You haven’t told me enough to be able to tell if it was incorrect or not.
Most situations I can imagine, though, I would say it would quickly become “the correct” usage. This is on the assumption that people are intentionally picking up on a new term and intending to use the term in the way it was designed to be used.
With “au jus” people aren’t intending to pick up on a new usage–they are mistakenly thinking (unthinkingly) that they are using it in the way it’s been intended to be used by competent speakers all along.
This is how I articulate my intuition, anyway, that ‘there’s something wrong’ with using the term that way.
I tend to agree with Frylock on this; if there was a proper name for the stuff – say, French Gravy (so as to differentiate it from gravy proper – this has nothing whatsoever to do with the idea that said dip is thin and yields easily) – people wouldn’t be using au jus as a noun, as long as it was well established that French Gravy is what you get when you order a Beef Dip au jus.
I define a competent speaker as someone whose speech is understood as intended by their intended audience. Do you agree with that definition?
If that’s the case, then if a person says “I’d like my sandwich with extra au jus,” and the waiter immediately understands what they mean, then that person is a competent speaker. Do you agree?
I’m not sure what “all along” means here. Obviously “au jus” hasn’t been part of English since the language’s inception. At some point it entered the language; at some point it started being used as a noun. I think the only relevant time frame is the moment that it’s used by a particular speaker and heard by a particular listener.
You may be right that people are ignorant of the word’s etymology. I’d guess that most people are ignorant of the etymology of 99% of the words they use. That ignorance doesn’t bother me at all. For example, most people who use the word “children” are unaware that they’re using a misformed plural: the original plural of “child” was “childer,” but at some point, a lot of folks “mistook” the word “childer” for a singular noun and so they pluralized it as “children.” Despite this weird formation, I’m not bothered at all when someone says they have three children instead of saying they have three childer.
Ah, I see where you’re confused. I’m not speaking Spanish (check my posts). I’m speaking English.
What “Rio” means in Spanish is completely irrelevant unless you’re speaking Spanish. For example, “gift” means “poison” in German. If you give your wife an anniversary gift, are you poisoning her?
Further, what’s grammatically wrong with saying “Big River River”?
Sure, but a competent speaker is not the same thing as someone who is using the language correctly. Its not the same thing, either, as someone who is using the language in a way consistent with their own beliefs about how that language should be used. These are three different though overlapping kinds of speakers.
Certainly.
For questions of correctness, or questions of consistency with one’s own beliefs about how language should be used, there can be other relevant time frames. We can ask ourselves “Where did this word come from? What bearing does that have on how I should use it? How did the person I picked the word up from mean it to be used? How does the community at large mean it to be used, both now and back into the past from which the community derives its norms?” And so on.
But that’s not my point. It’s not just that they’re ignorant of the etymology. Its that, in the case of “au jus,” they think they’re using the phrase in a manner consistent with its original usage in English, and they’re incorrect to think so. Their usage of the linguistic item stems from a mistaken belief about how that linguistic item has been used. (Or alternatively, it stems from a failure to form a belief about how that linguistic item has been used, under circumstances in which they would judge of themselves that they ought to have formed such a belief before using the term.)
Nor me, in the general case.
Nor am I, because I don’t take anyone to be intending to use the word “children” in a way consistent with the usage of the word “child” five hundred years ago (say). Nor do I take anyone to think they ought to be doing so.
But I presume that if you point out to someone “Notice we don’t say ‘roast beef with au jus’ but rather ‘roast beef au jus,’ because the phrase is borrowed from the french meaning ‘with juice,’” and let them think about it for a while if they care to, then next time they are tempted to say “served with au juice,” they will think, “something’s not right about that!” They will think this because in using that phrase, they have intended to use it in a way consistent with and derived from the way it is used in the phrase “Roast beef au jus.”
None of that has any bearing on the question of whether someone who is correctly called “A Competent Speaker of English” can use the phrase I am calling “incorrect” and incur no communication problems thereby.
You’re missing the point. The point is that the English speaking people who live there don’t call it that as evidenced by the aforementioned maps. If I came to Schenectady and kept saying “Boy, Schenectady City sure is beautiful! What’s the rent like in Schenectady City?”, you would probably politely inform me that the name is just “Schenectady,” and to local ears “Schenectady City” sounds foolish. If I insisted on saying it my way anyway, you’d assume I was foolish.
Living in New Mexico somewhat close to the Rio Grande and an english speaker. I really don’t recal anybody refering to it as the Rio Grande River. It was either just Rio or Rio Grande.
Just how “long-held” is this particular linguistic custom, though?
As a vegetarian i don’t spend much time thinking about the ways of serving meat, but the first time i ever heard the “with au jus” usage was in the recent Quiznos commercials.
That’s a bit broad a definition though. By the same token I could say “I like sandwich. It is best with the mustard.” It is a horribly constructed sentence – but my message is perfectly clear, isn’t it? But does that make me a competent speaker?
Ah grammatical debates, I love those! I’m somewhat hesitant to subscribe to this thread seeing as how when I come back in 20 minutes there’s going to be 70 more posts to read, but… what the hell, here my 2 cents:
Rio Grande in common usage refers to a river, most people who use the word know it’s a river, they don’t confuse it with anything else, and honestly, even growing up in Russia as a little kid if I saw “Rio Grande” I knew what people were talking about. Most people should know what the Rio Grande, Nile, Amazon, Yangzte, Mississippi, Volga, Thames, Seine, Rhone, Hudson or whatever are without clarification. Their proper nouns contain enough information to convey the name, and what the name refers to. Now when you say Sacramento River, you can’t just say Sacramento, because a) People usually don’t know there IS a Sacramento river b) A whole lot of things are named Sacramento and you could be referring to any of them.
With “Au jus”, I contend that “Au jus” is an english noun referring to the meat juice based on common usage. French grammar might have affected how it was used originally, but now the word diverged from its roots. Claiming that we can let the language evolve as long as it doesn’t break some other language’s grammar is silly. Just like fetuses and penises are correct english plurals, “au jus” is a noun and “Rio Grande” means “the river called Rio Grande”.
I’ve seen it for at least 10 years, and been complaining about it for as long.
For all the hardcore descriptivists out there:
Grammarians and educated people are part of culture too. They should have a say in the use of language just as much as anyone. If they think something is incorrect, that means a certain percentage of people do not use it as part of their English language!
In 1983-85, when I was a server at a place with Roast Beef au Jus on the menu, and if people wanted more of that stuff that came on the side in a little cup they asked for “more au jus.” Everyone knew what they meant. I think I would have been confused if they just asked for “more juice.”
Ick, just thinking about asking for “more juice for my meat, please” grosses me out a little. Sounds like they want a cup of bloody drippings. “Au jus” sounds a lot nicer. Anyhoo, it was clear what they meant when asking for au jus; not clear when they asked just for “juice.”
Now when they asked for more “OH juice,” that was the most confusing of all.
