Why does English lack a "bon appetite"?

[Indistinguishable]

@Colophon

But “de” is not pronounced “day”. Why do people insist on pronouncing all Es in French words as if they had acute accents on them?

My apologies. Sticking with “phonetic” spelling, change “day” to “duh”, of course.

[Brynda]

@Sunspace

Oh, I don’t know. I often pause at dinner before eating, just because enough people say grace that I never feel safe assuming we can just dig in. I grew up in a British-derived household and we always paused before eating.

The pause, ok, but not having a phrase to say. That’s the part that seems weird if you are used to using one.

[sturmhauke]

@Pushkin

Dad has some sort of idea that you should never have a sauce with food, the food should be good enough without. He bases this on the lack of English sauce pots found by archaeologists, the French had tonnes of them to hide their awful food, the English didn’t need them. Times change eh?

I guess next time I make spaghetti I should skip the sauce, then.

[Apollyon]

@Indistinguishable

(The trouble with “phonetic” spelling: it’s so difficult to know what one means by it. I assume by “grahc”, you mean something ending in an “ess” sound, close to rhyming with “cross”?)

Kinda. I was thinking – and having no idea what accents you or any other reader have-- something like “grass” (rather more than the English “grace”, which rhymes with “Ace”).

[Indistinguishable]

Yes, the difficulty with indicating pronunciation through rhymes is that it’s so difficult to know what accent such descriptions are meant to be interpreted in.

For those with the trap-bath split, your pronunciation of “grass” is indeed the sort of thing I was going for. In my own accent, the pronunciation of “grass” is markedly different, I’m afraid (same vowel as “trap” or “cat”), and so I tried to indicate the pronunciation using an approximate rhyme with “cross”.

Things would be easier if we all just used IPA (or one of the ASCII-ified versions of it).

[Trunk]

@Brynda

Exactly. I grew up with a German mother and I “get” this in a way I think most Americans don’t. American households (nor British, as far as I can tell) don’t have this custom, so there isn’t a phrase that is used.

Americans don’t have much of a culture centered around meals, but I think that we still take an “eating cue” when gathered around a meal…

If a family all brings plates to the table from the kitchen, the first guy there doesn’t just start eating before everyone else sits down.

I’ve always thought that saying grace wasn’t just a prayer, but also a cue to start eating. My father-in-law even says “hot dog, let’s eat” after “amen” a lot.

Usually, you wait for everyone to sit, and sometimes there’s an unspoken acknowledgement to eat, or sometimes it’s just, “all right, let’s eat” or “dig in” or “bon apetit”, or everyone raises their glass and says, “cheers”.

We don’t have a well-defined cue, but I think that most people who eat toegether regularly still have their cues to start eating.

Before anyone vehemently disagrees with this (“my family never said nothing. we just start eating when we get our food”). . .just try to notice it, first, at some meals. And, I’m not talking about getting Burger King, and watching TV with your roommate. I think that people don’t even always realize that we do this.