First, passing a high school course doesn't signify much knowledge. What do you have to do to fail? Surely not enough to ensure you know the phrase underlying the initialism "RSVP." I'll bet you could pass without even knowing how to say "please."
But more importantly, is there anything about French that makes it wrong for a person speaking English to use "RSVP" as a noun? I find my answer in the Oxford English Dictionary:
Clearly, it's completely correct and solidly English, to use "RSVP" as a noun. It's been used as a noun since 1850. The oldest attested usage as a verb is from 1942.
If you're going to get snooty and look down on others, you'd better make sure you're correct... especially if you're posing as an expert on etiquette.
The first letter in that column — before the haricots verts — is about a child's pronoun preferences. I was considering blogging about that, but perhaps you've had enough of that grammar lesson and prefer the one I chose. One or the other — it's all more or less eating your vegetables.
In case you're interested, there are some elderly family members who try to remember to use the child's "they/them" preference, but they forget sometimes, and the child "will either aggressively correct the offender or refuse to respond." Now, the letter-writer finds herself/himself "hesitant to converse with them." It hasn't worked to ask for "grace in the transition" — that is, the transition from speaking one way to speaking another — but the child is focused on themself and the parent — singular — is backing them up, defending "this aggressive approach to 'prevent them from being disrespected.'"
The etiquette expert gives no useful advice, just acknowledges the hypocrisy about showing/demanding respect and — hoping the child matures — saying nothing about the awful parent.
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I feel like Deirdre McCloskey's wife and children handled this sort of thing properly: if you don't speak to someone at all, then you don't need to use pronouns.
Although I'm also puzzled because I was taught that it was rude to speak of someone in the third person when they are physically present. And I have no way of knowing what pronouns people use for me when I'm not physically present.
It must really salt her that the French leave their cars in le parking, end the day with le happy hour, and call samedi and dimanche le week-end.
Sorry, "themself" is not a word. "Them" is plural, "self" is singular. To pretend that this has somehow become a new word is foolish, especially for someone who relies on the OED.
I'm with Jordan Peterson on refusing to acknowledge all the new pronoun nonsense. Any descendant of mine who goes that route can look forward to disinheritance. Life is too short.
Interesting point about the kid working on its* narcissism with passive-aggressive pronoun games. Kids are always looking for ways to reduce the imbalance of power with adults, and getting/keeping attention is a constant battle space. If they can contrive a problem like this, and then tweak Ma or Pa or Grandma by screeching in outrage or sullenly refusing to respond, many will do it. They're just being jackasses.
For the nominal adults in this scene the real question is, what will they do about it? There's a simple, healthy, time-tested solution. But these days how many nominal adults remember it and will avail themselves of it?
______
* See what I did there? It wants to be special, let's treat it as special.
The parent is terrified. They (she?) knows their child is messed up and they don't know how to fix it. That fear and despair manifests as aggression and defensiveness. Patience, grandma.
Also, the child is a snotty brat. Its parent has set no boundaries. What do you expect?
And haricots verts are green beans. Did Miss Manners snootily translate incorrectly, or did Althouse transpose for clarity?
I wonder whether Ma. Martin is just nonplussed by the question of how to respond to an older relative's "mistake." Certainly she has addressed that point in the past when the mistake didn't have to do with a young person's demands for attention sand compliance. Wish I could remember an example...
I just looked for my copy of Miss Manners' Guide To the Turn of the Millennium, and it's not where I thought it was.
Is the headline of this post supposed to be "unaccountably"?
"The origin of the term "zydeco" is most often attributed to the folk expression "les haricots sont pas sales" (the beans are not salted), a saying that reflected those hard times when people could not even afford to put salt pork in their pot of beans." - https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/performing-arts/music-history/zydeco
And many other citations. We just used it in culinary to boost up the price of wedding meals. I still listen to zydeco music and traveled to Louisiana and far away places to listen and dance to it, even joining Steve Apple's Pet de Kat Krewe, a loosely-organized bunch of festies who would only meet other members at festivals by the wearing of shirts, hats and carrying a pole with a facsimile of a dead kat atop it.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
Also, "haricots verts" does not mean "string beans", it means "green beans".
(Yes, string beans are green beans. But 'vert' does not mean 'string', it means 'green'.
I know this, and I never took French at all.)
I see from the OED excerpt posted that Country Wedding, in 2004, was already using "invites" to mean "invitations." Another verb-to-noun transition that's already at least twenty years old. Would have ruined the 1965 meter of "When your mother sends back all your invitations," though.
The 1883 attestation reminds me of the (almost) lost art of the calling card. In the past, those various bent corners told the visited something important about the visitor. Today, the inattention to corners tells the visitor something important about the visited.
The 1883 attestation reminds me of the (almost) lost art of the calling card. In the past, those various bent corners told the visited something important about the visitor. Today, the inattention to corners tells the visitor something important about the visited.
Sigivald said...
Also, "haricots verts" does not mean "string beans", it means "green beans".
(Yes, string beans are green beans. But 'vert' does not mean 'string', it means 'green'.
But to say "haricots verts means string beans" is NOT to say "haricots verts translates to string beans". It means "the thing they call haricots verts are the things others call "string beans". Perfectly true and valid.
I get a lot of invitations that end with "Please RSVP." I wouldn't have thought that you needed to pass HS French to know what see-voo-play means, even if you can't spell it, and yet here we are.
The problem with learning French is that they have a word for everything.
"What do you have to do to fail?"
Wear a MAGA hat to class.
Just guessing here. The happy part of that child’s life is over.
It is my mouth and my eyes, so I will use whatever fucking pronoun I want to use for you. Deal?
My high school French teacher used to call me up to the front of the room every year and tell me "Kirbette I am willing to give you a C if you promise not to take my class next year.". I took four years of French. My senior year he asked me why I kept taking the class. I gave him two reasons. First it was a guaranteed easy C for little effort. Secondly, the school paid for me take at least two or three trips to Paris and Normandy every year to translate for the other kids. (I went to an American high school in England.) By the second semester of my junior year, I was spending most of those trips partying with the bus drivers.
It must really salt her that the French leave their cars in le parking, end the day with le happy hour, and call samedi and dimanche le week-end.
It pisses off the French government. They actually pay people and have a commission to discourage the use of non-French terms and create French replacements for them. The problem is the French replacements are not nearly as concise and convenient. Indeed one of the main reasons English has become the dominant language worldwide is its ability to integrate (and outright theft of) foreign terms, and the other being the ease of creating useful new terms.
Judith Martin is now eighty-four years old and I believe her column has been taken over by her children, which explains why it’s not as surefooted as it used to be.
"Sorry, "themself" is not a word. "Them" is plural, "self" is singular."
"You" takes a plural verb, but we still say "yourself" when we're referring to one person. Do you reject the phrase "Do it yourself"?
Anyway, I deliberately wrote "themself" to comply with the child's preference, lest I catch hell.
"I'm with Jordan Peterson on refusing to acknowledge all the new pronoun nonsense."
You are misrepresenting JP's position. He said he'd try to go along with new pronouns for interpersonal reasons but he objected to being required by his employer to rigorously adhere to preferred pronouns.
The problem with learning French is that they have a word for everything.
A habit acquired through a diverse palate, which oversamples its environment and dilutes its significance.
"Is the headline of this post supposed to be "unaccountably"?"
Oh! I would have never caught that.
Thanks.
Fixed.
"lest I catch hell"
Catching hell from . . .?
I don't blame you. But it is telling, isn't it, that not using nonsense word demanded by a stranger, in a context that does not concern that stranger, could nonetheless trigger "hell."
Ok,
1st off.. I would NEVER respond to ANYONE referring to me in the 3rd person.. that's just rude.
2nd off.. my grandma Frequently referred to me using my brother's name.. on account of because she was old; didnt mind one bit.
3rd off.. i had
2 YEARS of French
2 YEARS of German
And 2 YEARS of (college) Spanish..
I can't speak any of them.
Je non parly franchy
Ich niche spreche dutch
Yo no habla espanio
"Interesting point about the kid working on its* narcissism with passive-aggressive pronoun games. Kids are always looking for ways to reduce the imbalance of power with adults, and getting/keeping attention is a constant battle space. If they can contrive a problem like this, and then tweak Ma or Pa or Grandma by screeching in outrage or sullenly refusing to respond, many will do it. They're just being jackasses."
This is a good point. It's something some kids might get involved in insincerely and for the purpose of jerking adults around. It's the adults' fault if they are standing down and accepting abuse from children or treating their children as if they have special wisdom because they've adopted a challenging gender identity.
We need to bring back the Novel of Manners.
This is an all-star post.
And when did French lose its status as the Lingua Franca?
I appreciate Ms Manners rearguard effort to make French the preferred tongue among the American Aristocracy.
And let’s get rid of third person singular pronouns altogether.
I looked up haricots verts and apparently they are a special French variety of bean - slender, long, elegant and young (picked early in the season), they are slightly blanched and lightly tossed in a lightly-dressed, light tossed salad. I see them under a beach umbrella in Cannes. But the beans you and I pushed around our plates long ago in another century are Blue Lake beans - short, stout and genetically programmed to maintain their shape in a school or hospital steam table. Cast a cold eye on alleged haricot verts, my townspeople. Late in the season, they will be Blue Lake beans escaping from their destined place of hiding under your fork and transbeaning in light, bright salads.
On first reading I took the snarky comment to refer to the fact that RSVP in modern usage appears to refer to a response rather than the request ("did we send in our RSVP for the kid's party yet?") which is rather gauche (to keep the theme going).
The invitor sends the RSVP, the invitee sends either an acceptance or a regrets.
Then I saw I had misread things, however that did not stop me from posting.
It's something some kids might get involved in insincerely and for the purpose of jerking adults around.
My wife was going through the playbill of a local HS production and commented about how many she/they or he/they combinations she found. I was not particularly surprised because for one thing it is a group of theater students so they would naturally gravitate towards doing things like that, and because it is likely seen as the trendy/transgressive thing to do these days.
Isn't it very poor manners to criticize the way in which people talk?
What a hypocrite.
I tried to drop high school french early in the fourth (?) year, because I had discovered I was not cut out for languages (one of my problems was I had ignored English grammar when they were teaching it a few years prior, so when I was told a particular french word was the past participle, I had little idea what that meant). The high school counselor informed me if I stuck it out, I would not have to take a foreign language in college. I stuck it out.
Chatgpt Uber alley.
"...haricots verts..."
I misread that as harlots verts and wondered what Orion slave women had to do with this.
I almost forgot - Miss Manners disapproved of "RSVP" generally. That is, she disapproves of the need to put "RSVP" at the bottom of invitations. People simply ought to indicate their acceptance or regret without having to be told.
But, she conceded, here we are.
When she was waiting her own stuff, she didn't entirely eschew snark, but she tended to reserve it for people who thought "manners" were a way to get other people to dance to their tune or a way to shame or exclude people. She was, as I've said here before, a staunch supporter of American etiquette (as opposed to European), which was purposely intended to minimize class differences.
She also deplored the move toward the kind of "informality" that might be intended to reduce class differences even more but instead results in confusion and in a highlighting of income differences (they being a proxy for old world class distinctions), like "beach formal" or "dressy casual" on invitations. We just had to attend an event at this year's Houston Rodeo where the dress code was "rodeo dressy" or something like that - in practice, that ranged from men in suits to men dressed literally like Rip from Yellowstone, from women in cocktail attire to women in cutoff shorts and tank tops. The only common denominator was Western hats and boots. It sort of looked like a costume party.
A cousin's wedding some years ago was "resort." Just "resort." So some people wore nice dresses or nice trousers and linen shirts, and some wore baggy shirts and t-shirts with beer ads or short-shorts and belly shirts.
Maybe there is a place for the third person instead of the second. "I didn't mean to insult the large person standing in front of me." Less personal...?
My father spoke pretty good college French which is no doubt why they only had him fighting in Holland and Germany. Surprised he wasn't sent to the Pacific.
Being too beat up to go west after VE Day, he was assigned to units in France awaiting shipment home and meantime trying to keep a lid on things.
He said the average Frenchman didn't speak "French". "Comment ca va?" (Sorry I couldn't get the little tail on the "c") which means more or less literally "how goes it with you?" is mostly pronounced "s'va". And worse. It was said that French was the second language of half the French soldiers showing up for WW I. First was their provincial dialect and then French as taught in school.
Obviously, mixing the two in pronunciation would end up a dog's breakfast.
In many cases, a Frenchman had to make the choice to speak "French" instead of French when speaking to an official or someone from out of town who was trying to speak "French".
It's as if half the Americans you run into outside the big cities speaks as if from the Smokies, the Ozarks, the far Southwest, the High Line (Rte 2), down east Maine, New Jersey, New Orleans, various areas within NYC, etc.
I was pretty sure that RSVP meant Right Wing Death Squad in French.
I just remembered I need a haricot. Off to the coiffeur for me.
Not a "he" or a "she"? Then you are an "it" and no modification to English usage is necessary.
In my neck of teh woods, RSVP means Roast Skunk Very Possible.
It’s an enticement for some, deal breaker for others…
It is typically American to use acronyms to save time speaking.
It is typically French to say "s'il vous plait" so quickly that it takes no more time than RSVP.
Vive la difference!
Also, "haricots verts" does not mean "string beans", it means "green beans".
Oh, please. If I were to state that "pomme frites" is the French for "french fries," would you correct me and say, "'Pomme frites' doesn't mean 'french fries'; it means 'fried potatoes.'"" Or would you be even more pedantic, and say that "'pomme frites' means 'fried apples'"?
Original Mike,
The problem with learning French is that they have a word for everything.
No, it's Germans who have a word for everything, b/c however convoluted it is, in German you can always make a noun out of it. This is why Guinness Book, &c. stick to words used in English.
one of my problems was I had ignored English grammar when they were teaching it a few years prior, so when I was told a particular french word was the past participle, I had little idea what that meant
I'm a bit surprised. Foreign language class is often (if not usually) the first place students learn *any* grammar in a serious, systematic way. Teachers usually know better than to assume their students know much about the grammar of their native language.
Althouse,
"You" takes a plural verb, but we still say "yourself" when we're referring to one person. Do you reject the phrase "Do it yourself"?
That is because "you" can be either singular or plural. Obviously, you know this. So what you are arguing is that "them," like "you," ought also to be both singular and plural. There is a case to be made for that, but so far you (singular) haven't made it.
I love haricot vert but the rubes think green beans are the same. Rubes...
...so, how am I supposed to eat them?
Maynard, true. Which is tough on the ear of a person trained in "French".
Ann - you OED.d it! (OED, v.).
miss-manners
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