JOHN LOCKHARD writes:

My thanks to you and Thomas Bertonneau for introducing me to Françoise Hardy.

There’s a detail which I found very beautiful. French is more flexible with articles and possessive pronouns than English. In the first two verses, she sings “et les yeux dans les yeux, et la main dans la main.” Literally translated, “and the eyes in the eyes, and the hand in the hand,” or, in more natural English, “eyes locked, hand in hand.” French uses definite articles where English doesn’t.

But in the last verse, as she imagines that she too might find a boyfriend, she sings “et les yeux dans ses yeux, et la main dans sa main.” She switches one of the “la”s to “sa.” “Sa” is either “his” or “her,” indifferently. “La” basically means “the,” but French normally doesn’t use the first-person possessive (“ma”) if it’s obvious. So, the correct translation of this line in the last verse is, “my eyes locked with his, and my hand in his hand.”

The line — that in the first two verses describes the happy couples that she envies — expresses her imagined happiness with her future beloved. There’s that much meaning in switching a single letter, from “la” to “sa.”

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