The origins of eating ourselves silly

Update: spell check didn't save last time, so this is edited.

Today's question comes from my old friend Peter: why is there no English equivalent of "bon appetit?" Most sources seem to provide "enjoy your meal," but it is always accompanied by an asterisk and an admonition that it's not a direct translation. We have no idiomatic way to wish people happy eating - what's up with that?

When I was in Moscow, I talked with several Russians who expressed amazement at how polite the English language is (true story). English has all of these unnecessary conversation fillers that soften our speech and make it less direct: "if you don't mind..." "if it's not too much trouble..." "I think that..." Russian, on the other hand, is apparently far more direct.

This makes the question particularly interesting to me. If the polite way to order food is to say "If you don't mind, I'd like the fried rice, but with no egg please, if it's not too much trouble. Thanks so much!" Which contains 5 politeness-modifiers, (that's my specially made up term for this post), why don't we have a unique way to say "eat well?"

My "research" (random web surfing) led me to the etymology of "bon appetit," Puritanism, the French revolution, and the bastardization of French culture. Here's what I found.

One theory is that we don't have an idiomatic form of "bon appetit" because of the Puritans. They took the fun out of sex, out of singing, and apparently out of eating. That's right - enjoying the way food tasted was a sin. Daniel Stuhlman, who writes about the Puritan theory, notes that if Puritanical attempts to eliminate pleasure deprived us of an English bon appetit, then there would be expressions that pre-dated the Puritan folk, and there don't seem to be any. He notes that

"The Norman conquest of English in 1066 brought many changes in the social and linguistic structure in England. The English language gained many "polite" terms from Norman French that complemented the Anglo-Saxon terms. Many foreign expressions stuck in English, because there was no previous equivalent."

He is, of course, right about the fact that French made English classy and polite. Here's a pretty good summary of how French saved English from itself, but I'll give ya the elevator version. 800 or 900 years ago, the most uptight of British folk only spoke French - it was the language of the court, which made it the language of literature, which made it the language of upper classes. English was considered base and the language of street folk. Eventually, we stole a lot of words from French, our ability to discuss worldly important things improved, and English went on to conquer the free world. Although the language obviously evolved, some expressions just stuck.

I think he's wrong about bon appetit, though. The OED traces the first known occurrence of "bon appetit" in English to 1860, so clearly we were not early adopters of the phrase, and it certainly wasn't introduced wholesale into English in the 9th or 10th century.

I can't find much evidence about when "bon appetit" entered French either, so I came up with a theory of my own. Pretty close to pure conjecture, but I like it: the phrase co-evolved with the advent and evolution of restaurants. Restaurant is, of course, a French word. Here's a brief linguistic explanation ofthe meaning of "restaurant" in French. I prefer, though, the explanation given in the book Prague. My copy's at home, so I'm doing this from memory, but I think this is the jist. During the Renaissance, folks would meet in the parlors of inns to discuss philosophy and plan what ultimately became the French revolution. Eventually, inn keepers started cooking for them, which gave rise to public meeting-and-eating areas. Habermas also talks about the importance role restaurants played in providing folks with the ability to create a political life for the masses in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. [Important: Apparently The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture by Rebecca L. Spang, offers the opposite view of restaurants: they were a spa for spoiled, pampered Parisian elite. I haven't read it, so I'm going to stick with the idea of coffee shop revolutions until I do.]

The story goes, then, that as the French aristocracy began to lose its grip on the masses, and people began to flock to inns to organize rebellion and spread democracy, I'd like to think that the inn keepers showed their solidarity by offering a warm meal, something to drink, and well wishes, expressed through the expression "bon appetit!"

So, how'd we wind up with "bon-appetit" but no red-blooded equivalent? Apparently, the first American "fine-dining" experience was opened in NYC in 1830, and was modelled, of course, on the French way of dining: "a fine-dining establishment with all the sophistication of a meal at the court of Versailles." Seems to make sense to me that, in our hurry to create a more authentically French culinary experience, we would directly borrow French phrases, rather than substitute our own.

So your best bet is probably to tell people to enjoy their meal, or give a shout out to French revolutionaries with a hearty "bon appetit!" Traveling elsewhere, though, this chart might help you out - Bon appetit in about 30 languages. My favorite is Estonian: "may you have plenty of bread."

P.S. I broached the issue with Joey Seiler, authoritative voice on most things and the most accomplished author I know. He denounced the popular translation of "enjoy your meal," and instead offered this explanation: "Subtle translation differences change it to "Go fuck yourself and your Diners' Club Card." They just don't like to tell us. It's all one big joke on America."