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In today's Plain English, you'll learn some English words taken directly from French. Hi there, everyone. I'm Jeff and this is Plain English, the podcast that helps you upgrade your English with stories about current events and trending topics.
When you listen here, you'll learn about the world in English and you'll practice thinking in your new language. And as you'll hear, the speed is a little slower than normal speed, and that helps you understand every word. If you're learning, it also helps to read along with the transcript.
The transcript for this episode is at plainenglish.com slash 750. That's because this is episode 750. That makes it easy to remember. Just listen for the episode number and you can find the transcript. 750 is at plainenglish.com slash 750.
Today's story continues our theme for February about unique English words and phrases. The topic today, words that come directly from French. I'm not talking about words that have their base or their origin in French. That would be a long episode. No, I'm talking about words we use in English that are taken directly from French.
Words like resume, fiancé, facade, and others. Before we start today's story, I'd just like to remind you that the podcast is just one part of how we can help you upgrade your English skills.
At plainenglish.com, you can make faster progress with active learning strategies. You can take quizzes, do activities, listen to the fast version of the audio, watch video workshops, practice what you learn, and even join a live call with JR and me. It's all about helping you build your skills to become a better, more confident English speaker.
Sound good? Go to plainenglish.com to start your free 14-day trial today. Now, let's jump into today's story. A lot of words in English trace their roots to French. Government, adventure, courage, leisure. The roots of these words existed in French before they migrated to English.
But English also takes some words directly from French. That means the spelling is the same, the pronunciation is almost the same, and there may even be accent marks, something we don't otherwise have in English. So in today's story, we'll review some French words that have made it into English.
Let's start with one of the most unusual words that English takes directly from French: fiancé. Use this word when you are engaged to be married. The person you have promised to marry is your fiancé. Hopefully, you won't have a fiancé for long.
Before you get engaged, you have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or a partner. After you're married, you have a husband, a wife, or a spouse. But during that year or so after you get engaged, but before you get married, you have a fiancé.
This word is unusual for two reasons. First, English does not have accent marks, but when we write fiancé in English, it is correct to put the accent mark on the first E, just like in French. Fiancé is also unusual because it's one of the very few gendered words in English.
If you're engaged to marry a man, you have a fiancé with one "e". But if you're engaged to marry a woman, you have a fiancé with two "e". I can think of just two other words in English that behave like this.
If you're an experienced person and you're teaching someone younger or junior to you, that other person is your protégé. And like fiancé, protégé is often spelled with accent marks and an additional E for females.
And if you're divorced, you would be a divorcee, also with an extra E if you're female. Speaking of accents, the next French word to learn today is façade. A façade is the front or the face of a building.
For example, when teams were restoring Notre Dame Cathedral, they cleaned the facade and replaced any damaged limestones. They did this work on the part of the building that you see from the outside. That's the facade. This is an interesting word because this is one of the only words with a sedilla.
the squiggly line beneath the sea. This is a marking we don't use in English either, but we do often use it with the word facade. Many people will spell it facade with just a regular C. I've even seen it spelled that way in books and magazines in recent days.
but it's just as common to see it with the cedilla. Now here's a curious thing. We have some words in English that come straight from French, but their meanings in English are not the same as their meanings in French. "Resumé" is one of them. In French, this means "summary."
But in English, it specifically refers to a document that summarizes your work experience and education. In many parts of the world, including in France, this document is referred to as a CV or curriculum vitae, a word borrowed from Latin. And CV is sometimes used in English.
But in North America, we most often call it a resume. The dictionary allows two spellings. The traditional spelling has an accent on both E's, but it's also acceptable to write it with no accent marks at all.
If you're unemployed and you've just sent your resume off to a potential employer, you might find yourself with a free afternoon. If that's the case, you might want to catch a matinee. We English speakers have changed the meaning of matinee just like we have changed the meaning of resume. In French, matinee means morning.
But in English, a matinee is a daytime performance or a daytime show, usually in the afternoon. You can use matinee with movies or live performances like plays, musicals, or operas. Here's how you might use it.
If a friend invites you to the movies on a Saturday, you might say, I'd love to go, but I can't stay out too late. Can we go to a matinee? That means, can we go to the movies during the day and not at night?
Theaters often have matinees on the weekends. They might have live performances at 7 o'clock p.m. during the week and then a matinee on Sunday. Some theaters might have a double performance on Saturday. They might do a matinee at 2 o'clock and then an evening performance at 8 o'clock.
You can say matinee performance or matinee show, but it's usually enough to simply say a matinee and people will know what you mean. Here are a few more quickly. If you do something wrong, something socially unacceptable, you commit a faux pas.
If you wear jeans to a meeting and everyone else is in business dress, that's a faux pas. An encore is a second performance. If you're at a concert, the band stops playing, everyone cheers, they want to hear one or two more songs. The band may come out for an encore. That's an additional performance.
Ever get the sense that you're living through a moment that you've experienced before? If so, you've experienced déjà vu. We write that with accent marks on the E and the A.
A cliché is an overused phrase. Often a cliché started as a common phrase but became so commonly used that people tire of hearing it. Don't judge a book by its cover is an example of a cliché. And cliché is a French word too. A coup is an overthrow of the government.
In French they say coup d'état, and you can say coup d'état in English too, but it's enough to simply say coup. That means the same thing. A boardroom coup is when the board of directors of an organization fires the CEO and replaces him or her with someone new.
If you have a meeting or an appointment with someone, you might say you have a rendezvous. This is part of a very famous quote in American history.
In 1936, then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to raise American spirits during the Great Depression when he said, This generation has a rendezvous with destiny. That is a famous, famous quote.
Hungry? You might saute some vegetables and beef. That means you put it in a frying pan with just a little bit of oil. And just before eating, it's very, very common in English to say, Bon Appetit. Just a quick note on the accent marks. Most English keyboards don't have a way to enter accent marks.
On a computer, you can usually insert them from the menus in Microsoft Word or find the keyboard shortcut on the web. If you're on Windows, there's a keyboard setting called English International, which lets you enter accent marks using other keys on the keyboard, but most native English speakers don't know how to use this.
A lot of them don't even know how to enter an accent mark at all. And so it's very common for these French words to be written without their accent marks in emails and informal documents. This was the second episode of our February theme, "Funny Words in English."
Episode 747 was about words or phrases from Latin, and then next week you'll learn about some funny contractions. A contraction like "can't" or "don't" combines two words, but there are a few contractions that don't behave that way.
I know that you know at least one of them. Let's see if you know the other two or three that will be next week on Plain English. But for now, our time together is coming to an end. The full transcript, exercises, translations, and more are all at plainenglish.com/750.
We'll be back on Thursday with a new story. See you then, or maybe I should just say au revoir. Listen up if you speak Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, or Turkish.
One of the most frustrating things about listening and reading in a second language is being confused by unfamiliar words or phrases. When you listen to plain English or when you read the transcript, you probably encounter some words you don't know. When that happens, you have a few options. You can stop the audio, go look up the definition,
then return to the episode, find your place, and press play again, but that's exhausting. Or you can just skip it and be confused. That's no fun either. But what if you could see the translation of the word into your language instantly without having to stop the audio, without having to look anything up?
Well, you can at plainenglish.com. For each episode, we translate about 100 words and phrases from English to nine languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Turkish. And we highlight those words in blue.
All you have to do is hover your mouse over the highlighted word and you'll see the translation instantly. It works great on mobile too. It really makes listening a lot more satisfying and it's a great way to expand your vocabulary in English.
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