MacCa

Michelle ma belle means 'Michelle, my beauty/beautiful one.'

The rest of the 'french' is a clumsy attempt at translating the rest of the verse. It says:

'Michelle my beauty are of the words which go very well together, very well together.'

This is clearly not very good. To make things worse, unless I'm very much mistaken, the French don't use 'go' to mean 'fit' in the same way we do so they would think the words were 'going somewhere' together (on some kind of journey) and making a good job of it.

I would guess that Paul M. didn't speak much more French than you do, and even less than I can, which isn't very much. His song writing makes up for it though.

Useful references:

Google translate

and

Babelfish

Both quite happily translate the French lyrics in Michelle. Were you really serious? Given the beautifully simple structure of the song was translation really necessary?

munch,

During my first attempt at replying to you I began to doubt everything I'd said in my first post, so I did some research. What I found in a couple of different places, was the story (from a Hard Day's Write by Steve Turner) that PM couldn't speak French (though he could speak a little German) so he got a friend who was a French teacher to provide the lines. I realise now that I've always assumed the French didn't have the same 'go together idiom that we do, but I've never actually checked it with a French person.

There seems to be some confusion, which I can't resolve, over whether it should be 'sont des mots' - literally 'of the words' - which is what's written down in many places, or 'sont les mots' which PM actually sings.

So it may or may not be good French, but either way it's nothing to do with PM who doesn't speak it. Unless he does and it is. It's a good song though.

I knew some of the words but not all. I had 2 years of french 40 years ago and couldn't conjugate a verb to save my life, and when we hit the irregular ones..... I lost all interest in memorization.

I just thought I'd ask someone closer to the source over there. Problem with translations is they usually don't fit and he was probably trying to make it rhyme in the musical sequence. It really is a beautiful song and he's written some outstanding tunes. He deserves the Gershwin Prize.

Then again, isn't there some Italian in Abbey Road?

It's a Spanish/Italian mix with some English thrown in IIRC - in Here Comes the Sun King. Just a jumble of words and phrases and the odd bi-lingual pun like 'que can eat it'.

Thanks David, that has stumped me for decades but I'm enjoying the music too much to figure it out. They had a lot of fun in the studio and messin' with obsessive fans.