Erik Reuter wrote:
> At the risk of ruining it, can you explain the joke? I know that "le" is
> and article for "the", but what is "le weekend"? I thought the French
> worked short weeks compared to Americans, so they would have at least as
> long a weekend as Americans.
The French adopted the term "le weekend" from the American, and there are
enough people trying to protect the language and keep it pure that they were
upset by it. Many words that just get co-opted and whatever-ized in other
languages are given their own French version that doesn't resemble anyone
else's (but if you know enough French, they make sense on some level, at
least). "Le weekend" is the pretty much the only bit of purely borrowed
vocabulary I remember from 3 semesters of college French. ("Jeep" might
have been a vocabulary word as well, but I don't put brand names on the same
footing as generic nouns, for example.)
Julia
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