Nice hat!

Well, hello.  I am a terrible blog owner.  Blogs should be allowed to run free and I keep mine couped up and neglected.  I should have realized it was going to be a bigger responsibility when I got it.  Here's a blog post I started a few weeks ago and now have time to finish.  Other upcoming posts: cupcake for two challenge, Carson's Goodwill sale haul, and probz new hair pics.  On the learning front: you're gonna learn some physics because I need to learn some physics.

This is style-related only in the origin of the thought that spurred such an idea for such a blog.

SO I'M SITTING THERE, thinking about whatever, and the idea of prêt-à-porter came to mind.  It pretty much translates to "ready to wear" and refers the factory-made clothes that make up 95% of my- and almost everyone else's- wardrobe, as opposed to haute couture or bespoke clothing which pretty much no one can afford.

ANYWAY... this isn't about clothes.  This is about hats.  Little hats.  Like the one that the e in prêt-à-porter is wearing.  Isn't it cute?  It's a circumflex.

IT IS TIME: to learn some French language history.

The circumflex dropped itself from the English language a long ass time ago but it's used a lot in the French language.  It's considered an "accent mark" but it doesn't do anything to the sound of the word (okay it does, but not all of the time) so WHY THE HELL IS IT THERE?  Because French people like little hats?  Yes.

But also, it's there to signify that once, a long time ago, there was another letter there and people stopped pronouncing it and it started being spelled with out it.  Some French linguists of the time were all like "fuck that!" but there was nothing they could do, times-a-changing, but put a little tombstone where the letter used to be.

The most common missing letter is s*.

anglais	français
hospital	hôpital
hostel	hôtel
forest	forêt
beast	bête
feast	fête

Yay!  Now you've learned some French words that are easy to remember because they're almost English words.


Prête doesn't have an English equivalent per-se, but is similar to a word we are familiar with.  Presto.


*The accent aigu ´ is also sometimes used when s is missing, like the French word for "spice", épice.