Virtual Event: Richard ScholarÉmigrés: French Words That Turned English

Naiveté. Cliché. Mirage. Ennui. Entrepreneur. Encore. Déjà vu. Souvenir. The list goes on. English has borrowed more words from French than from any other modern foreign language, and professor Richard Scholar is curious about why.

Scholar joins us in a livestreamed conversation with Kathleen Cain to share insight from his book Émigrés: French Words That Turned English. He examines the continuing history of untranslated French words in English and asks what these words reveal about the relationship between English and French speaking cultures. He posits that migrant French words are never the same for having ventured abroad, and argues that they complete English by reminding us that it is fundamentally incomplete. At a moment of resurgent nationalism in the English-speaking world, Scholar invites us to consider how much we owe the French language, and why so many of us remain ambivalent about the migrants in our midst.

Richard Scholar is Professor of French at Durham University. His books include The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe: Encounters with a Certain Something and Montaigne and the Art of Free-Thinking.

Kathleen Cain began her career in Seattle writing and producing documentaries and talk shows for television and radio before founding her own communications consulting firm, Cain Creative.

Presented by Town Hall Seattle.

About the Book

English has borrowed more words from French than from any other modern foreign language. French words and phrases—such as à la modeennuinaïveté and caprice—lend English a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that would otherwise elude the language. Richard Scholar examines the continuing history of untranslated French words in English and asks what these words reveal about the fertile but fraught relationship that England and France have long shared and that now entangles English- and French-speaking cultures all over the world.

Émigrés demonstrates that French borrowings have, over the centuries, “turned” English in more ways than one. From the seventeenth-century polymath John Evelyn’s complaint that English lacks “words that do so fully express” the French ennui and naïveté, to George W. Bush’s purported claim that “the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur,” this unique history of English argues that French words have offered more than the mere seasoning of the occasional mot juste. They have established themselves as “creolizing keywords” that both connect English speakers to—and separate them from—French. Moving from the realms of opera to ice cream, the book shows how migrant French words are never the same again for having ventured abroad, and how they complete English by reminding us that it is fundamentally incomplete.

At a moment of resurgent nationalism in the English-speaking world, Émigrés invites native Anglophone readers to consider how much we owe the French language and why so many of us remain ambivalent about the migrants in our midst.