
The other day, a friend of mine, in attempting to describe thetasteful and stylish interior of a converted manor house,referred to numerous objets d’art on display. Now that is a phrase I must store away for future use, I told myself, for it evokes in the mind a clear and unambiguous picture of the type of ornamentation and adornment on view. Somehow, ‘arty objects’ does not quite fit the bill. Objets d’art is more classy, more elegant, more opulent, more grandiloquent. Not only does it lend the décor a certain cachet, but it also shows off our knowledge – even if no more than a passing acquaintance – of the French language. (Note that ‘décor’, ‘certain’, ‘cachet’, ‘passing’, ‘acquaintance’, ‘French’, and ‘language’ in that sentence are all words that owe their origin to French.) Objets d’art is making a statement about the good taste of the owner as well as the eloquence of the speaker. And, as any pretentious writer knows, such usage of French words should always be placed in italics. Not only are we well educated, but we are also punctilious about our writing. Two pats on the back, then.
Do I detect a touch of affectation here, a certain pretentiousness in one’s use of English, or rather French, when good old simple, down-to-earth Anglo-Saxon will do? What’s wrong with ‘decliner’ that we feel the need to say chaise longue? Hors d’oeuvre is falling out of fashion. Good riddance. Let’s have the more informal ‘starter’ and have done with it. At least it’s simpler to spell and easier to pronounce. And as for that annoying word jus we see so often in menus; let’s stick to the good old British description, ‘gravy’. All this poncing about with French affectation - didn’t do them much good at Waterloo, did it?
Respectfully, I differ. And that is not just because I am a confirmed Francophile and wish – fervently – that I could speak the language fluently, like my brother and sister. But as a student of English, tuned in to the nuances of language, I sense that sometimes the French word or phrase is simply more felicitous, in a way that the bald English version somehow isn’t. Deja-vu implies a sense or feeling of experiencing something that has been encountered before; ‘already seen before’ lacks the ephemeral quality of the experience. Did that really happen, is that what I truly remember, or is it a figment of my imagination? A femme fatale uses her feminine charms and sexual allure for hidden, sometimes nefarious, purposes. The English translation, ‘deadly or lethal woman’, could just mean a woman infected with typhus or carrying a gun. Not quite the same. Coup de grace in translation means ‘blow of mercy’. The image of the officer commanding the execution party stepping forward to shoot the condemned man through the temple because his soldiers can’t shoot straight does not sit easily with our understanding of mercy. The French phrase betokens an act of dreadful finality that the English version fails to evoke. Piece de resistance: a piece, or means, of resistance. Hmm… not much of import there in the English version. But in French it means the best or most important thing, originally the main course of the meal (well, the French do like their haute cuisine). Latterly, it refers to an artist’s or a writer’s or a composer’s most important work, though it can of course refer to something rather splendid created by anybody. Rendez-vous(literally ‘present yourselves’) has a distinctive military connotation, or at least a gathering organised with military precision, in the way that ‘meeting place’ does not. That sounds more informal, as if you were meeting up at the pub.
It should not come as a complete surprise, I suppose, that two near neighbours would borrow from each other’s language. But as we know, there was much more to it than that. The Norman Conquest changed everything. For centuries, two languages, Norman French and Anglo-Saxon, existed side by side. French was the language of the court, the law, the military, the nobility, the Church and commerce; Anglo-Saxon was spoken by the serfs, the servants, the peasants, the labourers. It was a wonder that English survived, but it did by the simple expediency of assimilating so many French words into its vocabulary. French words are now so much in common usage in our own language that we barely give their origin a second thought: competition, table, chauffeur, detour, delegate, gallery, irony, neutral, rich, sentiment, television, uniform, valid….et ainsi de suite.
But there is more to it than that. In the 17th and 18th centuries, French was the language of literature throughout Europe; it was also the language of diplomacy, reflecting France’s position as a major power. The custom grew among the wealthy and educated class in this country to undertake a Grand Tour of Europe, serving as an educational rite of passage. As French was the dominant language of the elite in Europe, it was advisable, de rigueur even, to learn the language and to be able to speak it fluently. Thus, a knowledge of French, with the ability to slip in words and phrases into everyday conversation, set you apart as an educated and cultured person. Undeniably, a touch of one-upmanship here, snobbery even. One might even say l'art de faire mieux que les autres!
It is only relatively recently, in the 19th and 20th centuries that English has replaced French as the lingua franca of international relations and trade, owing to the influence of the British Empire and the rise of America as a super-power.Nonetheless, the odd French phrase casually tossed into our discourse still has a certain cachet. It shows that we are erudite, civilised, polished, bien sur, un homme de culture.
Quite often, we use a French phrase in a sense that the French themselves do not. Cul de sac means literally ‘bottom of the bag’. For a ‘dead end’, the French say voie sans issue. Pied a terre literally translates as ‘foot to the ground’. Let’s call a spade a spade here; we really mean a ‘flat’, which the French call un appartement. If we drop in the phrase au contraire, we are attempting to sound sophisticated but just appear patronising. Our use of bon vivant preys upon our suspicion that the French always seem to be having a better time than us Protestant Anglo-Saxons. Literally, it means ‘good liver’, which is just what you would need to enjoy life to the maximum. Enfant terrible means ‘terrible infant’ but we use it more to describe a grown-up bad boy. Fin de siècle, the ‘end of the century’, refers to the 1890s, a time of political upheaval and the rise of right-wing demagoguery in France: we tend to use it to remember a time of decadence and cynicism, when the social restraints of Victorianism were being cast aside. Vis-à-vis is a fancy way of saying’ with regard to’. Literally, it means ‘face to face’, but the French no longer use the archaic vis for ‘face’. It is now visage; in any case ‘face to face’ would translate as face a face. We love our double-entendres, but the French do not. For a start it is grammatically incorrect, and in any case the proper translation would be double sens. If you use the word touche in French, you are talking about fencing; you are not, as in English, acknowledging a point well made. Menage a trois has deeply sexual undertones whenever we use the phrase. Not necessarily so in French usage. Literally it means three people living together. There may or may not be a sexual element in the three-way relationship, but the arrangement has a semi-permanent, domestic basis. We do suspect the randy French get up to much more hanky-panky than us, even in their domestic arrangements, and their reputation for affairs of the heart goes unchallenged in this country. I tried to count the number of English synonyms for ‘love’ that owe their origin to French: affection, passion, tenderness, amorousness, ardour, beau, paramour, suitor, enchanted, embrace, caress…a l’infini. And while I’m on about it… how about French kiss, French letter, French maid, French disease, French fly? By the same token, how can you trust a Frenchman who might give you one, two, three or four kisses and claim it is the custom of where in the country he comes from? So, it goes on, our eccentric appropriation of our French cousins’ language.
Now I await the French-speaking members of my family, friends and readership to respond with some English expressions that have crept into the French language, despite the draconian strictures of the language police, L’AcademieFrancaise. There are some obvious ones, like le weekend and sandwichs. I’ve never understood why they don’t add an ‘e’ for the plural of ‘sandwich’; after all, if they want to use one of our words, the least they could do is to spell it correctly. But there you are - that is the French for you.
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