Context: 

This piece is collected in a casual interview setting around a cup of coffee. My informant (BA) was born in Lille, France, and moved to California in 2002 with her husband for their jobs at Caltech. She has a Master in Human Resources and Detection of High Potentials, is a mother of two teenage girls, loves to garden and go on hikes, and is overall a very energetic and happy woman. 

Main Piece:

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the informant (BA) and interviewer.

Interviewer: How do you cure hiccups?

BA: Ah, bah, you have to sing this song as many times as you can without breathing! It goes like this *she proceeds to sing it*

J’ai le hoquet, Dieu me la fait, vive Jésus, je n’l’ai plus!

Interviewer: Where did you learn this song from?

BA: My grandmother taught me it, you know, *names the person.* She would make me and my little brother sing it until our hiccups went away and it really worked, it worked every time. It was really funny. I don’t know where she learned it from though.

Translation: 

Original song: J’ai le hoquet, Dieu me la fait, vive Jésus, je n’l’ai plus!

Transliterate translation (word for word) *note that “n’l’ai” is a slur of “ne” and “l’ai” together, which is the equivalent of slurring “don’t have it” as one word*: I have the hiccup, God did it to me, long live Jesus, I don’t have it anymore!

Fully translated song: I have hiccups, God did it to me, long live Jesus, I don’t have it anymore!

Thoughts: I have heard of holding your breath to stop from hiccuping before, but I discovered the “hiccup song” from my informant. I believe, like she does, that this method works. If holding your breath for as long as possible gets rid of the hiccups, singing a song for you to lose your breath faster can only help! 

Annotation:

For more versions of the French hiccup song, and other ways of getting rid of hiccups, please follow this link: http://nichkouna.blogspot.com/2009/05/le-hoquet-hiccup-schluck-schluckauf.html