“Vasistas“

French pronunciation: [vah-zees-tah]

Un vasistas = a small window or opening, often hinged at the top; by extension, a small ventilating window.

Example sentence:
J’ai laissé le vasistas ouvert pour faire entrer un peu d’air.
I left the small window open to let in a little air.

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A DAY IN A FRENCH LIFE by Kristi Espinasse

Early this morning, I went in to get Mom and bring her back to her own studio. Did I tell you she’s been sleeping here at night since Jean-Marc left for the Alps?

Making my way through the dark room, I noticed her window was entrouverte. Something about this made me smile, opening, for a brief instant, a window onto my childhood.

Here in France, we have special windows that can open inward from the side—or, by turning the handle another way, tilt open at the top. Maybe you’ve seen them before. They’re called fenêtres oscillo-battantes, but I prefer to call them vasistas, ever since adopting the fun-to-say word many years ago.

It takes me all the way back to my first trip to Europe. I came for an exchange program, trading the familiar with the unfamiliar. Among the many fascinating sights were those window contraptions. Somebody along the way shared the name, and I was immediately smitten.

Vasistas.

Growing up in the Arizona desert, in Phoenix, our mobile home had unusual windows as well. They were crank-operated with horizontal glass slats. I have only just learned their name—they’re called jalousie windows—and it is every bit as amusing as the French one. Funny to think that, even back then, I was gazing out of a window with a French name.

If my sister Heidi and I wanted to open our bedroom window—not that we often would in the severe Arizona heat, when temperatures could climb toward 120°F—we simply turned the crank, and the horizontal glass slats began to open. Beyond them stretched an orchard and, beside it, a trailer much like ours—a single-wide with sea-green trim. I can still see the Mexican family who lived there for a time and smell the orange blossoms mingling with exhaust from the freeway beside the grove.

When Mom looked out her own window, there at the back of our aluminum nest, she could see Shaw Butte Mountain. But Mom never set her sights on that arid, cactus-dotted hill. Her gaze lifted dreamily to the horizon above it.

“Who would ever have thought we’d end up here in the south of France?” Mom often muses as we enjoy lunch together, un saut de puce from the sea.

I think that if I were a young French girl arriving in America, I might find those jalousie windows as curiously charming as I once found the windows here in France.

Vasistas. It turns out that the word comes from the German Was ist das?—“What is that?” Which is exactly what I thought when I first saw one. And perhaps somewhere, a young French girl is discovering an Arizona jalousie window and wondering exactly the same thing:

Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?

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DID YOU KNOW? Jalousie is the French word for “jealousy.” These windows may have gotten their name from their overlapping slats, which allowed you to look outside without others easily seeing in (and becoming jealous of your stuff?). Common in mobile homes and warmer parts of America, they opened with a little crank, causing all the horizontal panes of glass to tilt at once and let in the breeze while keeping curious eyes out.

FRENCH VOCABULARY

un vasistas = a small window opening inward, usually hinged at the bottom or top
une fenêtre = a window
une fenêtre oscillo-battante = a tilt-and-turn window
une jalousie = jealousy; also a slatted blind or window
entrouvert(e) = ajar, partly open
un saut de puce = a hop, skip, and a jump; a very short distance
Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça ? = What is that?

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