Franglais () or Frenglish ( ) is a French blend that referred first to the overuse of English words by French speakers and later to diglossia or the macaronic mixture of French () and English ().
Etymology
The word Franglais was first attested in French in 1959, but it was popularised by the academic, novelist, and critic René Étiemble in his denunciation of the overuse of English words in French, published in 1964. Earlier than the French term was the English label Frenglish, first recorded in 1937. Other colloquial blends for French-influenced English include Franglish (recorded from 1967), Frenchlish (1974), and Fringlish (1982).
English sense
In English, Franglais means a combination of English and French. It evokes the linguistic concepts of mixed language and barbarism. Reasons for this blend could be caused by lexical gaps, native bilingualism, populations trying to imitate a language where they have no fluency (sometimes known as creoles/pidgins), or humorous intent. Franglais usually consists of either filling in gaps in one's knowledge of French with English words, using false friends, or speaking French which (although ostensibly "French") would not be understood by a French speaker who does not also have a knowledge of English (for example, by using a literal translation of English idiomatic phrases).
Franglais may also mean a diplomatic compromise, such as the abbreviation UTC for Coordinated Universal Time.
In English humour
Chaucer's Prioress knew nothing of the French of France, but only that of Stratford-atte-Bow ('Cockney French'). Similar mixtures occur in the later stages of Law French, such as the famous defendant who "ject un brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist" ("threw a at the said Justice, which narrowly missed").
Another example in English literature is found in Henry V by William Shakespeare. In Act 3, Scene 4, a French princess is trying to learn English, but unfortunately, foot as pronounced by her maid sounds too much like (vulgar French for 'semen', or 'to have sexual intercourse' when used as a verb) and gown like (French for 'cunt', also used to mean 'idiot'). She decides that English is too obscene.
A literary example of the delight in occurs in Robert Surtees' Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities:
The 19th-century American writer Mark Twain, in Innocents Abroad, included the following letter to a Parisian landlord:
The humourist Miles Kington wrote a regular column "Let's Parler Franglais" which was published in the British magazine Punch in the late 1970s. These columns were collected into a series of books: Let's Parler Franglais, Let's Parler Franglais Again!, Parlez-vous Franglais?, Let's Parler Franglais One More Temps, The Franglais Lieutenant's Woman and Other Literary Masterpieces.
A somewhat different tack was taken in Luis van Rooten's Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript. Here, English nursery rhymes are written with meaningless French phrases which are meant to recall the sounds of the English words, and the resulting French texts are presented as a historical manuscript and given a pseudo-learned commentary.
Another classic is Jean Loup Chiflet's Sky My Husband! Ciel Mon Mari! which is a literal translation of French into English. However, in this context, the correct translation of is 'heavens...!'
In Monty Python's 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the French castle guard (John Cleese) orders, when King Arthur (Graham Chapman) does not want to go away, his fellow guards to "Fetchez la vache." The other French guards respond with "" and he repeats "Fetchez la vache!" The guards finally get it: fetch ('the cow'), which they then catapult at the Britons.