It’s not often that Italians pay homage to France or French culture. For the most part, Italians mock and frown upon all-things/people-French. But if you’re like me, you’re probably wishing Rome had some French restaurants where you can bathe yourself in butter instead of olive oil for a night (like confit duck leg, mmm).
But no matter how prominent their distaste is for France, Italians are pretty much OK with incorporating some French words into their vocabulary.
One example of said word-borrowing is moquette. This noun (f) is basically the French word for carpet. Italians use it in the same way: a fitted carpet, or wall-to-wall carpeting. Needless to say, fitted carpets are not the style of Roman apartments for the most part, but I do occasionally see an apartment listing that has a room with a moquette. To each his own…floor covering!
Example:
“Penso di mettere la moquette nella mia stanza da letto.” – I am thinking of putting a carpet in my bedroom.
5 comments
http://www.frommers.com/destinations/rome/D33596.html
Thanks for the link! I’ve actually heard of this place. Mostly that it is not very good and very expensive. Have you been?
http://www.romatoday.it/ristoranti/francese/
Thanks again! I’ll have to try some out. Still though, around 5 French restaurants in one of the major European capitals.. it’s odd. Especially since Italy is so close to France…
Needless to say, Italians frown in shock upon moquette. We consider it, with good reasons, the most unhygienic thing one could conceive, and nobody willingly put one in their place after the 1970s. Maybe that’s why we left it its French name.
(The second most unhygienic thing would of course be the lack of a bidet in one’s bathroom, and since the French themselves, as most of the world, do not even know what the thing is, it’s fittingly ironic that we decided to leave it its French name, too).