A little bit of French has long been a sign of culture in English (never mind how much of our vocabulary comes from French). We like to drop in the occasional cultured phrase… and many of us aim to be particular about the pronunciation… including some people who don’t really know the original French pronunciation. I have pronunciation tips for 64 French terms that get tossed around in English, not always accurately. This doesn’t include food-related terms; I’ll do a separate video for those. Today I cover aide-de-camp, au contraire, au naturel, avant-garde, Beaux-Arts, Bell Époque, bête noire, bon voyage, boudoir, bric-à-brac, bricolage, cache, cachet, carte blanche, cause célèbre, chaise longue, cherchez la femme, clique, concierge, couloir, coup d’état, coup de grâce, crèche, cul-de-sac, de rigueur, déjà vu, eau de toilette, en pointe, en route, esprit de corps, fait accompli, femme fatale, fin de siècle, fleur-de-lis, haute couture, idée fixe, je ne sais quoi, joie de vivre, laissez-faire, lèse majesté, lingerie, ménage à trois, naïveté, noblesse oblige, nom de plume, nouveau riche, œuvre, oh là là, papier-mâché, pas de deux, petite bourgeoisie, pied-à-terre, prêt-à-porter, prix fixe, quelle horreur, raison d’être, roman à clef, roué, sacrebleu, sang-froid, savoir-faire, tête-à-tête, trompe-l’œil, and vis-à-vis.
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