Suspense. It’s French … sort of.

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SUSPENSE …

2 a : mental uncertainty : anxiety
   b : pleasant excitement as to a decision or outcome <a novel of suspense>

— from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Suspense is a “French English” word that has a few meanings in our language but is used most often to describe a sense of nervous anticipation, whether the circumstances involve dread or eagerness. For instance, we feel suspense when we’re waiting for someone to make a decision that’s out of our hands :

“Oh, please, please! Let them make a decent offer on my apartment so I can finally sell it!”

“When am I going to hear back from the prefecture? And what am I going to do if they end up refusing to renew my visa?”  

But we can also feel it when we’re watching a television show and the episode ends with a dramatic event, while leaving the story unresolved :

“What in the world are they going to do now? Is he alive or dead? And what am I supposed to do with myself until next week?!”

                                                              … or when we’re reading a book, the chapter ends with a cliffhanger, and despite the fact that we have to get up early the next morning, we just have to start the next one. 

“Suspense” came into Middle English from Anglo-French, one of those lexical imports during the first few centuries after the Norman Conquest. Its first recorded English use was in 1306 in the legal term “en suspens” meaning “not executed, unfulfilled.” By 1440, the word had also developed the sense of a “state of mental uncertainty” … because, I guess, whatever legal judgment that was “en suspens” had not yet been carried out and the future was stressfully unclear. The Anglo-French “suspens” itself derives from the Old French “suspens,” from the Latin  “suspensus” (the past participle of the verb “suspendere“) meaning “delayed.” Continue reading Suspense. It’s French … sort of.

Got a chimney? It’s French.

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A while back, I posted about how much of the English language comes from French. Perhaps surprisingly, more English vocabulary comes from French than from any other language source, even Anglo-Saxon—some 30% in fact. Speaking English words of French origin doesn’t make us French speakers, of course, but stumbling across these cognates can be pretty useful if you’re in a French class … or even trying to decipher a French menu. Being an etymology nerd myself (and inspired by my blogger friend over at Le mot du (bon)jour), I decided to create a new “column” on je parle américain: the French English Word of the Week. Every week or so, I’ll write a short post about an ordinary English word that we inherited from French. Sometimes, the French and English words will have exactly the same meanings. Sometimes, though, they’ll be faux amis (“false friends”), because the words have evolved differently over time. Those can be the most interesting!

So, this week’s French English word? Given the record-breaking cold temps affecting many of my readers, I’ve decided to kick things off with:

chimney

Everybody knows what a chimney is, of course. In its primary sense, chimney means “a vertical structure incorporated into a building and enclosing a flue or flues that carry off smoke; especially : the part of such a structure extending above a roof.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

“Chimney” comes to us from the Anglo-Norman chiminee ← from the Old French cheminée ← from Late Latin caminata ← from Latin caminus ← from Greek kaminos, meaning “furnace.”

In American English, we use the word almost exclusively for the structures that carry off smoke from our homes. We generally call the industrial versions or the versions on steam locomotives and steamships “smokestacks.” In England, by contrast, such smokestacks are often called chimneys and, in some English dialects, chimney can also mean a “fireplace or hearth,” especially a large one, like those found in old castles.

Continue reading Got a chimney? It’s French.

A Love Lock?

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As a hopeless romantic, I just love anniversaries, and Michel and I celebrate a lot of them: the day we met … our first real date … our engagement … our marriage … the first time we ate ice cream together (okay, maybe that one is an exaggeration—but just barely). We don’t stop with anniversaries, though; we even celebrate the “monthaversaries,” as in “Today is 17 months since … blah, blah, blah.” Some of my friends used to joke about my monthly spate of Facebook dedications, but they’ve grown awfully quiet these days. They must have all just suppressed me from their newsfeed. After almost three years together, I guess marking monthaversies had become old-hat.  So, a few weeks ago, I asked myself: “Why not celebrate a different date—some unusual milestone?” Well, geeky hopeless romantic that I am, I did the math and determined that today—February 12—marks one thousand days since we said those magic words to each other for the very first time:

I love you.

Je t’aime, aussi.

Pretty good idea, huh? But how to celebrate? Well, living in Paris definitely puts the pressure on you to come up with something extraordinary. Paris doesn’t have a monopoly on romance, of course, but there is something magical about this city that can turn the most ordinary of moments into a scene from a sappy romantic comedy:


(Don’t skip the video! It’s really cute.)

So what did I come up with? A crêpe sucrée? A crème brûlée? Beret shopping? Well, no. I didn’t want my little Phineas to miss his cue, so I decided to get a cadenas d’amour—

a “love lock.” Continue reading A Love Lock?

Previous Post

Posted on by je parle américain

To tide you over until the next post from je parle américain, allow me to share this humorous article from my blogger friend over at Le mot du (bon)jour. (To read the whole article, click on the link “Reblogged from Le mot du (bon)jour” above.) I recently wrote about how much French is actually in the English we speak, and her post highlights the confusion that can arise from mixing French and English without considering how a French person will interpret it. Now, as a die-hard Clemson Tiger, I have to take issue with the first sentence of her post because, well, if I were at Williams-Brice, it would be to cheer for the other team! Nevertheless, today’s “mot rigolo” (“funny word”) is guaranteed to make you chuckle!

Enjoy!
And come back Sunday for the next post from je parle américain!

FrenchNad's avatarLe mot du (bon)jour

If you ever go to a USC (that is University of South Carolina) football game, you will find yourself screaming “Go cocks!”… Very strange at first! We brought my French sister and brother-in-law to a game a couple of years ago, and we could not stop laughing because the other side of the stadium was prompted to scream “Game”, and our side had to scream “Cocks”… this lasted a whole game. So we translated with the alternative meaning of cock=rooster (so right, the other meaning…), and in French, that is: “Allez les bites!” (We wanted to text it to the big board but it did not work… I wish! I would have taken a picture!).

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Looking for work, or walking off the job?

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Strikers at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle yesterday. Photo from Reuters

The News

Besides the record-breaking cold temperatures, the big news this week in France is the grève — the strike — at Air France. Essentially a “strike about the right to strike,” it was called by the unions representing Air France’s pilots, cabin crews, and ground crews to protest legislation that would impact their right to walk off the job. Now, you should know up front that workers’ rights are a big deal in France: the 35-hour workweek, generous unemployment benefits, and strong union representation are ingrained in the national consciousness here. As a matter of fact, the right to strike (“le droit de grève“) is actually enshrined in the French Constitution of 1946. Nevertheless, since 2008, railway and bus employees have been subject to a regulation to ensure “the continuity of public service” in ground transportation by requiring 48-hour notice of the intent to strike and the provision of “minimum service” during the strike. Last month, the Assemblée Nationale passed legislation expanding this regulation to include air travel as well, and the Senate is expected to take it up later this month. That, in a nutshell, is why the departures board at Charles-de-Gaulle was lit up in red today. Continue reading Looking for work, or walking off the job?

I’ll have a Martini, s’il vous plaît.

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This isn’t a blog post about the arguments over what constitutes a martini: gin versus vodka, shaken versus stirred … if something with Pucker in it can even lay claim to the name. Instead, this post is about a crucial difference between martinis in America and martinis in France. If you’re ever thinking about ordering one in this country, pay close attention. This is very important!

To illustrate this lesson, I’ll share an anecdote recounted by a friend over dinner Friday night:

A group of Americans walk into a restaurant in Paris and are seated for dinner. (I know this sounds like the start of a joke, but it’s not.) The waiter arrives and asks if anyone would like to start with a cocktail or an apéritif. One of the Americans orders a martini.

“Blanc ou rouge?” the waiter asks.

“Uh … rouge,” the American responds tentatively. “There must be a splash of cranberry or Chambord in there,” she thinks to herself, remembering that “rouge” means “red” in French.

“And for Monsieur?”

“I’ll have a blanc,” Monsieur replies. “That must be a ‘normal’ martini,” he thinks to himself, before starting to wonder why the waiter didn’t ask if they preferred gin or vodka.

Continue reading I’ll have a Martini, s’il vous plaît.

Groundhogs? Pancakes!

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Presentation of Christ at the Temple, Hans Holbein the Elder

February 2 might be Groundhog Day in the United States, but it’s also Candlemas on the Christian calendar. It’s the day when the Church celebrates Joseph and Mary’s presentation of the baby Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem forty days after his birth, in keeping with the Jewish tradition of ritual purification and redemption of the firstborn. Despite the Catholic church’s official rejection of such theories, some believe that Candlemas was created to Christianize a pre-existing Roman holiday, Lupercalia, or perhaps a pre-existing Celtic holiday, Imbolc. Lupercalia was the feast of Lupercus, the god of fertility and herds. Imbolc was the feast of the goddess Brigit, and was marked by torchlit processions through the fields to invite purification and fertility for the coming spring. Whether he was motivated to co-opt these pagan holidays or not, it was Pope Gelasius I who instituted Candlemas in AD 492 and fixed its date on February 2. The blessing of candles and candlelit processions supplanted earlier pagan rites and gave rise to the name of the holiday.

These days in France, though, Candlemas (or Chandeleur, from chandelle, meaning “candle”) is known less for its candles and more for its …

CRÊPES

Continue reading Groundhogs? Pancakes!

How much French do you speak?

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Just the other day, I was watching my latest favorite television series, Downton Abbey, and I heard one of the characters use a French word I’d never heard used before in an English sentence: “She’s found her métier—farm laboring.” That struck me as the height of pretension, but then again, it is a show about English aristocrats during the First World War. In any case, métier means “profession, occupation, or trade.” I knew this word from my French classes, of course, but I never knew that we used it in English. I guess being a country boy from South Carolina, I wasn’t high-class enough to have trotted it out in my own conversations. It got me thinking, though, about how much French there actually is in English. As it turns out, between the recent imports and what we inherited from the Normans, there’s a lot more than you might imagine.

Recent Imports

Métier is one of those French words that entered the English lexicon in recent centuries through literature, the arts, and other cultural exchanges. Because we “adopted” them directly into English, they’ve preserved their unmistakable character as Gallicisms even when we don’t pronounce them exactly right. Originally, these words were used primarily by the upper echelons of society (Look, there’s another one!), those privileged enough to have spent their time reading, visiting art exhibits, and traveling to France. As such, although they may be recognizable by a broad segment of today’s English-speaking population, they aren’t used in the normal course by most of us … except perhaps when we want to sound chichi.

used under license from CartoonStock
used under license from CartoonStock

Continue reading How much French do you speak?

Oh là là! Where’s my baguette?

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Yes, I’ve spent three semesters learning French in a rigorous academic setting here in Paris, but there are still those moments when I just have to fake it … like hanging out last night in a bar with French college students, or sitting around the dinner table with my French family, or taking an oral exam. Truth be told, I understand what they’re saying to me SO much less than they think I do, but I put on a good act!

So, go pour a glass of red, grab that baguette, sit back, and enjoy this little gem a friend found on the Internet:

And don’t worry if you can’t quite make out what she’s saying about Americans in Step Four. You don’t really have to understand it—just shake your head and cuss a little!

© 2012 Samuel Michael Bell, all rights reserved (not the video, of course … if only I were so talented)

Why do I speak American?

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“Je parle américain” means “I speak American.” It’s a catchy title for the blog of an American expat in France, but why do I say that? After all, I speak English, right?

The fact of the matter is that, while we Americans might say we speak English, as far as the French are concerned, we speak something else. When I enrolled in French courses here in France, I always listed “anglais” as my native language, of course, but I had already learned by then that many French think of my native language as something other than English. I can still remember the first time someone in France asked me how we say something in “American.” I chuckled at the time, thinking it was an odd thing to ask … until I quickly realized that it was a serious question and no joke was intended. After all, when kids in France learn English at school, they learn the Queen’s English, and what comes of out my mouth when I speak is certainly not that!

Of course, the differences between what we speak in America and what they speak in Britain are far greater than just our accents. Accent is, after all, just the way you pronounce the same words: “You say tomato; I say tomato …” Well, it doesn’t make much sense when you read it, but you understand.  Continue reading Why do I speak American?