palemovie, you're half right- in Jarry's play Pere Ubu mispronounces "merdre" by actually sounding the "-re", giving you this untranslatable slang- sometimes it's translated as "shit-rrr". Making things even more confusing is Dave Thomas' lovable way of mumbling and garbling words- I've known French since childhood, and been a longtime Ubu fan, and it took me some work to figure out that he wasn't saying "mandra mandra"
oh, and not to be a pedant, but the word for shit is different in other Romance languages.
palemovie, you're half right- in Jarry's play Pere Ubu mispronounces "merdre" by actually sounding the "-re", giving you this untranslatable slang- sometimes it's translated as "shit-rrr". Making things even more confusing is Dave Thomas' lovable way of mumbling and garbling words- I've known French since childhood, and been a longtime Ubu fan, and it took me some work to figure out that he wasn't saying "mandra mandra"
oh, and not to be a pedant, but the word for shit is different in other Romance languages.