Your next car?
Un coupé
Should your next car be a “coupe” or a “coupé”? What kind of question is that? Well, you know, when in a French speaking country, should you ask where to get a “coupe”, you might be directed to the barber shop or to a couturier but never to a car dealership. It is because une coupe can be several different things, such as a champaign glass, a haircut or how a piece of garment is cut but it is never a car. In English, what that word refers to by many people — including the media — is called un coupé in French. Why is the accent dropped in this case and not in “soufflé”, when both terms are borrowed from French? Actually, I do not have the answer.
A number of other French words have met the same fate. Une mosquée has become a mosque and un polo shirt en cotton piqué or more simply, un polo en cotton piqué is called a cotton pique polo shirt, though some rare souls do keep the original accent. Do I need to even mention the word “resume”? Here, especially, it would have made so much more sense to keep the accents from the French word “résumé” since “to resume” –reprendre— has no common connotation with the French verb “résumer” – to summarize. Preserving the accents would have helped in making the difference. Accordingly, “un résumé”, for a French person, is a summary, while the French-borrowed English word “resume” is a curriculum vitae, commonly abbreviated to “CV”. Getting dizzy yet? Thought I would check.
Frantz Présumé
857-251-1662
