Brian Steel’s Soapbox

A significant amount of the English lexicon is – or was – French. In addition to all the words which were fully absorbed in the first centuries following the radical change of government in 1066, many other words and phrases have been absorbed or borrowed down the ages. They still keep arriving. Some of the more recent have kept their French spelling (sometimes written accents as well) and an approximate French pronunciation. We come across such terms in our reading and listening or we use them in our speech and, more often, our writing.

After that début, faute de mieux, if you would like a concise desktop aide-mémoire for many of these terms (with a novel system of pronunciation glosses), I invite you to download and enjoy the collection of 600 terms which I made available some time ago.

Perhaps you would be kind enough to supplement my list by sending in suggestions, and corrections, to “ompukalani@hotmail.com“.

Here is a brief sample for your dégustation.

Merci bien and à bientôt.

Bonne chance.

Sample: abba-twa(r), ah la cart, ah-pray-voo, aid duh com,

boo-fong, cash, ca-shay, coo duh grass, crow-Kay, day-tont, dee-stang-gay, dew zhoor, etc.

(A Cheat Sheet is provided)

The full lists are available at: http://briansteel.net/writings/frenchwordsinenglish2005.pdf