Read Online When in French by Lauren Collins - Free Book Online

closeness of the community relied on its closedness, fostering a sort of micro-xenophobia, the threat less actual foreigners than people from other states. In Advanced Placement English, our teacher—with smudgy beauty mark and scrolled peroxide curls, rumored to be a former Playboy bunny—jettisoned the curriculum in favor of lessons in comportment.
    â€œWhat is an appropriate hostess gift?” she would ask.
    â€œA candle, a picture frame, or a box of chocolate,” we chorused back.
    â€œWith what color ink should one compose a thank-you note?”
    â€œBlack is preferred for men, blue is preferred for women.”
    Tests were a breeze. All you had to do was walk to the front of the room and demonstrate that you could correctly enunciate words like
twenty
(not “twunny”) and
pen
(avoiding “pin”).
    â€œPop quiz!” she would cry, summoning one of us to the chalkboard like a game-show hostess waving down a contestant from the stands.
    â€œWhat is the number after nineteen?”
    â€œTWEN-ty.”
    â€œWhat is the number after nine?”
    â€œTEN.”
    â€œWhat am I holding in my hand?”
    â€œA PEN.”
    â€œAll together now!”
    â€œTEN PENS!”
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    A FEW YEARS LATER, southeastern North Carolina gave rise to its own neologism. It was 2003. France had just promised to veto the United Nations Security Council’s resolution to invade Iraq. Neal Rowland, the owner of Cubbie’s, a burger joint in Beaufort—two hours north of Wilmington on Highway 17—decided to strike back. A customer had reminded him that during World War I, sauerkraut makers had euphemized their product as “liberty cabbage,” and frankfurters had been rechristened “hot dogs.” Rowland bought stickers and slapped them on top of such menu items as fries and dressing, scrawling in “freedom” wherever it had once read “French.” “At first, they thought I was crazy,” he told CNN, of the employees of the restaurant’s eleven branches across the state, as the stunt took off. “And then now, they think it’s a great idea, and all the stores have started to change—Wilmington, Greenville, Kinston, all over.”
    In Washington, a North Carolina congressman urged his colleagues to join the “freedom fries” movement. Soon, the word
French
was purged from congressional dining rooms. The French issued an eye-rolling reply: “We are at a very serious moment dealing with very serious issues, and we are not focusing on the name you give to potatoes.” They noted that
frites
were Belgian. Nonetheless, the trend caught on. The makers of French’s mustard were forced to issue a press release: “The only thing French about French’s mustard is the name.” Aboard Air Force One, President George W. Bush’s chefs served “stuffed Freedom toast,” with strawberries and powdered sugar.
    The next year, in the 2004 presidential election, Rush Limbaugh mocked John Kerry as Jean F. Chéri, a lover of Evian and brie. Tom DeLay, a wit of the era, began his fund-raising speeches with the line, “Good afternoon, or, as John Kerry might say, ‘Bonjour.’” In 2012, when Mitt Romney—who had spent two years as a missionary in Bordeaux—ran for president, the trope that foreign languages, especially French, were unpatriotic remained in evidence. An ad entitled “The French Connection” was set to accordion music. It warned, of Romney, “And just like John Kerry—he speaks French.” The gotcha shot was a clip of Romney saying “Je m’appelle Mitt Romney” in a promotional video for the Salt Lake City Olympics.
    Foreign languages were not always taboo in America. The word
English
appears nowhere in the Constitution, whose framers declined to establish an official language. Many of them were multilingual.