What is Poisson D’Avril Tradition?

The Poisson D’Avril Tradition?

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

The most harmless Poisson d’Avril gag (on April Fool’s Day) involves tagging friends and family with a fish taped to their backs without them noticing. The goal is to keep the fish on for as long as possible.

Pranksters have celebrated April 1 since Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A fox tricks Chanticleer in “The Vain Cock”. (Wikipedia).

Is studying a new language suspicious?

Cognites—English words or phrases that are similar—help beginners learn a foreign language. While French and English were never linked, historical cross-pollination means that American French learners may guess 30% or more of a random list of terms, according to Paul Pimsleur. Paul Pimsleur, How to Learn a Foreign Language, 2013, p. 11. Learn French with Poisson D’Avril

When the language you’re learning seems arbitrary and the cognates don’t match, it’s suspicious. This fishy linguistic mistake reminds me of poisson rouge, the French word for goldfish, which means “red fish.” (I’ll grant that most real goldfish in their bowls are more red than anything else, and that gold, as used in English, is the least realistic description of their patina.)

The big fishy surprise was that these self-same dwellers of foggy octogonal bowls across the US were, for one day in April, the centre of the comedy stage in France and Italy, the wet and frigid rulers of a world turned on its fins.

It turns out that April Fool’s Day in the US is called Poisson d’Avril in France and Pesche d’Aprile in Italy. (From the lack of wonderful vintage post cards online, the Italians may have done this later than the French.)