The birthday card i bought for my brother read: "A birthday gift for a person who has that certain 'je ne sais quoi", which is French for "card with no money in it".
Sorry, it's Friday, and i'm 1 hour from hittin the lake....
----- Original Message -----
From: Harkins, Patrick
To: CF-Community
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2004 10:25 AM
Subject: RE: je ne sais quoi (WAS Definition of terrorism(WAS The politicization of the Iraq War
Close but not quite. That's a conflation of English and French. Sais comes from savoir or "to know". Hence "je ne sais quoi" (a shortening of "je ne sais pas quoi") means literally "I don't know what" or figuratively "I can't say...".
>-----Original Message-----
>From: S. Isaac Dealey
>
>
>hence the literal translation: "I not say what". or "I say not what"
>
>I've always interpreted it more as "I can't say" like... "I can't say
>why I like Monet, I just do." ... "His work has a certain ... I can't
>say."
>
>> je ne sais quoi - roughly translated to mean "that special
>> something".
>> It means you like some overall aspect that you can't
>> quite
>> articulate.
Outbound email scanned for viruses. (e232)
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