Dépaysé

One of the fewmore interesting words I remember from my French course in July is “dépaysé,” which is used to describe how you might feel when you travel to a foreign country where you feel a bit disoriented. The way our teacher explained, it is the antonym to “déjà vu,” or something that you know too well, and thus is too familiar and, presumably, of little interest.

The reason why I was so fascinated by this little word is that it has a very positive meaning in French. Apparently, to feel disoriented is something to be desired when you travel. This was difficult to grasp at first and, although I now get it semantically, I am still intrigued by it.

To my rational mind, a state of disorientation is something to be avoided at all costs. I rarely travel without a guidebook, more often with a map as well and, when possible, with an A-Z of street names, just in case. You might say that I am at the totally opposite end of disoriented (can you be super-oriented? Superpaysé?). I adore maps, I am very good at reading them and I like to navigate. Why would I not want to be oriented?

Ok, I suppose I am taking the word a bit too literally—it probably doesn’t mean that you don’t know where you are when you are “dépaysé.” I guess it’s just a striking change of scenery, which is exciting and positive, in which case ‘disoriented’ may not be the most accurate way to translate it to English because it has a negative tone to it. Or does it? Maybe it’s just negative to me? Perhaps other people enjoy feeling lost/disoriented?

Call me analboring but I’m sticking with my maps.