lundi 1 avril 2013

What a mix!

Posted by John | lundi 1 avril 2013 | Category: |

Just for fun, let’s go on a linguistic adventure. As you will know, English is a language which owes its origins to many other languages, foremost of which are Norse, Germanic and French sources, along with some Celtic additions.

This is why it’s such fun, and absorbingly interesting, to trace the origins of certain words and idiomatic phrases in today’s English. They give you a potted history of the language – and the country, to a certain extent.

Shall we start just across the Channel in France?  

Clearly, there are many words which are identically spelt in both languages but you have to be careful; "sensible" in English means to be careful, or logical or commonsensical in your approach to things, but in French, "sensible" means sensitive in English – too easily hurt, or painful to the touch.

Far more interesting, to my mind, are curious rebounds – where a word has come from French in to English, been sent back and reappeared.

A few hundred years ago, the French nobility played a game with ball and bat. When the server was ready to hit the ball, he shouted Tenez! meaning be ready to respond! This came to England, but changed into tennis. And the word tennis in English crossed back to France as "le tennis". Players used to call the page boy to gather the ball by shouting service! And if a player scored no points they called l'œuf which means the or rather an egg. It came to English as love. They still use the French word deuce (deus in ancient French language)

A few hundred year ago, they borrowed the French phrase "double entendre" which literally meant hear double. It refers to a phrase or word which can be understood in two different ways; often the second meaning is risqué, which more or less translates as risky, but in English they use the French word risqué to suggest something rude, especially about sex.

"Double entendre" died out in French – we now say "double entente" but continues happily in English, probably because the English like that type of earthy humour. It’s not to everybody’s taste, but chacun a son goût, as they say, another borrowing from French, meaning we all have different tastes.

There are a thousand more examples, but here is a menu. As you know, menus are sometimes written in French in England, because they sound more tasty in French than in English. Frog’s Legs sounds fairly unpleasant in English but Cuisses de grenouille sounds gastronomically tempting – food for the gods! I gladly let you taste it…

People often laugh the idea of English cooking. There is a good reason for this – it used to be very bad. But those of you who have visited or live in the UK will see that cuisine there has improved remarkably – largely under foreign influences - and the national dish of GB now is surely curry or pizza or Chinese dishes, although fish and chips and roast beef are still of course very popular.

Here are phrases with the word French which are commonly used in English:

- French dressing - sauce for salad
- French leave (or to take French leave) -  go absent without permission. The French use "filer à l’anglaise" meaning to slip away in English style!
- French dresser - type of open cupboard used to display ornaments - sorry, it’s not a French lady who helps you to dress, whatever you may have hoped.
- French beans - you eat the beans and the pod they are in.
- French kissing - using the tongue as well as the lips. So, of course, a French kiss.
- French letter - nothing postal. In fact, a condom (but this usage is now dated)
- French window - a full-length door with large glass windows

There are many others. But why don’t you find some for yourselves!

And for hundreds of years, they have imported French phrases and words into their language: Chic, haute couture, cuisine, terrine,  par excellence…

Voilà! There you have it!  French has played an enormously important part in the formation of English. Most of their legal, clerical and intellectual vocabulary derives from their friends (?) across the English Channel. Who would have believed it ?

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