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Phrase: Je ne sais quoi
Did you ever find yourself liking someone you didn’t think you would like and not know why you liked them?
That’s je ne sais quoi.
I’m going to state the obvious here and tell you it’s French.
Next, I’m going to explain that je ne sais quoi means I don’t know what.
Yep, that’s it; that’s what it means.
So, if something or someone has a certain quality or charm that you can’t put your finger on, you can say they or it has a certain je ne sais quoi.
Using a French word or phrase now and then really helps to enhance your English.
If you were to say, “I don’t know why I like this soup, but it’s really good,” people may look at you funny and think you have a small vocabulary.
However, if in the same situation, you were to say, “I don’t know why I like this soup, but it has a je ne sais quoi,” people would look at you as if you just said something important.
In reality, you just said I don’t know in a language they don’t speak or understand.
People respect others who use big words or say things that sound sophisticated.
That’s why I try to teach my students and readers a tiny bit of French.
If you want to portray a little bit of je ne sais quoi when you speak, drop a French word into your English now and then.
If works for native speakers all the time.
If it works for them, it’ll work for you too.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 6th-grade education (age 11).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 85.
The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.