In one of my workshops on spoken French, I noticed that some English-speaking learners were saying (le) désert – with the “z” sound when referring to dessert, the sweet dish at the end of a meal. This is a big mistake. Le désert in spoken French is the desert, the empty expanse of sand. Think of le désert du Sahara “the Sahara desert.” The proper word for dessert is le dessert with an “s” sound and no accent on the first e.
Notice that the French and English words have exactly the same spelling. In fact, the English word comes from French. Interestingly, in North American English it took on the “z” sound despite the double s and differs from desert only by the accent on the second syllable and a small change in the first vowel.
Le désert in French has a number of associated words, There is the verb déserter used nearly exactly like “to desert.” And then the adjective désertique or “desert-like.”
When using le dessert be careful to not confuse it with la desserte. This actually happened to me when I first arrived in France. I read a sign saying Desserte du cimetière du père Lachaise and said to myself: “How strange, they will be serving dessert in the cemetery.”
La desserte is either a serving table in a dining room or a transportation service such as in les trains de desserte locale et régionale “local and regional service trains.”
La desserte comes from the verb desservir which, by the way, has nothing to do with the English verb “to deserve.” Desservir has a number of meanings. It can refer to clearing a table, as in Je vais desservir la table “I’ll clear the table.” It can also refer to the stops of a transportation service as in Cet autobus dessert Manhattan et Brooklyn “This bus serves Manhattan and Brooklyn.”
Stanley Aléong is a polyglot, author, musician, language coach in French, English and Spanish, language workshop facilitator and organizer of French-English conversation meetups in Montreal, Canada. He likes to share his passion for languages and believes that anybody can learn to speak a foreign language well with the right methods and tools. He has also invented a cool visual learning tool called the Essential French Wall Chart Calendar. Reach him at info@langcal.com.