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.
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.
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?
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.
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 …
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.
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!
“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?
That’s right. I just finished up my third and final semester of French courses at the Cours de Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne. Last week, I wrote a 1,540-word paper on French-Canadian literature. Then, I spent an hour and a half answering the question “Why can we speak of a myth of progress?” for a “Myth and Modern Thought” seminar. On Saturday, I took my final exam in French grammar, reading comprehension, and written expression. Today, I cleared the final hurdle: the oral exam.
The oral exam has always been the most intimidating for me. Despite the fact that it only counts for maybe 10 or 20 percent of the final grade and only lasts for 10 or 15 minutes (as opposed to 3 hours for the written exam), there’s something infinitely more nerve-racking about sitting at a table across from two French professors and speaking in French about an excerpt from a work of French literature. To be honest, I think I spent more time studying for the oral than I did for the written exam: reading and re-reading eight different texts as disparate as Montesquieu’s Les Lettres Persanes and Albert Camus’s Le Premier Homme, summarizing each one, reviewing the more esoteric vocabulary, identifying the major themes, and then worrying about my pronunciation when it would come time to read aloud!
This morning, I was very lucky. I ended up drawing at random Baudelaire‘s L’Albatros. You might remember that this is the poem I never got around to memorizing for a recitation earlier this semester, despite our professor’s pleas. Of course, I didn’t have to recite it this morning, but I did have to read it aloud and—just to let you know—even reading French poetry with a English-speaking mouth isn’t an easy thing to do. But I did it and did it pretty well, if I do say so myself. It’s a good thing I practiced a few times with Michel this weekend! I explained the “story” of the poem and then moved on to discuss the analogy: the poet, like the albatross, is a “different” being, beautiful and graceful in his own world, but clumsy, misunderstood, and sometimes ridiculed when “brought down to earth” among the rest of us. I even got to talk about neoplatonism. How often does one get a chance to do that in an average day? After my ten minutes were up, it was time for the next student … and I was relieved to have reached the end.
Now that it’s all over, though, I’m already getting nostalgic. I’ll miss my classmates and my professor, who was one of the best I’ve ever had. Of course, as long as I live in France and as long as I have a French family (no matter where I live), I’ll keep learning French. It just won’t be in a classroom anymore … and that makes me just a little mélancolique.
I recently wrote that a fat frequent flyer account is one of the many benefits of extensive foreign travel. Another one (at least for me) is collecting all those entry and exit stamps that fill up the visa pages in your passport. Even in this day and age of digital technology, every time you cross a border, a border agent stamps your passport to show your port of entry (or exit) and when you were there. Over the years, your passport gradually turns into a jumbled-up journal of your foreign travel—full of tiny, sometimes colorful souvenirs of where you’ve been.
As you can imagine, since meeting my French husband back in 2009, I’ve gotten quite a few passport stamps from French passport control. And for every one of them stamped at Charles de Gaulle, I have a corresponding one stamped by American authorities at Dulles or Charlotte. As an expatriate, though, it’s not just entry and exit stamps that decorate my passport: I even have two entire pages taken up by my initial student visa issued by the French Embassy in Washington and my first residency permit issued after my arrival in France by the Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration. Just flipping through my passport, in fact, you see more French than English.
My stamps aren’t limited to French and American ones, though. I do have an eye-catching one in vivid green from a trip I took with my mom to Ireland in 2006, as well as a few British ones I got at Gare du Nord in Paris before taking the Eurostar over to London. What I don’t have, unfortunately, are stamps from Belgium or Hungary, my other two international destinations since getting my current passport. Since both countries are in Europe’s Schengen Area, you don’t even have to pass border control if you’re coming from another country in the Area—like France. That’s really too bad. It would have been really cool to have one in Magyar … or even Dutch.
The rub with all this stamping is that you only get 24 visa pages in an American passport. Now, that sounds like a lot since each page (the old style, at least) had 4 little boxes for stamps. Technically that gives you 96 passport stamps during the 10-year life of your passport … maybe even more since most passport control agents are pretty sloppy about placing their stamps. When you travel as much I have, though, and you’ve got other big things like visas and residency permits pasted in there, you can run out of room before it’s time to get a new passport.
The solution?
If you don’t want to order a new passport yet, just order new visa pages!
American passport holders can order up to two 24-page inserts that are affixed in the passport by the National Passport Center, or by the local consular officials if you’re living abroad. Late last year, when I realized that I was quickly running out of room in my passport that was valid for another 2-1/2 years, I figured I’d just take a trip to the Embassy one afternoon and ask for new pages. Of course, it’s never that simple! It turned out that I had to fill out an application and mail my passport to the Embassy. Now, I’m a little skittish about putting something as essential to my immigration status as my passport into the mail system … even the French mail system. No worries! The Embassy requires you to use something called a Chronopost envelope for both sending the passport and getting it back. It’s very secure and traceable—kind of like FedEx, but more expensive … a lot more expensive! Little did I know when I walked into a French post office last Thursday afternoon that each Chronopost envelope costs 22.50€! That meant that just mailing the passport to the Embassy right here in Paris (just 5 miles from where I live) and getting it delivered back to me was going to cost about $60! On top of that, the fee for the visa pages themselves was $82.
Sigh.
Oh well, at least that’s not as expensive as my residency permit was … oh … wait a minute. Yes, it is!
Sigh, again.
Of course, you might be asking why I didn’t just spring for an entirely new passport that would be good for 10 more years for the bargain basement price of $110. Good question. After all, my passport photo is of me about 25 pounds ago! The truth be told, I’m already having buyer’s remorse about my decision to just get visa pages, but here’s my story and I’m sticking to it: It has something to do with the fact that my residency permit is linked to my current passport number. Maybe I’m wrong about that and getting a new passport wouldn’t create a problem with the French immigration system at all. If you’ve been following my story here, though, you know that I don’t have any desire to open that can of worms just yet! I’ll just wait until 2014 to worry about that, thank you very much!
In any case, in what may be a record of bureaucratic efficiency, I got my newly made-over passport in the mail today … just 3 business days after sending it! Now, it’s off to enjoy my 24 brand spanking new visa pages! Where should I go? Somewhere outside the Schengen Area so I can get some use out of them, I guess … or I could just look for flights with connections through London or Dublin!
je parle américain 