Why Leslie's IQ is 14 points higher than mine

I now believe that one will become smarter if one learns more than one language, particularly when young. That became very clear to me after I started to learn French. It aroused something in me that is rare pour moi: curiosity. Now, Leslie is a very, very curious person. She always wants to know everything. And, she is smarter than me – by 14 IQ points as a matter of fact. I, on the other hand, am rarely curious, but learn things easily when I must. Par exemple, before I became a maintenance person I had no interest whatsoever in how a toilet worked, or a refrigerator, or how a window was put together, or anything of that nature. I could not have cared less. But, I had to learn these things to do my job well and, as I taught myself how to fix things, it was always interesting. But, still, my curiosity, en général, n’existait pas.

(Of course, many think the IQ test to be suspect. Be that as it may, it is clear to me that for my economic class, my race and my country, – it is a fairly accurate representation of ability with regard to pattern recognition. When I took the test when I was young I got the exact same score I get now. It has never budged one damn point!)

To me it is now a chicken and egg question: Is Leslie smarter because she learned languages young and, thus, became curious (which led to better pattern recognition)? Or, did she love languages because she had a natural ability for pattern recognition, and learning languages is particularly rewarding for someone who likes that sort of thing? Je ne sais pas. But, I swear, I am getting smarter!

Ok, par exemple, the phrase faux pas. I grew up with the expression and certainly knew at some point that it came from the French and what it meant in English (and assumed it meant the same thing in French) – a blunder, generally social. Of course, I had picked up a few French phrases like the one in the last paragraph: Je ne sais pas. I understood that to mean: “I don’t know”. Pas seemed to mean “not” – though I had no idea what the "ne" was and, as usual, didn’t care. If you had asked me what I thought faux pas meant literally in French I would have thought it meant something like “must not”. But, in America, we also use faux (i.e. faux fur), and I did understand that to be “false”. So, a literal interpretation in English, had I ever thought about it which I certainly did not, would have been “false not”. That doesn’t make a lot of sense but, perhaps it meant “one must not be false socially”. But, recently, I had a new clue without paying much attention to it. I started attending the ballet where they had this thing called pas de deux. Now, any curious person would have realized that the phrase made no sense if pas meant only “not” as I then assumed. Perhaps a curious person would have looked in a dictionary or asked someone or read the program. Though, I admit I did wonder why there were two dancers when the movement name seemed clearly to announce “not of two”. But I was not curious enough to check. Plus, my combination of decent pattern recognition along with lack of curiosity pointed me to the obvious answer: the point must be that they were lovers, joined as one! All the pas de deux I had seen were lovers, after all. Yes, that must be it……

Not.

Turns out pas also means step. Who knew? (Any French speaking, curious or cultured person, of course!) Thus, faux pas literally means false step. And, of course, romantic as my conception of what pas de deux meant, it obviously really meant “step of two”. Merde! Je suis stupide.

And, it further turns out that faux pas doesn’t have the same connotation in France. It is, more of less, a literal phrase there. So, how did this literal phrase in France turn into this figurative phrase in English? I was very curious! (OK, this essay has now come full circle; please reread the first paragraph if you forget where I was heading.) It was the English who turned it into the meaning of “social blunder” and – now that I have more curiosity due to my study of the French language - I also have a non-confirmed theory of how this came to be.

Through dressage competition. (For those who are not horsey at all dressage is, to quote one on-line dictionary definition, “the guiding of a horse through a series of complex maneuvers by slight movements of the rider's hands, legs, and weight.”) I have little idea the full history of dressage but I do know the words that describe the movements in the sport are French. And, after watching a dressage competition in which there were beaucoup de faux pas, I spun out this theory.

In a nutshell, I think that English folks who made a faux pas in dressage competition began to associate the phrase with a blunder in general and then started using it for a social blunder. As the phrase moved to the general masses who didn’t speak French, – the literal meaning was lost and only the blunder portion remained. Perhaps my theory is as fanciful as my romantic conception of pas de deux but it makes sense to me. Now, Leslie thinks it may have equally come out of ballet. Perhaps – though ballet dancers make far less faux pas than riders with their horses. But, then, as everyone reading this knows, Leslie is smarter than me so she is probably right.

Anyway, the point of this whole thing is actually that I became – and remain – curious about this. And, so it goes with hundreds of other French words and phrases. All of a sudden, as I learn French, I can feel my brain making connections at this torrential pace. I am thinking I might, finally, gain a point or two the next time I take an IQ test. Oh, and if you happen to know how faux pas really gained it’s English meaning, please tell me. I am very curious.