't that good, but I think you can make out what they're singing.

Now I know there has been a lot of comments of a certain nature already. I can imagine what I'm going to hear when people find out I was peering in through a fence to see a little girl dancing on top of a giant ball.

Anywho, I stopped at the VRS to see what they had and they had one copy of Alizee's Psych album for 10 euros, and a copy of her Gourmandises album for 22 euros. I asked one of the guys in there if they had any stores in town that sold older albums and he directed me to a certain street several blocks away. I'll check it out tomorrow when I get back from Monaco.

I'm hoping to score another find like the large vinyl record I got of her remixes in Strasbourg last year.

[FanDeAliFee]

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

There were two young woman working at the hotel I'm staying at who look to be in their mid, maybe early 20s. I thought to ask them if they had ever heard of Alizee. They said no, which is kind of understandable considering their age. Then I thought to ask them if they had ever heard of Mylene Farmer and they said no. I was stunned. How could they have not heard of the most successful female singer in French history?

This is very interesting research, so I thought I would do some homework on this type of celebrity inquiry and came up with the following clippings -

The Wikipedia article titled Q Score writes that:

The Q Score is a measurement of the familiarity and appeal of a brand, company, celebrity, or television show used in the United States. Other popular synonyms include Q rating, Q factor, or simply Q... TVQ and Cable Q Scores are calculated for all regularly scheduled broadcast and cable shows... Other Q Scores are calculated to order for clients who pay... Performer Q rates living celebrities,,, Cartoon Q rates cartoon characters, video games, toys and similar products.

One can query whether or not a Q score has been measured for an entity by using the engine here.

For example, scores exist (Cartoon Q) for
Tinkerbell Popeye Snoopy and Dilbert.

They also exist (Performer Q) for
Madonna Cher Shakira
but not for
Mathieu Piaf Chevalier
on account of audience nationality (US).

But death is not a barrier, because there even is a Dead Q!

The page titled Target consumer insights adds that

Each Q Scores category provides a wide variety of demographics for pinpointing target consumer appeal across age, gender, household income, market size, region, race, ethnicity, presence of children and other key characteristics...

Page 258 of the book Advertising Promotion, and Other Aspects of Integrated Marketing Communications, Cengage Learning (2008), and another source here report that Q score is simply 100 times the fraction of the human survey group who are familiar with the subject who consider it among their favorites in its category. Note that this implies that even a largely unknown entity can have a huge Q score.

CNN wrote in 2000 that

Q-Scores are derived from a representative mail-in survey of 1,200 Americans living in the continental United States. The names are taken from Marketing Evaluations database, a polling company that has tracked celebrity recognition for 36 years. The score is a measurement used by advertisers to evaluate the popularity held by potential spokespeople or characters.

and enumerated some sample Q scores, including the following:

56 Albert Einstein
44 Mickey Mouse
33 Elvis Presley
13 Batman
10 Howard Stern
9 Carmen Electra
7 Count Chocula

The 2008 source here writes that

The actor with the highest current Q score? ...William Petersen... After him comes... Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington and Johnny Depp... Among women, who generally Q about 10 points lower, Carol Burnett... still rates among this country's most loved, along with Mariska Hargitay, Reba McEntire and, finally, Julia Roberts.

The source here writes that:

[Whoopi] Goldberg... has a Q score of 32, a number so high that among 1,750 celebrities and media personalities ranked...she sat comfortably in the Top 50... The average Q score is 17...

At the top of the list was Tom Hanks, with a Q score of 57 out of a possible 100, and nearer the bottom, Martha Stewart, with a Q score of 10...

In 2008, The New York Times wrote that

Last summer, Madonna’s positive Q score, a measure of familiarity and appeal, was 13, compared with an average positive score of 17 for most performers, and her negative rating (representing people who were turned off by her) was 39. That reveals a slight decrease in her popularity since 2000, when her positive rating was 14.

Alizee, dear - that's why Bigdan and I collaborated to place you on a mock film poster with Tom Hanks, even as you took the public relations faux pas of doing a magazine cover posing as Madonna!

The source here writes that:

Each [Q] score is derived from a set of numbers that represents the celebrity's overall familiarity and appeal.

The familiarity quotient is fairly straightforward: It measures how many people are familiar with the celebrity.

The appeal factor is assessed through four criteria: whether the personalities are among the consumer's top-10 favorite celebrities, whether their appeal is very good, good, or fair/poor...

Depending on the category, Marketing Evaluations conducts field research between one and four times per year with 1,800 to 4,500 participants.

Research usually takes the form of self-completed questionnaires or interviews.

Seemingly the only requirement of subjects is that they be over the age of six... Client requests are responsible
for generating 90 percent of the names on the questionnaire...

A decade ago, in 1990... Bill Cosby garnered a Q Score of 52. Compare that to Cooper's 44, Ford's 41, and Hanks's
40.

The source here writes that:

...The Q Scores Company, has just released its January/February 2010 Performer Q study, which asked a
representative sample of 1,800 children, teens, and adults to rate the familiarity and appeal of personalities...

Rank
...Familiarity %
......Q Score
.........Performer
1. 88 50 Tom Hanks
2. 82 50 Morgan Freeman
3. 42 50 Pauley Perrette
4. 84 48 Robin Williams
5. 85 46 Clint Eastwood
6. 57 45 Mike Rowe
7. 90 44 Will Smith
8. 91 43 Johnny Depp
9. 91 43 Bill Cosby
10.83 43 Harrison Ford

The 2008 source here writes that:

[Britney] Spears remains among the most-recognized celebrities, along with Johnny Depp and Will Smith, according to Marketing Evaluations, the company that developed the "Q Score." But she is not well-liked. Her negative Q Score is at 66 -- only Federline has a lower one among all celebrities -- meaning two-thirds of people who know who she is give her a "fair" or "poor" rating. The average for female performers is 30.

The source here writes that:

...the likability factor of celebrities who struggled with some perception problems in life... increased greatly after their deaths..
.
Presley's positive Q-score was at 25 before his death, and is at 34 in the company's most recent polling. (His negative Q-score was 34 before his death, but has fallen to 17 in the most recent polling.) Similarly, Johnny Cash's positive score is at 33, up from 19 prior to his death...

Even celebrities who are beloved during their lives see their positive scores increase in death... Johnny Carson's score, for instance, is at 32 -- up from 26 before he died.

Application of Q Scores is illustrated by the following Disney brief on Disney Fairies, which writes in part:that

Tinker Bell, the beloved pixie made famous by Walt Disney's Peter Pan, invites you to discover her world through one of the newest franchises at The Walt Disney Company, Disney Fairies...

Since its launch in 2005, the Disney Fairies franchise has evolved into a global phenomenon generating $1.3 Billion in worldwide retail sales...

Key Attributes:
Friendship, Individual talent, Nature, Mystical, Magic

Reach:

* Unaided Top 10 Favorite with Girls 9-11
* 98% awareness with Moms of Kids 2-5 [1]
* 98% awareness with Girls 9-11
* 85% awareness with Girls 6-8

...[1] Source: Marketing Evaluations,
Cartoon Q, Fall 2008

I wonder if France has the equivalent of the Q Score. Does Alizee have a Guide Michelin rating? (The late Serge Gainsbourg once did say he was born under a "lucky" star - a yellow one!)

French intellectuals LOVE quantitative analysis, but perhaps the ability to make money with such a tool is a powerful disincentive!

[C-4]

Dave,
I hope you have a terrific time in France and Spain.
This week is the Paris-Nice bicycle race going on. It ends on Sunday, I believe, so I understand why they are having a festival in Nice.
Enjoy it all.
Stephen

[Scruffydog777]

Getting back to the pronunciation thing. I've spent 20 years away from Boston and many people have told me I don't have that noticable an accent any more. It's most noticable with the dropped r's as in the old saying I pahked my cah in Hahvad Yahd. But like I say it's not that bad. But with the name Alizee, I've heard it pronounced hundreds of times by different French people and the way I thought it should be pronounced is Al-e-zay and the other day, when I talked to the young woman (who immediately recognized Alizee when I showed her the video) about her without much success, at the end I asked her to say her name again and she said it slow and deliberate..........Al...........e...........zay. That's why I can't figure out why so many people never recognize the name. They always seem to understand I'm talking about a singer which would narrow the field down quite a bit but I guess I'll never know.

Anywho I had no luck with the Corsican store. They were again closed on monday. This morning before I left for the airport, I went to the record store the other store had refered me to and all they sold was sheet music. I stopped at 3 other stores I had noticed along the way, Fnac, Disc king and one other one and they still hadn't opened as of 9:30. So I struck out all the way around.

I got one last picture of something that reminded me of Alizee yesterday. I happened to be rounding a corner with my camera in my hand when I saw a bumper sticker (window sticker in this case) on a car that was driving off, that I thought said Corsican fairy is a 10. Well once I got it back to my rome an enlarged it I realized it only said Corsica ferries 10.

[FanDeAliFee]

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

...I've spent 20 years away from Boston and many people have told me I don't have that noticable an accent any more. It's most noticable with the dropped r's as in the old saying I pahked my cah in Hahvad Yahd.

As a New York City native who spent a decade in metro Boston - err, I mean BAHsten - I agree with those who say Scruffy's accent is muted - although I've only heard him speak when he was on French TV! When I arrived in Boston, I surprised people when I told them I was from NYC - and had since labored under the notion it was gone for good. But I'll be damned if it hasn't returned in full fury - oddly enough, after two decades in the Deep South!

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

...with the name Alizee, I've heard it pronounced hundreds of times by different French people and the way I thought it should be pronounced is Al-e-zay... and the other day, when I talked to the young woman (who immediately recognized Alizee... I asked her to say her name again and she said it slow and deliberate..........Al...........e...........zay.

In the sound clip here, Alizée sings her name as part of the phrase

d’Alizée / Sont

which I would render using my informal phonetic English as ah-leeZAY.
And goodness knows, that wasn't the only time Alizée - or someone else - pronounced her name in one of her songs! This includes a tricky "hidden" form like Idéaliser - ironically pronounced Edie-Alizée! I say ironically, because in Grand Central Alizée MISpronounces the English name Edie ("EE-dee") as an English speaker would say Eddy (EH-dee)!

In some TV reports from Alizée's VERY early career, I remember a VERY few TV folks having trouble with her name. Was it the M6 awards, maybe an Italian interviewer and the voice-over in the UK's Passengers(?) profile. In the last case, I recall that the guy moved the accent to the middle syllable.

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

... I saw a bumper sticker (window sticker in this case) on a car that was driving off, that I thought said Corsican fairy is a 10. Well once I got it back to my rome an enlarged it I realized it only said Corsica ferries 10.

Sorry, I am WAY behind on handing out the follwing bumper stickers, LOL!



(For those who do not know French, it says I brake for Corsican fairies.)

Sadly, today there is no more Alizée to be heard at alizeeradio.com! Perhaps when the Institubes Internet radio station rolls out, this will change.

[FanDeAliFee]

Alizée ranked top French singer at FreeOnes.com

In the article titled Q Score - celebrity recognition & popularity, I inquired about quantitative tools which measure the familiarity and popularity of well-known people like Alizée, and observed that the Q scores rarely measured non-American persons.

But there is a well-known tool, of unknown reliability, which claims to assess the "rank" and "Babe Rating" of well-known, attractive, (largely young) females in the public eye - particularly, but not exclusively, those who take off much of their clothing for the camera and maybe even perform activities well suited to such a state of dress. That tool is the FreeOnes.com Web site, which, as I write, Alexa ranks as the 700th (sic.) most popular Internet site, drawing about 1 in 700 (sic.) global Internet users in a typical day. (That's equivalent to the traffic which would result if every male Internet user on earth visited the site once annually!)

The entry at FreeOnes for Alizée features a faked topless photo of her, so it is not likely to meet with her undivided approval! This page started following her on 2001.09.28. The sites user's have submitted a Babe Rating for her 176 times, giving her an average of 4.6 out of 5.0 stars - using criteria of their own choosing, which I suspect highly weights physical appearance over any other factor! There is another metric called the rank, which I can only guess relates to how many times visitors access a particular woman's site materials.

The site assigns each woman into one (or more) of several categories, namely - Actress, Adult Model, Centerfold, Musician, Pornstar, Sportswomen, Supermodel, or TV Host. Naturally, Alizée is found among the Musicians, of which some 416 are indexed as I write. At the present, she is ranked the TOP French singer. The only singers (of ANY nationality), numbering some 26, who are more highly ranked are (in descending order):

Miley Cyrus
Rihanna
Britney Spears
Katie Price
Katy Perry
Selena Gomez
Lady Gaga
Jennifer Lopez
Renee Olstead
Christina Aguilera
Jessica Simpson
Victoria Silvstedt
Hayden Panettiere
Avril Lavigne
Nicki Minaj
Heidi Montag
Sammi Jay
Shakira Ripoll
Aubrey O'Day
Hilary Duff
Beyonce Knowles
Mariah Carey
Isabelle A
Sophie Monk
Cheryl Tweedy
Taylor Swift

To be more accurate, it seems some women fall into multiple categories, so not all of those listed above are primarily singers: 8 (in italics above) are not, meaning that only 26-8=18 are primarily singers, according to the web site.

One might observe that in this ranking scheme, Alizée beats out such popular singers as Lily Allen, Madonna and Janet Jackson.

And Alizée seems to be holding her position over time among singers well, as evidenced by the graph (see blue line) here. She has ranked as high as 11th weekly position within the last year.

As a postscript, the Alizée America member whom I playfully like to call KLo is a well-known model who poses for what I'll call 1960's Playboy-style snapshots and videos. She is rated very highly at Freeones.com as well, coming in 32nd among the 1399 Adult Models who are indexed. Listed as Venezuelan, she tops ALL Adult Models attributed to Spanish-speaking countries! Her entry reports that they have tracked our friend Karla since 2006.12.30. A total of 1816 folks give her an average Babe Rating of 4.54, a number only a teeny bit less than Alizée's. Note that among all the 16561 women (of any profession) indexed on the site, Karla ranks at number 262, while Alizée ranks at 2579. (The very top of the rankings consist largely of Pornstars - what a surprise, LOL!) Karla's own website typically has had as much or even much more traffic than the one here at Alizée America, according to Alexa. The Web page providing her profile taught me that her middle name is Anais, a name very popular in France and deriving from that of the Persian goddess of love, Anahita.