Faux French

One of my mom's pet peeves about French usage in the United States is that many restaurants like to use the French phrase "prix fixe" but do it improperly.  It means pretty much just what it looks like, fixed price, and it means the that here as well.  There are many possible versions of this you can see around the US: "price fixe," "price fix," "fix prix," etc. 

I think she objects to this mostly on the grounds that when not done in French (prix fixe) or not completely translated into English (fixed price) it makes for a stupid mishmosh of grammatical incorrectness in two languages.  I agree, but I object more to the fact that it either implies some kind of faux elegance or that the restaurant thinks its clientele is too dumb to figure out "prix fixe."

Here is a lovely example of it from Northport:

There we have not only the Yoda-sounding "price fix" but also the horrible and egregious misuse of apostrophes.  It hurts my brain a little bit.  Next time you see such an error I encourage you to enter the establishment and proclaim, "Good sir or madam, I entreat you to correct your sign, as I cannot abide incorrect French!  If not I shall summarily report you to the feared Acadamie Francaise to answer for your crimes."

Admittedly, though, the French do similar things.  I can't tell you how many times I've passed bars that advertise "happy hours," but that kind of delights me as it makes the whole thing sound a lot more joyful.  There is also a store close to where I work that bizarrely has "boy's and girl's clothing" on a sign outside; this particularly confuses me because it's not a likely area for tourists.

If I were more organized I'd take pictures of all the poorly translated signs I see around here, but after a while it just doesn't faze me.