Anglicisation Anxiety

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Des croissants, confiture et jus d'orange.

Recently in a discussion with a friend, I got into an argument as to the correct pronunciation of “prima facie”. Having tentatively dipped my toe in the Italian language, I assumed that a Latin expression would follow Italian pronunciation, hence: “pri-ma fah-chi”. But no, apparently everyone says “preemer face-ee” as in the word “face”. Wikipedia’s IPA spelling suggested the unhappy compromise of “prima fay-shee”. I decided in the end, that however the phrase is properly pronounced in Latin, it’s best to go with the common pronunciation. But this question frequently vexes me, how much should one anglicise foreign loan words when using them in everyday sentences?

Take “croissant” for example. Is there any other word for which I exercise so much anxiety when I’m called upon to use it in conversation? Where do you draw the line when it comes to pronouncing the word properly? Do I cough-up a great big ball of phlegm when pronouncing the “r” in “cr-” and do I, like “un vrai français” pronounce the “-oi-” as “wah”? Of course I’m not going to pronounce the final “t” but should I also properly nasalize “-ssant” and thus produce a passionate and fully rounded “kr-wasson”?

No, that would sound ridiculous.

Should I instead, like every other Aussie, refer to a croissant the same way I would refer to my auntie when she’s angry about something?

Oh, if only I could just ask my whole question in French and remove any ambiguity:

“Deux croissant s’il vous plaît.”

But I’m not sure the pimply apprentice at Baker’s Delight would understand what I was talking about. Looks like I’ll just have to say:

“May I have two cross aunts please.” (Although really I’d prefer it if my aunts remained their cheerful old selves).

But this is the dilemma. On the one hand, I can sound like an uneducated bogan, on the other a pretentious merchant banker. Where is the happy middle-ground?

Of course the French have no such anxiety. The resolve the question rather bluntly by simply Francifying all foreign loan words. I don’t think anyone in France would get any sort of higher esteem or caché for pronouncing “le showbiz” like some marketing executive straight off the plane from Los Angeles. Rather, my pocket Larousse’s IPA guide suggested something much more like “le chobiznès”. While it is generally a mark of intellect being able to pronounce foreign loan words correctly in English, the French have no such hang-ups. “Naples”, “Genoa”, “Moscou”; if you ever wondered why we call Florence “Florence” when the actual denizens of that city call it Firenze you can thank the French. Yes the English assiduously tried to copy the names properly - but the English copied them from the wrong language!

“Facts”, “deeds” and that which has been “done”.

Image via Wikipedia

Old English Epic Poem Beowulf

I’m a great fan of Melvyn Bragg’s “The Adventure of English”, but there is one part in his series when he is waxing lyrical about the uniqueness of English and it’s large vocabulary and extensive loan-words and I can’t help thinking that he’s making a virtue out of a necessity (or at least a virtue out of an indifferent fact). Because, really, is the English language’s much-vaunted big vocabulary actually as good as all that? I know it’s good in a social setting when you want to show off your … you know show off your... not lexicalness... logicalness? no.... Oh what’s that word?! Loquaciousness! Loquaciousness that’s it!

But how are you to impress upon your fellow human any sense your incredible wit and verbal acuity when you’re umm-ing and ah-ing? Everyone else gets impatient for you to “just spit it out” as you try to remember that really apt word; so eventually you just settle for a less appropriate but still workable word. And that’s the big problem with English: there are just too many words and I (for one) can never remember the one that I really want to use!

I was thinking the other day about the word “fact” - because it sounds a lot like the French equivalent “fait” and I guessed that that was where the English word came from. Actually according to the “Australian Oxford Dictionary” it comes from the Latin word “factum” which just like in French is the past tense form of the verb “facere” (“fait” and “faire” in French) “to do”. Which is to say that really a fact is simply a done - something that has been done. The etymology is easy to follow in French and Latin, but in English it’s not at all readily apparent that the word “fact” is related to the word “done”.

Of course English had its own word for “that which has been done” before it developed its preference for fancy Latin and French words over humble old Anglo-Saxon ones. That is, “deed”. Which if I refer again to the Australian Oxford Dictionary, has an “Old English” origin, “from Germanic: related to DO”. But, you might protest, “deed” doesn’t mean the same thing as “fact” and this is the source of Melvyn Bragg’s effusive paean to “English’s extraordinary ability to absorb [new words]”. Bragg finds that when English absorbs words from another language where a word with the same meaning already exists in English, both words take on a slightly different meaning. Thus “where old English said craft old Norse said skill... in Old English you were sick, in Norse you were ill”. Bragg lauds this habit of adding words to the English “word horde”, describing it as “adding to the richness and flexibility of the vocabulary” as each word takes on a new, more specific meaning, with nuanced distinctions between words, allowing for the expression of more complex and specific ideas.

Image via Wikipedia

Influences in English vocabulary

But to suggest that English has any particular advantage in expressing complex ideas is ridiculous (for one thing it would mean it couldn’t be translated into other languages!). And of course, whilst Stephen Fry might be happy to make outrageous claims on behalf of his beloved language, linguists will have more difficulty in justifying them. The reality, as I investigate my “Larousse de Poche” is that the French word “fait” in fact encapsulates all of the above listed meanings of fact, deed and done - varying according to context.

So, what about the big vocabulary? Is it a bane or boon? Well, for my part, I find it jolly annoying! I can never think of the word with that specific meaning that I’m after. And words with related meanings like “fact” and “deed” don’t in any way hint as to the other’s existence through sounding similar because they have completely alien etymologies. But if you were to ask me which ones I wanted to cull, I could never choose any, because I can’t help but be infatuated with all of the English vocabulary’s richness of connotations. Each word has its own adventure to tell as to how it found itself in our language. Whether it be from the marauding vikings of the Danelaw who gave us “sky” and “knife”. Or if they came from William’s conquering armée who taught the English the hard way about the role of the “state”, “traitors”, “arrest”, “justice”, to “accuse” and “acquit” and to “sentence”, “condemn” and “gaol”. Or the honest “pukka” words from working people under English dominion all over the world whether they be the unsentimental references to pompous “Lord Muck-a-Muck” from those suffering under the thumb of the British Empire, or just the tomfoolery of some “hooligans” in Ireland...

Autumn in the Loire Valley

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The town of Langeais

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Leaf-fall outside the Château de Chenonceau

In October, before returning to Australia, Esther and I went on one last continental excursion from the UK. To a part of France we’d never seen before but wanted to visit. The Loire Valley - a region of vineyards, chateaux and an incredible river.

We stayed in a small boutique hotel in the town of Saumur. It’s a fantastic region, quintessentially French, and Autumn was a perfect time to visit as well. Approaching France, as always, from a literary-historic background, what first attracted me to the Anjou region was the knowledge that this was the homeland of the Angevin Kings of England. Henry II, King Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland. This period in history was singularly important in English history, coming as it did, so shortly after the Norman Invasion and which saw the signing of the Magna Carta.

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The Maze in the grounds of Château de Chenonceau

The first Angevin King, King Henry II of Anjou, who married Eleanor of Aquitaine, presided over a realm that extended from the border with Scotland in the North to the Pyrenees in the South, encompassing much more of France than the King of France, Louis VII actually controlled. The Angevin’s origins amongst the French nobility and historical ties to lands in France were to sow the seeds for the Hundred Years War two centuries later. This was also the period, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, that saw all those fantastic French loan-words enter English, words to do with Gouvernance, Justice and the Court, etc. Not to mention it being the most-romanticised period, a time of troubadours, chivalry, Robin Hood and England’s favourite King: Richard the Lionheart or Richard Coeur de Lion. So I was eager to visit that part of France where the Angevin influence began.

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The Mairie of Chenonceau

But, as I found out, if you’d never read a history book before in your life. You’d still love this part of France. Unlike Provence which is also beautiful, the Loire seems quintessentially French in a way that happily reflects all of your preconceptions. That perfect table at a French cafe, sitting in the dappled sun of plane trees, which you’d hunted Paris up and down for, is in fact much more likely to be found in Tours. Travelling the high-speed rail-link that connects Nantes to Paris, you will come across the most delightful kind of towns, so quaint and picturesque, like the town of Chenonceau, with it’s few streets, Mairie, ecole and bistro, and surrounded by vineyards and woods.

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Grape vines - laden with ripe fruit

Our hotel was likewise a fantastically clichéd chateau. It’s gothic dimensions actually intimidating at night. And the Saturday farmer’s market was really alive with all varieties of mushrooms, berries, fruits and vegetables. When buying a punnet of strawberries I asked whether they were grown locally:

« Qu’est-ce que le provenance de ceux-ci ? »
« Trente kilomètres. »

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The Hôtel de Ville, Tours

Thirty kilometres! That’s local. One day, waiting for the train from Chenonceau, the vines heavy with grapes in the vineyard opposite almost tempted me to jump the ditch surrounding the vineyard and sample some. They did look delicious and fat from a bountiful and verdant land.

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Picnic on the banks of the Cher: Château de Chenonceau
is visible in the background, whilst mushrooms arise from
the Autumnal earth in the foreground.

So with the vineyards, the local produce, the cute little towns with their municipal buildings and symbols of the Republic, as well the chateaux and the history, I couldn’t imagine a better place to visit.

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The gothic lines of Château de Verrières come alive at night.