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.
The fascinating history of French words that have entered the English language and the fertile but fraught relationship between English- and French-speaking cultures across the world
English has borrowed more words from French than from any other modern foreign language. French words and phrases-such as à la mode, ennui, naïveté 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. "Who needs ennui when we have old-fashioned boredom? . . . Scholar's émigrés often manage to be posh and phoney at the same time, while still carrying a kind of precision it would be hard to find without them. . . . [In Émigrés] words have historical lives and tell us stories we may not know how to hear."---Michael Wood, London Review of Books "A well-researched, convincing account of how our language has welcomed foreign words-but not always their native speakers." "Scholar . . . reflects thoughtfully and sometimes surprisingly on the use of French words in English. . . . Given the current interest in immigration, Scholar's book on immigrant words is erudite, witty, and surprisingly timely." "Like the émigré lexical items themselves, Emigrés crackles with hidden energy and is worth serious study." "The émigrés that Scholar highlights-à la mode, galanterie, naïveté, ennui, and caprice-don't assimilate and, in this act of resistance, reveal new ways of being."---Meghan K. McGinley, AmeriQuests "This thoughtful summation of how much English owes to French, and other languages, has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi and cultural relevance."---David Caddy, Tears in the Fence "[A] lively and always entertaining book. . . . Although Professor Scholar clearly has a wealth of learning at his fingertips, enjoyment of Émigrés need not be limited to academic readers. The book will be readily understood by academic and non-specialist readers alike. . . . The habit of using émigré words is infectious: for his sang-froid, savoir faire, and bonhomie in guiding us on this voyage through the complexities of our national love-hate relationship with French-and the French-we are all indebted to Richard Scholar."---Annette Tomarken, H-France Review "The 'émigrés' of this engaging book . . . occupy an uneasy centre ground between donor and borrower language, being neither French nor fully integrated into English. This ambiguity, Richard Scholar arg
