Tuesday 18 September 2012

Sang faire, savoir froid

Slightly puzzling that two key 'English' national-character-virtues (we can put that hyphenated lump in inverted commas too, if you like) are referred to with French phrases: sang froid; savoir faire.  As if even the English language has too much sang froid, and too much savoir faire, to include English phrases for these things.

2 comments:

Ian Sales said...

And why does the French Horn have an English name but the Cor Anglais has a French one? Is it the reverse in France?

Adam Roberts Project said...

Je n'sais pas, moi.