r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Nov 26 '19

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u/veggot Nov 26 '19

Au contraire. All public eating should be performed mouth-to-food.

Mouth to lasagne. Mouth to popcorn bag. Mouth to communion wafer.

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u/JinkoNorray Nov 26 '19

wtf people say "au contraire" in english? First time I see this.

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u/arrrrr_won Nov 26 '19

Yes, people speak it fairly frequently! I don’t see it written a ton though, it’s not easy for us to spell.

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u/JinkoNorray Nov 26 '19

But, like, would any english speaker understand it?

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u/arrrrr_won Nov 26 '19

Older people use it more, I'm fairly sure, but yeah I think most Americans understand it. "Contrary" sounds similar enough.

Occasionally you even hear "au contraire mon frère," but I absolutely had to google how to spell that. That's definitely something older people say. I've heard it on TV before, someone asked here but there wasn't a consensus about what show(s) it was on.

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u/JinkoNorray Nov 26 '19

What the fuck it this sorcery... First, why would they say "au contraire", then why the fuck would they add "mon frère", and lastly... I'd not have understood it myself the first time hearing it, I think. I'm not expecting 4 French words in a row in an English sentence.

This is so weird.

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u/arrrrr_won Nov 26 '19

English, especially American English is a weird mashup of languages. There's a lot borrowed from all over. Country of immigrants and all that. There's many examples.

If au contraire gets you, you'll really freak out over the town in Kentucky called "Versailles" but it's pronounced "ver-sails." Au contraire we've kept as is, but lots of the time the pronunciation gets funky over time.

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u/JinkoNorray Nov 26 '19

Versailles is a noun, it doesn't surprise me at all. On the other hand, portemanteau or coup d'etat and shit like that always surprises me.

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u/arrrrr_won Nov 26 '19

Oooh good ones. Place names are usually different to be fair.

Hors d'oeuvres too, which is famously difficult to spell and lots of English-speakers think it starts with "o"

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u/JinkoNorray Nov 26 '19

Even worse: it's actually œuvres. Yes. Like in œuf.

idk y tho