They say the English language is one of the hardest to learn simply because we have so many words for one thing. Miss, Ms., Mrs. – all of these are prefixes for women, each meaning something different. Miss, unmarried; Ms.- could be unmarried, could be married; Mrs.- definitely married. Bottom line, Americans cover our asses when it comes to language. The French, on the other hand, do not, and this has been bothering some feminists of Cesson-Sevigne. Special corespondent for the LA Times, Kim Willsher, brought this issue to the attention of Americans with her wonderful, through article on Sunday.
“Mademoiselle,” which is the Gallic form of “miss,” and is normally used for young, unmarried women, and so, feminists say, openly declaring them either available or unwanted. But that’s not the only issue with the title, before the French Revolution, the use of “mademoiselle” had little to do with whether a woman was married; a laywoman or commoner was always called “mademoiselle” to indicate she was of lowly status. Only women of high birth were addressed as “madame.”
Feminists were fed up with marking “mademoiselle” on forms and so they they started making noise about it, and finally they were heard. “It’s about eliminating all terms that could be discriminatory or indiscreet,” the town hall at Cesson-Sevigne, a suburb of the western town of Rennes, in Brittany, said in a statement explaining that the title “mademoiselle” had been banished from all official forms since the beginning of …
