Improve your English with French!

do you want to add some french flavor to your english does that sentence give you a sense of deja vu do you know what a cliche is and why you should avoid it have you ever made a faux pas all this and more coming up but first do subscribe to the english nut if you already have thank you there are thousands of french words in english many of them seem so quintessentially english you'd be surprised to learn that they're french in origin i'm talking about words like city different person place and table it's hard to believe they're derived from french right but today i'm going to talk about three words or phrases that well look and sound french each one of them describes an interesting concept and you'll be the richer for knowing them and being able to use them both while speaking and writing has it ever happened to you that you go to a new place and get a strong feeling that you've been there before or you meet someone new and feel certain you've met her before or suddenly feel in the middle of a conversation that you've had the same conversation before except that you know that in reality you've never been to that place met that person or had that conversation this feeling of familiarity is known as deja vu deja vu means already seen in french so it's an apt phrase to describe this illusion of already having seen or experienced something it's usually a fleeting experience and it happens out of the blue it's not well understood by science in layman's terms it's best explained as a trick your memory plays on you here's how you could use it in a sentence i had a strong sense of deja vu when i entered the cathedral sometimes the phrase is used in a pejorative way to describe something that seems unoriginal for example many scenes in the movie had a sense of deja vu about them or the politicians election promises gave me a sense of deja vu if you're wondering about the marks over the e and the a in deja vu they are called accents or axon in fringe the mark tilting to the right over the e is called an axon tegu or acute accent the mark tilting to the left over the a is called an axon curve or grave accent these marks influence the pronunciation of the letters i won't get into an explanation of how exactly they impact pronunciation it's sufficient to know that the french pronunciation of this phrase is deja vu many people report having had experiences of deja vu occasionally i myself have experienced it a few times how about you fopa is a french phrase that literally means false step or misstep it's been used in english since the 1670s 4 means false and in this case means step the more common meaning of power in french is not but step is another meaning of the word and as is typical of french pronunciation the consonants at the end x and s are silent fopa means a social gaf something you say or do that causes embarrassment or offense in a social context for example mentioning the bride's ex-husband at the wedding was a four-part that i should have avoided or the president made a faux pas on a state visit when he praised the enemy country the plural of fopa is spelled the same as the singular but pronounced four pars in english though in french the plural is pronounced the same as the singular in english you could say after he made several faux pas he was asked to leave the party pho is also used in english to mean fake for example fake fur used in the making of quotes is called faux fur cliche is another word borrowed from french you can see the axon they go over the e again it's because of this accent that we pronounce the word as cliche and not cliche cliche means an idea a saying or an element of an artistic work that's been overused to the point where it seems unoriginal or loses its impact or becomes meaningless boring and irritating photographs of kittens sunsets and certain celebrities have become a cliche because we've seen them so often when you say you're as fit as a fiddle or time flies when you're having fun or all that glitters isn't gold you're using a cliche the reason people use cliches is that they're often true it's going to get worse before it gets better or life isn't fair or only time will tell all are true but if you use these phrases particularly in writing you'll be considered a poor writer one who's unoriginal the first time one of these phrases is used it seems profound after it's repeated a hundred times it makes the reader roll his eyes in annoyance the word cliche has an interesting origin it's an early 19th century french printing term it referred to a stereotype which was a printing plate that could reproduce type or images repeatedly the clicking sound that the printing process produced gave rise to the word cliche over time the word evolved from meaning text or designs repeated endlessly through printing to describing endlessly repeated ideas or phrases there's a story about a young man who went to see shakespeare's play hamlet and came away saying it had too many cliches the reason for this is that phrases like neither a borrower nor a lender b there's method in my madness and to be or not to be that is the question all originated in this play the poor young man who went to see hamlet did not know that and thought that shakespeare had filled his play with cliches how do you use the word cliche in a sentence let's say you're in a fiery argument with your partner you can tell him or her your argument is a cliche i've heard a hundred times before at least try to be original here's another example when a man is heartbroken time heals all wounds is not the cliche he wants to hear i hope the following phrase has not become a cliche though i've repeated it many times i'm the english nut bye for now [Music]

Channel: The English Nut

Views: 621

Keywords: Improve your English, The English Nut, Indian English, Grammar, Language Memes, English Fun, Funny English, pronunciation, improve vocabulary, grammar, idioms, fun facts, Google, popular, nut, language, déjà vu, faux pas, cliché, French

Id: eT3ZdCGZuaU

Length: 7min 5sec (425 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021