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French language

Friday’s French – blocage

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I’m introducing an Australian acquaintance to Jean Michel. “Bonjour”,  she says, then turning to me, somewhat flustered, “I’m tongue-tied. How do I say that in French?”

“Langue coupée”, I say rather doubtfully. “No, I know, je suis bloquée, j’ai un blocage.” “Ah, then it doesn’t mean the same as the English word ‘blockage'”, she laughs.

Definitely not!

Bloquer et blocage are actually used quite a lot in French and are often rather annoying to translate into English.

La porte est bloquée : I can’t get the door open.

Il s’est garé trop près, il a complètement bloqué la sortie : he parked too close to me and stopped me getting out.

Bloquer la vis: turn the screw until it won’t go any further.

Il faut bloquer la porte avec une chaise : you have to keep the door open with a chair.

So how do you say “blockage” in French? In the medical sense, it’s obstruction except when it’s intestinal and then it’s occlusion.

You can sometimes use boucher as well e.g. l’évier est bouché: the drain’s blocked.

I should also mention that people are often intimidated about speaking French in front of me, but they shouldn’t be. I’m always so grateful that they can talk to Jean Michel who is a victim of the atrocious French language teaching system and has a poor memory for vocabulary. Remember – I was once a beginner too!

French language, Loire Valley, Loire Valley châteaux

Friday’s French – chateaux and castles

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When is a castle not a castle? When it’s a chateau.

Château de Chaumont
Château de Chaumont

The two words have the same Latin origin – castellum, meaning fortress. The transformation from ca to cha in French is very common : cat/chat, cauldron/chaudron, cart/charrette, etc. In château, the “s” has done its usual disappearing act and turned into a circumflex e.g. pasta/pâte, feast/fête, master/maître. Then the “l” has been vocalised which means that it has become a vowel, which is another typical change, witness by camel/chameau and cauldron/chaudron above.

What is generally called a castle in English is actually a château fort in French. Prime examples are Chinon and Angers. Fort means strong and is obviously at the origin of fort/fort and fortress/forteresse. We have our Anglosaxon word stronghold. Châteaux forts had moats/fosses, ramparts/ramparts, towers/tours and keeps/donjons.

Château d'Angers
Château d’Angers

A château does not have to be fortified, nor even be royal, so what can and cannot be described in French as a château is somewhat nebulous.

The châteaux in the Loire Valley, such as Chenonceau, Chaumont and Chambord, were never built to offer protection but they were mostly owned and built by royalty. Others, such as Azay le Rideau and Villandry, were often stately homes built by rich financiers and such like with all the trappings of a château. I guess they could roughly be described as pleasure castles.

Château d'Azay le Rideau
Château d’Azay le Rideau

The plural of château in French is châteaux, but in English you can choose between châteaux and chateaus and there’s no obligation to keep the circumflex or chapeau as it’s often called in French.

There are two other common uses of the word château. In the Bordeaux area (bordeaux wine is written with a small letter, by the way, in both French and English), all vineyards are châteaux whether big or small. The same does not apply to other wine-growing areas in France (but the small letter still applies – champagne from Champagne, burgundy/bourgogne from Burgundy/Bourgogne, chinon from Chinon).

Château d'eau
Château d’eau

Then there is the château d’eau which is a water tower and, to me, is the strangest use of the word. They certainly don’t look like castles. I have to be honest and say that I had never noticed any water towers in Australia but in France, you can’t miss them!

Last, by not least, we have the château de cartes which is our humble house of cards.

French customs, French language

Friday’s French – cloche

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One of the most significant differences between French and English technical vocabulary is that the French terms often describe appearance while the English terms refer to purpose or use.

A prime example is cloche. It’s original meaning is bell, as in church bell, with clochette used to signify the smaller version. Church bells live in clochers, there being no distinction between the pointy ones (steeples) and the square ones (church towers).

cheverny_clocher

However, it is also means the lid used to cover a plate to keep the contents hot or to cover a cheese platter, because it roughly looks like a bell.

This has given rise to derivatives such as déclocher, to uncover a plate.

There is a verb clocher that actually has nothing to do with cloche and derives from low Latin clocca, whereas clocher comes from the popular Latin cloppicare meaning “to limp”. It has given a series of familiar expressions meaning that something isn’t right.

Qu’est-ce qui cloche? = what’s up ? what’s gone wrong ?

Il y a quelque chose qui  cloche (in which someone is saying) = Something’s not right. That doesn’t make sense.

Il y a quelque chose qui cloche dans le moteur = There’s something wrong with the engine.

Yesterday we were visiting Château de Villesavin near Chambord and came across another type of cloche or globe in the bridal museum.

cloche_room

At first glance, I thought they were graveyard flowers, which seemed an odd thing to collect, but Jean Michel said his grandmother had one so I took a second look. They were used to keep the bride’s headpiece after the wedding and have a high symbolic content.

It was the bride’s mother who designed and gave the globe to her daughter.

two_cloches

Nearly all of them had mirrors. A mirror means sincerity, only reflecting what it sees. The large mirror in the middle is the marriage mirror, the reflection of life. The small rectangular mirrors are the number of years the couple courted. The small losenge-shaped mirrors are the number of children wanted I (don’t know who decided that though, the bride or the bride’s mother!)

newly_weds

Inside the globes, doves are the symbol of peace, ivy leaves of attachment, grapevine leaves of abundance and prosperity ; oak symbolises strength, love and health, linden fidelity (which is why linden trees are often planted at the entrance of a property), clover means happiness, a sheaf of wheat is to remind the husband that he has to work every day of his life to keep his wife and children happy and daisies are the traditional flowers of lovers.

Does these exist in English-speaking countries?

Closerie Falaiseau, France, French customs, French language, Loire Valley

A Neighbourhood Party – New French Words – Holidaying in the Loire Valley

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For this Wednesday’s Bloggers Round-up, I’ve chosen a description of France’s neighbours’ day by Phoebe from Lou Messugo, the latest French words to be included in the Larousse and Robert dictionaries by Stéphanie from Blog in France and, to finish up, a guest post I wrote on visiting the Loire Valley for Carolyn from Holidays to Europe. Enoy!

A Neighbourhood Party

by Phoebe from Lou Messugo, a traveller, francophile, expat, mum and foodie now living in Roquefort les Pins where she runs a gîte after many years of travelling and living in Asia, Eastern Europe and Australia

neighbourhood_partyIt was around 9 o’clock on a lovely sunny evening at the end of May when four young Singaporeans appeared at the end of the lane, dragging heavy suitcases and dodging the potholes in the gravel.  It was an unusual sight as 40 or so of us were enjoying an outdoor aperitif.  Our lane is not made for suitcase dragging – it’s barely made for 4 wheel-drive cars – and nobody ever attempts to navigate it on foot with large luggage.  That was from our point of view.  As from these strangers’ point of view, I imagine they didn’t expect quite such a public arrival at Lou Messugo nor so much going on in a quiet village street.  Yes, these were the latest guests turning up several hours late and without their car right in the middle of the annual neighbourhood street party! Read more

New French words

by Stephanie, the Llamalady, from Blog in France, an Irish llama and alpaca breeder living in the centre of France, who also runs a carp fishery and a holiday gite

The 2014 editions of Le Petit Larousse and Le Petit Robert will be coming out in early June and here are a few of the new words you’ll find in them.

chelou: this is the verlan (French slang that reverses the two halves of a word) for louche = shifty, seedy, weird

choupinet = cute, sweet

flash-mob = well, flash-mob ie a group of people who organise via the internet or mobile phone some sort of display in a public place

Googliser = to use Google to find information

nomophobe: great word this! It describes someone who is addicted to their mobile and can’t cope with being without it.

textoter = to communicate by text

Read more

Holidaying in the Loire Valley

by Rosemary Kneipp guest posting for Holidays to Europe, an Australian based business passionate about sharing their European travel expertise and helping travellers to experience the holiday in Europe they have always dreamed of

chaumont_outsideChenonceau, Chambord, Chaumont, Cheverny. Do these names mean anything to you? They are just four of the many pleasure castles or châteaux in the rich undulating landscape of the Loire Valley, just 200 kilometres south of Paris, many of them overlooking France’s longest river, which runs from Ardèche in the Massif Central to Saint Nazaire on the Atlantic seaboard.

The Loire, with its many sandbanks, is no longer navigable and much is untamed. Because it easily overflows its banks, a long dyke runs along each side, with very few constructions. Charming villages dot the countryside in between larger towns such as Amboise and Blois each of which has its own château. Read more

French language

Friday’s French – comme une vache espagnole

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Susan from Days on the Claise published a post recently about a florist shop called Vachement Fleurs. She also mentioned in a comment that her neighbour once told her she spoke French comme une vache espagnole – like a Spanish cow. What an insult! But it set me thinking about vache and its variants.

Vachement Fleurs (photo by Susan Walter
Vachement Fleurs (photo by Susan Walter)

Vache espagnole (1627) probably comes from Basque espagnol which is more understandable though still rude.

I have a French friend whose favourite expression – I can hear him saying it as I write – is “Oh, la vache !” which is his empathetic reaction to anything unpleasant.

When you speak of someone as a vache as in quelle vache ! – it’s very close of our “what a sod/swine/cow/bastard”. Vache or grosse vache (fat cow) was also used in the past to designate a prostitute.

Vacherie was originally a herd of cows but now means something nasty or bitchy. Dire des vacheries means making nasty remarks. Quelle vacherie de temps could be used very appropriately to describe the horrendous weather we’re having to put up with at the moment in France. Il m’a fait une vacherie means that he played a dirty trick on me.

The adjective vachement developed along the same lines and was originally negative but now is simply used for emphasis. You can say il faisait vachement mauvais (it was really awful weather) just as easily as il faisait vachement beau (it was really good weather).  A very common expression is vachement sympa which means “really cool”.

vachement_sympa

Jean Michel says he never uses vachement, that it’s not very elegant, but I’ve heard all sorts of people use it and I’m sure he does too.

The first time I heard the word was in Noumea back in the early seventies when I was still at university, in the expression vachement chouette, roughly meaning “it’s pretty good”, which is very strange because a chouette is an owl (the sort without those pointed tufts on their head called aigrettes in French – otherwise they’re called hibou) . Afterwards, we all used to go around saying “it’s cowly owl” and laughing uproariously. We were very young and silly in those days …

Chouette (no pointed tufts)
Hibou (with pointed tufts)

I checked the origin of chouette but nobody knows why it started to be used in the early 1800s to mean something pleasant. Rabelais used it to describe a loose woman. A connection maybe?

Chouette - without pointed tufts
Chouette – without pointed tufts

Incidentally, vachement fleurs doesn’t appear to have any particular significance. I don’t know whether it’s connected to Vachement Fleur, a chain of florists in Belgium, but they don’t have an “s” on “fleur”.

French customs, French language

Friday’s French – la bise

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After my post on Bonjour, I’ve been asked to write about la bise, one of the great mysteries of French social interaction. I’ve heard it described as the air kiss which isn’t a bad definition. You lean over towards the other person and touch first one cheek and then the other with your own cheek, kissing the air with or without a smack or a movement of the lips as you do so. The number varies from two to four and is both regional and personal.

Me giving the bise to Françoise - note my right hand
Me giving the bise to Françoise – note my right hand

I’d like to start by saying that the more casually you deal with the situation, the easier it will be.

One of the great dilemmas facing Anglosaxons is HOW MANY.

Well, it’s up to you to decide. Why should the other person always determine the number of bises and not you just because they’re French? Yet that is what most Anglosavons believe.

Going towards the left cheek
Going towards the left cheek

You can choose the usual number practised in the area you live in – a map has even been drawn up!  – and if someone doesn’t reciprocate with the same number, just laugh and say moi c’est deux or moi c’est quatre or whatever. Or you can wait and see what the other person does because the number is not only regional, but also depends on social class, the number being less the higher you go.

Which side to start with can be a problem as well. It’s very strange, in my opinion, that not everyone starts on the same side. I always go to the left first (right cheek), which seems to work most of the time, but occasionally you have someone who starts on the right. It would seem that left-handers have a tendency to go in the other direction. Once again, you can let the other person initiate the procedure is you’re worried. It can also be a question of size and personality!

Jean Michel giving the bise to Françoise, starting on the rigth
Jean Michel giving the bise to Françoise, starting on the rigth

The bise is part of a whole ritual among young people, especially teenagers and you’ll see them arrive at school and do the rounds of all their friends. Even some of the boys do it among themselves which surprise Anglosaxons.

La bise is not restricted to female/female and female/male but male/male is usually only practised among men who know each other well, particularly family members.  A friend told me a very funny story about an American friend visiting her who witnessed two men – firemen at that – affectionately greet each other with the bise. She nearly keeled over with surprise!

Middle of bise - changing sides
Middle of bise – changing sides

Jean Michel only kisses male members of his immediate family (father, brothers, sons) and one male friend who doesn’t have any family of his own and always insists on giving the bise. It seems to be a generational thing as well, becoming more prevalent among the younger generations.

During my personal bise survey (and thank you for all your answers), many friends of my generation (50 +) complained about the fact that it has become too systematic among people who hardly know each other, such as in a gym class  or other activity. Feel perflectly free just to say Bonjour tout le monde if you don’t want to do the rounds. If challenged, you can say Je ne suis pas bisous, which roughly means means “I’m not the kissy type”.

The big no-no is kissing anyone apart from your partner on the lips and even on the cheek. It feels so strange to me now that even with my Australian family I just can’t do it and always say We’ll do it the French way.

left_mw

If you’re not sure whether or not you should give someone a bise, you can wait for them to take the initiative if they are older and take the initiative yourself if they’re younger. If they are the same age, you can choose. If you’re hesitating, it’s best to announce what you’re going to do, je vous fais la bise ou je te fais la bise so that the other person knows what’s going on.

A woman can show she doesn’t want a bise from a man by body language – not offering her cheek, extending her hand instead, avoiding eye contact, keeping her distance. A man should respect that.

Children are often taught to give kiss everyone and will sometimes proffer their lips. I personally only told my children to say bonjour verbally because I remember my French tutor at university explaining once how she hated being forced to kiss people she didn’t know as a child.

Another question is health of course. If you have a cold sore (herpes), you should, of course, not have any contact with another person, but I am always surprised to see how many people don’t respect such as simple rule. All you have to say is J’ai un bouton. The same applies is you are sick, including colds. And don’t hesitate to refuse is the other person has the sniffles.

I haven’t touched on la bise in the workplace but I need another post for that!

French customs, French language

Friday’s French – autant pour moi – au temps pour moi – sorry

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It took me a while to actually understand what this expression is all about. Autant usually means “as much as” or “as many as”, such as prenez autant que vous voulez – take as much as you want. Autant pour moi may be short for C’est autant pour moi with the general idea being “so much for me”.

I have since discovered a more plausible explanation. It seems that the real expression is au temps pour moi, of military origin where temps is the precise moment in time at which certain movements are made and distinguished by a pause when using a weapon. It’s the same idea as “marching in time” or “clapping in time”. Saying au temps pour moi is like admitting you weren’t in time.

But the origin remains a controversy and today, autant pour moi is found at least as often as au temps pour moi. The Collins-Robert bilingual dictionary gives “It’s my mistake” as a translation, which is pretty close to the idea being conveyed.

However, the real meaning is a lot subtler than that, as I have come to realise over the years. It is actually a male substitute for an apology about being wrong.

I don’t know about other Anglophone countries, but Australia is a very apologetic nation. People are always saying they’re sorry about something, even when it’s not their fault.

It’s not very French though. Je suis désolé(e) exists of course, and is used, when a woman, in particular, wants to express commisseration e.g. je suis désolée d’avoir appris que vous avez été cambriolée – I’m sorry to learn you have been burgled.

Very often, only the past participle is used, without the verb, and the meaning is much more cursory, e.g. désolé d’être en retard – sorry I’m late.

More often than not, it is used to convey exactly the opposite, Je suis désolé mais je n’irai pas – I’m sorry but I’m not going, which is also a perfectly acceptable English usage as well, the difference being that it is used more often in French.

The reflexive verb s’excuser is far more frequently used than désolé in the apologetic sense. Excusez-moi d’être en retard – literally “forgive me for being late” but more like our “I’m sorry I’m late” in terms of frequency and register.

You can also say je vous demande pardon or je vous demande de me pardonner, both of which are sincere apologies for having done something undesirable. Ditto for je vous présente mes excuses.

To apologise for being wrong is something altogether different and seems to go against the grain. This is where autant pour moi comes in. Someone makes a blatant error, insisting upon it until you prove they’re wrong. When you finally produce evidence, they say with a shrug autant pour moi.

There is another version of excusez-moi which is typically French as well : je m’excuse – literally “I excuse myself!” At least that way there is no fear of their apology being refused … It’s usually used when you’ve finally managed to wring out an apology from some one. The polite form is je vous prie de m’excuser or voulez-vous bien m’excuser. Now je m’en excuse is slightly different and conveys the idea of “I’m sorry about that”.

There are a few other synonyms out there such as contrarié , chagriné, confus, embêté and navré, each conveying a slightly different meaning.

Je suis contrariée d’être en retard : I’m sorry I’m late, with the idea that I really did want to come on time but something prevented me that I couldn’t do anything about.

Je suis chagriné d’apprendre le décès de votre père : I’m sorry to learn of your father’s decease, with the idea of being emotionally affected. It would be a bit OTT to say Je suis chagriné d’être en retard!

Je suis en retard ; je suis vraiment confus, I’m late; I’m really sorry, gives the idea that I am embarrassed about being late. It doesn’t mean “confused” of course. If you want to say “Everyone’s telling me something different. I’m confused”, you could say Tout le monde me dit quelque chose de différent. Je ne sais pas quoi penser. Confusing, huh?

Je suis embêté d’arriver en retard, I’m sorry I’m late, meaning that I am personally annoyed about not being on time and have probably missed out on something.

Je suis navré d’être en retard : I’m sorry I’m late, but I’m polite and well-educated and sincere about it, not just paying lip service.

Sorry about all that confusion – have you got it straight now? What do my French friends think?

French customs, French language

Friday’s French – S’il vous plait

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Last week, I talked about the use of bonjour in French. This week, I want to comment on another very common expression – s’il vous plaît (or s’il te plaît in the familiar form). It literally means “”if it pleases you but, like bonjour, it is not necessarily used under the same circumstances as please.

To start off with, the so-called magic word is not used as frequently in French as it is in English. A child asking for an ice-cream should say s’il te plaît maman or s’il te plaît papa. However, if he is asked if he wants an ice-cream, the answer is more likely to be oui, je veux bien and not oui, s’il te plaît. This is particularly so in the case of adults who would never say oui, s’il vous plaît but simply oui or oui, je veux bien when offered something to eat or drink. Veux is from the verb vouloir “to want” so je veux bien literally means “I want well” and is not directly translatable.

If you want to ask someone politely to help you do something, you’d say est-ce que tu veux bien m’aider and not aide-moi s’il te plaît which is much more abrupt and corresponds more to “help me, will you”.

The very frequent “yes thanks” used in English is not possible in French. You can say non, merci or just merci WHICH MEANS NO unless the context indicates otherwise, but never oui merci. I can remember when my father was in France once and we went to visit friends who didn’t speak English. He understood he was being asked if he wanted a beer and replied merci. I decided not to say anythng until he expressed surprise at not being given anything to drink!v

You’d never see a sign saying S’il vous plaît, ne mangez pas dans le bus instructing people not to eat in the bus but Veuillez ne pas manger dans le bus, veuillez being the polite command form of the verb vouloir mentioned above, which isn’t translatable either. It very roughly means “would you”. You’ll see veuillez in several contexts such as Veuillez faire l’appoint which means that you should give the exact change.

In Belgium and in the north of France, s’il vous plaît is also used when someone gives you something. For example, a waitressr will say s’il vous plaît when she sets down your plate in a restaurant. It is also used instead of je vous en prie (you’re welcome, literally I pray you) in response to thank you.

Attracting the waiter's attention
Attracting the waiter’s attention

And while we’re talking of restaurants, you can use s’il vous plaît to attract the attention of a waiter, raising your hand at the same time with your fingers together (as opposed to apart when you wave).

Do you know of any other differences between the English use of please and French use of s’il vous plaît?

Flowers & gardens, French customs, French language

Friday’s French – Bonjour

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Now you might wonder why I am writing a post about something as basic as bonjour which everyone knows means “hello”.

However, Black Cat and I were having a discussion the other day about WHEN and HOW it is used in French which is quite different from the English use of hello.

Japanese cherry blossoms at Parc des Sceaux. Absolutely nothing to do with bonjour but we finally got there on Wednesday and it was breathtaking
Japanese cherry blossoms at Parc des Sceaux. Absolutely nothing to do with the subject but we finally got there on Wednesday and it was breathtaking so I wanted to share

If I am in a supermarket in Australia and want to ask the man filling the shelves where the coffee is, the most polite way is to go up to him and say, “Excuse-me, but can you tell me where the coffee is”.

Now, if I do that in France: “Excusez-moi de vous déranger, mais savez-vous où se trouve le café?“, I am likely to get a nasty look. The person will say, “Bonjour” and wait for me to reply “Bonjour“, then I have to ask the question again and will get a helpful answer.

If you go into a bakery or a butcher’s shop or even a doctor’s surgery, you should always say bonjour to the people present, and it’s even more polite to follow it with messieurs, or mesdames or messieurs dames depending on who’s present. You can also walk in and say messieurs dames without bonjour.

Just one tiny section of the Japense cherry tree grove
Just one tiny section of the Japense cherry tree grove

There is no equivalent to our good morning or good afternoon . Bon matin doesn’t exist, although bon après-midi  does (or bonne après-midi because après-midi is one of the rare words that can be both masculine and feminine and keep the same meaning) but that is something you say on leaving and  it means “have a good afternoon” which, of course, is quite different.

You can start saying bonsoir instead of bonjour from about 5 or 6 pm onwards, particularly when it’s dark in winter. Bonne nuit is only used when someone is going to bed.

So if bon après-midi means have a “good afternoon”, how to you say “have a good day?” The answer is bonne journée, as opposed to bonjour because the ée ending indicates something that is ongoing. Very occasionally, you might hear passez une bonne matinée (have a good morning) but never bonne matinée by itself ! Bonne soirée means have a good evening (or what’s left of it). Saying Au revoir. Bonne journée when you leave a shop will be very much appreciated.

The cherry blossoms form incredible bunches
The cherry blossoms form incredible bunches

Every morning when I wake up (provided we wake up at the same time) Jean Michel wishes me bonne journée. I really miss it when he gets up before me. Just before we begin to watch a film at the cinema, he says bon film and at the beginning of a holiday or weekend, he says bonnes vacances  or bon weekend.

Now what about salut? This is an informal way of saying both hello and goodbye and is not used to greet the butcher, for example.

Another thing while we’re on the subject is introducing yourself. If you’re invited to dinner and there are people you don’t know, it’s perfectly acceptable to shake their hand and say, “Bonjour, je suis David“, but it’s practically unheard of to give your name otherwise unless asked.

For example, when I wasn’t strong enough to help Jean Michel get a very heavy wardrobe up the front stairs once, he went looking for help and found a man picking up his son from a birthday party next door. Neither he nor the man introduced themselves and to this day, we still don’t know his name. That, in France, is perfectly normal, but would be considered very rude in Australia.

And, I nearly forgot: you only say bonjour once to the same person the same day. After that, you say rebonjour et even just re!

I’d be interested to hear other people’s experience under similar or different circumstances.

If you want to know how to pronounce bonjour and salut, there’s a great You Tube video by French Sounds.

Next Friday: s’il vous plaît which also holds some surprises!

 

FURTHER READING

AllAboutFranceBadge_bisThis post is part of Lou Messugo’s All About France montly blog linky. For other posts on France, click on the link.

 

French language

Friday’s French – hôte

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Hôte is the strangest word because it has two opposite meanings: guest and host! So chambre d’hôte, which means Bed & Breakfast in French, is literally “guest room” while table d’hôte is the host’s table.

Le Clos Postel, one of the my favourite chambres d'hôte in the Cotentin
Le Clos Postel, one of the my favourite chambres d’hôte in the Cotentin

So, je suis votre hôte, vous êtes mes hôtes means “I am your host and you are my guests”. Of course, to avoid the ambiguity, you can say, je suis votre hôte, vous êtes mes invités, which is what most people do. The problem only exists in the masculine, by the way, because hôtesse can only mean hostess and not guest.

Now how did this come about? The reason is simple. There are two different etymologies: one comes from the Latin hospes meaning guest, which also gives hôpital and hôtel, and the other from the Old French hostage (lodging) which also comes from hospes. Now, to make things more complicated, hospes is derived from hostis (stranger, enemy). This explains the meaning of our modern word hostage (otage in French). It was the place where enemies were lodged. Have I lost you?

On another track, have you noticed that the ô in French corresponds to “os” in English: hôte: host, hôpital: hospital, hôtel: hostel? The “os” reappears in the corresponding French adjectives: hospitalier. A circumflex nearly always indicates an “s” that fell out of the language in French, so we have château: castle, bête: beast, août: August. I’m sure you can think of a few examples.

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