Beauty and the Beast: A French fairy tale

I recently watched Disney’s 2017 live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast and I thought I would go through some of the French that appears in the film.

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This film is based on a fairy tale called, “La Belle et la Bête”, which literally means “The Beauty and the Beast”. The Disney movie takes place in a small town called Villeneuve, and so, many of the characters’ names are French.

Belle

One of the main characters has the name “Belle”, which means “beautiful” in French. The adjective it comes from is actually, “beau”. The feminine version of “beau” is “belle”. This strange change happens a lot in French, where adjectives that end in -eau change to end in -elle in the feminine form.

Another example is, “nouveau”. In French, the adjective, “nouveau” means “new”, the feminine version is, “nouvelle”.

Le Fou

This character’s name actually means “the madman” or “the lunatic”. The word “fou” can be a noun, but it…