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In French, it means "beginning." The English meaning of the word exists only when in the plural form: [faire] ses débuts [sur scène] (to make one's débuts on the stage). The English meaning and usage also extends to sports to denote a player who is making their first appearance for a team or at an event. décolletage a low-cut neckline ...
The fact this it derives from the French does not mean it's not part of the English language. The whole point of this article, as I understand it, is that phrases move across languages. People start using phrases from other languages, often because there is no equivalent in (in this case) English.
Douglas Hofstadter gave an example of a failure of machine translation: the English sentence "In their house, everything comes in pairs. There's his car and her car, his towels and her towels, and his library and hers." might be translated into French as "Dans leur maison, tout vient en paires. Il y a sa voiture et sa voiture, ses serviettes et ...
Note that the word in French has retained the general meaning: e.g. château in French means "castle" and chef means "chief". In fact, loanwords from French generally have a more restricted or specialised meaning than in the original language, e.g. legume (in Fr. légume means "vegetable"), gateau (in Fr. gâteau means "cake").
Conversely, the Académie française as an institution absolutely guards the French language. This hurdle in the creation of new words allows time and space for English neologisms to enter common usage in the French language. In many cases, l'Académie publishes French alternatives or creates French neologisms, however these words often fail to ...
For example, in French the sentence "I want you to come" translates to Je veux que vous veniez (lit. "I want that you come", come being in the subjunctive mood). However, "I want to come" is simply Je veux venir, using the infinitive, just as in English. In Russian, sentences such as "I want you to leave" do not use an infinitive.
Franglais is commonly spoken in French-language schools in Ontario and Alberta, as well as in DSFM (Division scolaire franco-manitobaine) schools in Manitoba, where students may speak French as their first language but will use English as their preferred language, yet will refer to school-related terms in French specifically (e.g.
Download as PDF; Printable version; In other projects ... everything that is not actually an article about a word or phrase. See as example Category:English words ...