The English language can be very confusing, and this is especially true when it comes to using (or misusing) words or phrases borrowed from another language. For some reason, French loan words seem to give us particular trouble.
For example, former professor of English Paul Brians of Washington State University points out, the word “amateur” is often misspelled as “amature.” Yet another common error listed on the professor’s website is made by those who confuse the terms “protégé” and “prodigy.” The former is someone you’ve taken under your wing, but the latter is someone extraordinary, and only in rare instances are they likely to be one and the same.
As anyone who browses online recipes and tutorials is probably aware, there are more than a few people who seem to be under the impression that “voilà” should be spelled “wallah.” (As per Brians’ site, the word “wallah” is actually Hindi for “worker.”) One understandably misspelled word from the food world describes somebody who owns or operates a restaurant. That word is obviously “restauranteur,” right? Well yes, it would be, were “restauranteur” an actual word, but it isn’t. The word you really want is “restaurateur,” spelled without an “n.”
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