#5 - Home

Home sweet home.  How can you even define this word?  Dictionaries can try.  Merriam-Webster lists multiple definitions like:

• house
• habitat
• social unit
• familiar or usual setting
• headquarters
• place of origin

And my personal favorite:

• the focus of one's domestic attention 

These are all true.  But the essence of "home," I think, is above all a feeling--of comfort, connection, and belonging.  It's a place where you have deep roots.  "Home is where the heart is," as the saying goes.

So what does the French language offer as an equivalent?  Usually, the word chez.

Chez is both oddly vague and oddly specific.  First of all, it can never be used by itself.  As a result, if you want to talk about home, you must specify whose: chez moi (my home), chez toi (your home), chez lui (his home), etc.  Chez soi (one's home) is the most general term, but even there, the possessive is necessary.

Strangely, chez can also be used to denote a place of work: chez le médecin (at the doctor's), chez le dentiste (at the dentist's), or chez ___________ (<insert any company name here).

It extends even beyond that.  Chez can be used to describe someone's habits, personality or outlook: C'est chez lui une habitude, or "For him, it's a habit."

It can also be expanded to include a whole group or culture: chez les Français ("among French people") or chez les musiciens ("among musicians"), followed by whatever stereotype or generalization you wish to make about said group. 

So why is this week's post called "home" and not chez?

Well, "home" is a whole concept in and of itself.  Even if our dictionaries fail to define it well, the word resonates deeply with English-speakers, managing to be both very powerful and very personal.  It even sounds like what it means.  It's concise, simple, warm--comforting to hear and to say.  Chez, on the other hand, means nothing out of context.  It has to be attached to another word to have any meaning, and so when we try to translate the concept of "home" into French, it often fails to come across.  Some translations don't bother with chez at all.  

Take "Home is where the heart is" for example.  It can be translated many different ways in French, but they always seem to fall back on words like "house:"

• Où se trouve le cœur, là est la maison ("Where the heart is, there is the house")
  
• Où le cœur aime, là est le foyer ("Where the heart loves, there is the house")

Or awkward uses of chez-soi: 

• C'est là où on a le cœur qu'on se sent le plus chez soi ("It's where the heart is that one feels most at home")

What's even more revealing is when you try and translate the word "homesick."

WordReference.com offers:

• vouloir rentrer chez soi - "to want to return home"
• ma famille me manque - "I miss my family"
• avoir le mal du pays - "have sickness of the country" (in other words, to miss your home country)
• nostalgique du pays - "nostalgic for the country" (again, meaning your home country)

I've also seen se sentir dépaysé which means to feel disoriented, or literally "feel de-countried."

All of these have to do specifically with either family or country (or in the first case, of actively wanting to return somewhere).  By forcing you to define what you mean so narrowly, they miss the wider concept that is the English "home."
  
Of course, this post would not be complete without mentioning one of the most famous lines in movie history: "There's no place like home."

I found it translated as "On n'est jamais aussi bien que chez soi," which is actually very hard to translate back into English; but it uses the word bien which means "well" or "good," implying that one is simply better off or happier at home.  What I like about the English version is that it doesn't talk about good or bad.  Rather, it emphasizes that "home" is unique, personal, and above all, irreplaceable.  It is simultaneously a feeling and a place--where you belong, where things are safe, comfortable, and familiar--whatever and wherever that might mean for you.