Lauren Collins (a good but sometimes annoying writer) has a Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker (archived) about Where Should I Go?, a company that “creates custom itineraries” in Paris:
They’ve done vegan Paris and occult Paris, romantic Paris and rainy Paris, and arranged for a superfan of the French TV series “The Bureau” to meet one of the show’s producers. “We just had a client who was really into needlecraft,” Solanki said. (They sent her to a yarn shop called Lil Weasel, in the Passage du Grand-Cerf.) Yet she and Colin could not have anticipated an unusual request that they received, about a year ago, from two American customers: they wanted to attend a soirée appart—a Parisian houseparty.
I was struck by the phrase soirée appart: was that some sort of variant of à part? Turns out appart is a clipping of appartement ‘apartment’; it must be pretty new, because it’s not in my dictionary of French slang or the TLFi, and the earliest example I found in a Google Books search (admittedly cursory) was this 2017 book by David Lebovitz (“the deed to my apartment in Paris. Or as time-pressed Parisians shorten it: l’appart”). And how is it pronounced? The Wiktionary page says /a.paʁt/, which makes sense for a clipping of appartement, but the audio file has /a.paʁ/, which makes sense for the spelling. I suppose both are used.
Later in the piece she mentions “an oozing Saint-Marcellin”; I guess the adjective is supposed to clue you in that it’s a cheese. And the quote “They floated the idea and I was down” would make a good test for a translator — no, “down” doesn’t mean ‘depressed’!
https://www.languefrancaise.net/An/1976
BOB says 1976, but does not give the citation…
The defense-of-Francophonie authorities must be up in arms about a shop in Paris called “Lil Weasel” rather than “P’tit Belette.”
BOB says 1976, but does not give the citation…
Thanks for that great resource, which I will add to the sidebar.
The 2017 edition of the Petit Robert also says 1976, pronounced with [t]. Alain Rey’s Dictionnaire historique (also a Robert publication) also dates it to 1976, but spells it apart and notes “forme précédée par la variante à part (1842), peut-être due à un jeu de mots avec se mettre à part.”.
The electronic edition of the Grand Robert also has the same date, but with the addition “in D. D. L.”, whatever that means.
Datations et documents lexicographiques, maybe.
Definitely, that’s what the Grand Robert‘s recherche de citations says, without any further bibliographical details.
I’ve definitely heard it used in Paris in the 2010s, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it written. I want to say the final t is pronounced, but it doesn’t immediately sound wrong to me without the t either so I’m not confident about how people pronounce it.
“Appart” is a very common word in familiar Quebec speech. The final “t” is always pronounced. I’d be very surprised if the French didn’t also always pronounce the final “t”.
L’appart is alive and well in Quebec French (in Montreal, at least; I can’t speak to how they talk out in Saint-Glin-Glin-des-Meu-Meu). Never heard it without the final “t” pronounced either.
I just checked some videos to see how people were saying the word and the t was pronounced without exception. I should have trusted my first instinct in this case.
If it didn’t have the t, then the vowel of the final syllable would be automatically lengthened in phrase-final position because of the final r giving [apaːʁ], and that does sound wrong to me for this word.
Thanks for the research! I’m guessing whoever did the audio for Wiktionary simply wasn’t familiar with the word.
In Switzerland I’ve often seen “aparthotel”, but in a German speaking area.
So it’s a spelling error! Weird that there’s scarcely a hit for <mon apparte>, then.
The defense-of-Francophonie authorities must be up in arms about a shop in Paris called “Lil Weasel” rather than “P’tit Belette.”
It would be a desperate rearguard action. French, like German, is well on its way to becoming a small atoll in the Anglophone sea of Europe.
When they whispered, “Napoleon pays Josephine’s rent”,
“Nonsense!” said Bonaparte,
“She lives on her own, apart,
In her own apart-
ment.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajE8eZIA1nc
Peter Grubtal: “In Switzerland I’ve often seen “aparthotel”, but in a German speaking area.”
I’ve seen “aparthotel” in Bulgaria also.
In related uncertainty, how do you pronounce toustes ?? It seems to be one of those PC abominations.
Pas besoin de s’inscrire, pas besoin de connaître quelqu’un·e : la Marche est ouverte à toustes.
[La Marche des Fiertés, Paris 2025]
I believe it’s meant to be /tust/ but don’t quote me on that.
Edit: fwiw, I’m supported by Wiktionnaire: https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/toustes
I was fretting as to whether the terminal “z” sound in tous was retained. The free-standing pronoun (?) is pronounced (Eng. cod-IPA) “tooze”, not “too” and not “tooce”. That is, I was expecting /tuzt/, not /tust/.
Tous is /tu/ if something follows (tous les…), /tus/ otherwise; there’s no form with /z/, and /zt/ isn’t viable in French anyway, it would become /st/.
The free-standing pronoun (?) is pronounced (Eng. cod-IPA) “tooze”
Maybe by you, but not by the French!
That’s the way I learned it (ils sont venus tous with “tooze”). Just can’t trust anyone nowadays.
Were you by any chance taught by a Texan?
I never heeded a thing Texans said to me. They exaggerate as much as the French do.
I couldn’t possibly remember where I might have learned such a deet, especially when it’s wrong.
Long, loud, voiceless [s]. Same for ils sont tous venus (…the rule I gave isn’t quite right).
If quelqu’un·e is unpronounceable (is it?), then one would not have to worry about pronouncing the rest, either, including toust.
@Y: What would be wrong with /kɛl.kɛ̃.yn/, following the pronunciation that Wiktionary gives for un·e?
(Genuine question here. My French is very limited and all the nonbinary Francophones I’ve met have spoken English to me)
all the nonbinary Francophones I’ve met have spoken English to me
<* cracks up *> Not very flexible of them, despite being nonbinary.
Alon: I dunno… I’d assumed that this was a written-only form, with some other ungendered form used in speech, but I have no idea.
In your experience, how do people pronounce the Spanish <-@> non-gendered noun suffix?
@Y: I haven’t seen that one used in a long while; it’s been essentially superseded by -e, conveniently pronounced /e/.
Some people used to unpack it in speech, IIRC, so that tod@s would become todas y todos. I have no idea how widespread that was.
I don’t know what the common convention is in Hebrew for speaking to and of nonbinary folks, but it’s much harder because so much more in the language is marked for gender. One article I saw dealt with it by going back and forth between masculine and feminine at every opportunity. I don’t know if that is common or even agreeable to everyone (because “both” ≠ “neither”).
Someone should invent Hebraica sine flexione.
That’s the way I learned it (ils sont venus tous with “tooze”). Just can’t trust anyone nowadays.
I’m not as familiar with everyday spoken French as I used to be, so I can’t remember if I’ve ever heard anyone say “tooze” for that word. But it wouldn’t surprise me. Modern French has a strong tendency to voice certain consonants that were formerly unvoiced, including s. “Seconde”, for example, is now most often pronounced “zegonde”.
But that’s just the normal everyday assimilation to the following /g/ once the schwa is elided.
Yeah, I learnt to pronounce it that way in about 1967.
I was looking for an example of this pronunciation on youtube, but I only found s, not z. It appears that for many speakers the rule “s at beginning of word” trumps “z between two vowels”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AX7xp1l2QUk&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD
Deu s[EPSILON]gond[e muet]s
There is no [ɛ]. It’s [døs], exaggerated pause, [gõnd].
Without the pause, [sg] easily becomes [zg] – but, unlike in your average Slavic language, this doesn’t happen every time.