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This may interest someone re. Proust, French/English history or language in general. I love the idea of a "nonce verb" (snober; Oh la la, homophobic grammar! 
)
Perdita
Swann's way with Franglais - Lewis Jones reviews Proust's English by Daniel Karlin.
...
Originally prompted by hospitality to refugee aristocrats, anglomanie - the rage for English fashion - has afflicted France since the mid-18th century, on and off, and in Proust's day it was in a virulent phase. He never came to England (as the French call Britain), or learnt English, but he preferred English literature to French, and was mad about Ruskin - two of whose books, with much diligence and female assistance, he translated into French.
The Champs-Elysée was agog for le lunch, le garden-party and le five o'clock tea. Le sport was de rigueur. When Marcel first sees Albertine, among les jeunes filles en fleur, he assumes, rather snobbishly, that she and her gang are the underage mistresses of professional bicyclists - an "individualist" sport, promoted by the state to counter English team games such as le rugby. As his love blossoms she becomes, for him, "la muse orgiaque du golf". He admired the game's frivolity, and in that spirit deduced that the aim was to score as high a handicap as possible.
The word "snob" entered French in 1857, with Georges Guiffrey's translation of William Makepeace Thackeray's Book of Snobs (1848). First published in Punch - in 44 "Snob Papers", under the rubric "The Snobs of England, by One of Themselves" - The Book of Snobs defined English snobbery. Proust, though, has more to say on the subject of snobbery, both in general and in particular, than every other author combined.
It is unsurprising to learn, therefore, that of the many English words in A la recherche - clubman, doper, fair play, films, flirt… gentleman, gin, globe-trotter, goddam… paddock, patronizing, pianola… toast, tommy, Tory… yachts and yachtswomen - snob is easily the most frequent, at 49 entries. Snobisme has 41. There are two entries for the nonce verb snober (glad to see it in the first conjugation), and one each for snobinettes and antisnobism.
Charles Swann, Proust's beau idéal, has an English name, pronounced "Suoann"; except once, by his daughter, when betraying his memory, as "Svann": "…a change, as she soon realised, for the worse, since it made this name of English origin a German patronymic". Swann is a friend of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), a member of le Jockey Club, and has "a letter in his pocket from Twickenham", where the Orléans pretenders lived in exile. His wife, Odette, who used to be a cocotte, is given to vulgar anglicisms.
...
Karlin notes that English in A la recherche tends to be associated with "social malfunction". In a fashionable tea-shop, Odette wants to tell Marcel a secret. So she won't be understood by neighbouring tables, and the waiters, she speaks to him in English. Sadly, the only person who doesn't understand English is Marcel, so she confides to the entire room, while leaving him in the dark (a generous joke).
...
Proust's English is comprehensively argued. According to Karlin, English is the key to Proust's "doubleness", and the grit in the oyster of his French. Snobbery besides, his great subjects included the related one of etymology. He loved the way words are rubbed like old coins, names changing shape, competing and merging with other currencies, and he knew that the Academie's propaganda about the classical purity de la langue française was simply fishing for compliments (two entries), then as now. That was why Proust was so fond of English, the vigorous bastard of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, swallower of all known tongues. And this was his view as an outsider, as a Jewish homosexual Dreyfusard bourgeois invalid artist: that English was the global future, more orgiastic than golf itself. full article
)Perdita
Swann's way with Franglais - Lewis Jones reviews Proust's English by Daniel Karlin.
...
Originally prompted by hospitality to refugee aristocrats, anglomanie - the rage for English fashion - has afflicted France since the mid-18th century, on and off, and in Proust's day it was in a virulent phase. He never came to England (as the French call Britain), or learnt English, but he preferred English literature to French, and was mad about Ruskin - two of whose books, with much diligence and female assistance, he translated into French.
The Champs-Elysée was agog for le lunch, le garden-party and le five o'clock tea. Le sport was de rigueur. When Marcel first sees Albertine, among les jeunes filles en fleur, he assumes, rather snobbishly, that she and her gang are the underage mistresses of professional bicyclists - an "individualist" sport, promoted by the state to counter English team games such as le rugby. As his love blossoms she becomes, for him, "la muse orgiaque du golf". He admired the game's frivolity, and in that spirit deduced that the aim was to score as high a handicap as possible.
The word "snob" entered French in 1857, with Georges Guiffrey's translation of William Makepeace Thackeray's Book of Snobs (1848). First published in Punch - in 44 "Snob Papers", under the rubric "The Snobs of England, by One of Themselves" - The Book of Snobs defined English snobbery. Proust, though, has more to say on the subject of snobbery, both in general and in particular, than every other author combined.
It is unsurprising to learn, therefore, that of the many English words in A la recherche - clubman, doper, fair play, films, flirt… gentleman, gin, globe-trotter, goddam… paddock, patronizing, pianola… toast, tommy, Tory… yachts and yachtswomen - snob is easily the most frequent, at 49 entries. Snobisme has 41. There are two entries for the nonce verb snober (glad to see it in the first conjugation), and one each for snobinettes and antisnobism.
Charles Swann, Proust's beau idéal, has an English name, pronounced "Suoann"; except once, by his daughter, when betraying his memory, as "Svann": "…a change, as she soon realised, for the worse, since it made this name of English origin a German patronymic". Swann is a friend of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), a member of le Jockey Club, and has "a letter in his pocket from Twickenham", where the Orléans pretenders lived in exile. His wife, Odette, who used to be a cocotte, is given to vulgar anglicisms.
...
Karlin notes that English in A la recherche tends to be associated with "social malfunction". In a fashionable tea-shop, Odette wants to tell Marcel a secret. So she won't be understood by neighbouring tables, and the waiters, she speaks to him in English. Sadly, the only person who doesn't understand English is Marcel, so she confides to the entire room, while leaving him in the dark (a generous joke).
...
Proust's English is comprehensively argued. According to Karlin, English is the key to Proust's "doubleness", and the grit in the oyster of his French. Snobbery besides, his great subjects included the related one of etymology. He loved the way words are rubbed like old coins, names changing shape, competing and merging with other currencies, and he knew that the Academie's propaganda about the classical purity de la langue française was simply fishing for compliments (two entries), then as now. That was why Proust was so fond of English, the vigorous bastard of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, swallower of all known tongues. And this was his view as an outsider, as a Jewish homosexual Dreyfusard bourgeois invalid artist: that English was the global future, more orgiastic than golf itself. full article
