I would hate to cause pain to my beloved readers – especially on this Christmas Eve – but, finally, after much procrastination, I have resolved to reveal this cruel truth: French comes from Latin, certainly, but of a Latin of the vilest kind there is.
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You do not believe me ? So let’s look at the word “horse” together. Logically, we should speak of an “eque”, since classical Latin used “equus”. But our own “horse” comes from “caballus”, a term which roughly meant “naughty” or “old rooster”: see the register! And this is not the only example of this type, far from it. “Belle” comes from the modest “bella” (“cute”) and not “pulchra” (“Magnificent”) ; “child”, of “infantem” (“who does not speak”) and not of “stink”; “head of “testa” (“shard of tile”) and not “caput”. And so on.
In a nutshell, French has little to do with the most beautiful pages written by Cicero, Livy and Virgil. Its true ancestor is to be found in the language of merchants, soldiers and slaves of the Roman Empire… Between the two: as many points in common as between a text by Proust and a conversation in the bistro when PSG moves to side of a meeting in the European Cup (pleonasm?).
We know this today, but when we began to look into the origin of French, this idea was totally unthinkable, as reported in a gripping book by the linguist Bernard Cerquiglini (1). And for good reason: since the king of France was powerful, his language must necessarily have a prestigious source. The only question, basically, consisted of choosing between Hebrew, Greek, Celtic (which was believed to be the heir of Greek) and the Latin of the great authors. It took time, a lot of time, to abandon this theory. But the differences in vocabulary and syntax between French and “good” Latin were such that we had to face the obvious: the language of the king, alas, came from the people (2)…
A dangerous rival called langue d’oc
It was a first cataclysm. There were two others. Soon, we discovered that French was also “impure”! In fact, it first suffered the (modest) influence of Gaulish, practiced before the arrival of the Romans, but also the more marked influence of Frankish, brought by Clovis and his people. A Germanization which has taken on a considerable scale among us, since it concerns both verbs (“hurt”, “walk”, “fall”) and certain colors (“white”, “blue”, “brown”, “gray”). “), not counting the first names (Albert, Clothilde, Guillaume, Hugues, Mathilde, Robert, etc.) and even the pronunciation, with the multiplication of words starting with a g or one h aspirated (“boy”, “keep”, “war”, “axe”, “hip”, “heron”, etc.). It’s very simple: French is the Romance language furthest from Latin! “This imprint is such that we can speak of creolization (3)”, summarizes Bernard Cerquiglini.
And as if all this were not enough, we again realized that French had to count on its own soil with a dangerous rival, the langue d’oc. Rich in prestigious literature, equipped with much older administrative documents and also remaining closer to Latin, in short, entirely worthy of reigning. Unbearable competition for the king’s tongue!
For a somewhat proud nation like ours, these successive blows were difficult to absorb. You might as well announce to aristos convinced that they were descended from Saint Louis that their ancestors were in fact muddy peasants from Berry… However, after a small bout of collective depression, a reaction ensued. French doesn’t come from the most prestigious descendants of Latin? Never mind ! We were going to work on beautifying it. And for this, we knew how to be particularly creative.
First of all, we “relatinized” at all costs, by forging new words starting from the language of Antiquity. This was all the easier since the movement had been underway since the 14th century, at least. From’“eque”, to use this example, we coined “horse riding”; from “caput”, “capitanship”; from “stink”, “childcare”…
“French is the Latin of despair”
Same Latinization on the spelling side. Many letters that were no longer pronounced were added or maintained in writing, notably under the influence of the French Academy: “corps”, “temps”, “teste”, “honneste” recall “corpus”, “tempus”, “testa”, “honestus” (4). With a transparent objective: to restore luster to French by adorning it with the attributes of the venerable ancestor. “Bastard child of a carefree and fickle mother, French is the Latin of despair,” writes Bernard Cerquiglini nicely.
Unfortunately, propaganda also got involved. The language of Ile-de-France, even if it is of low extraction, ended up being presented as an idiom superior in every way to its competitors. Not only have regional languages been subjected to a formidable process of denigration, but foreign languages have not been spared. French says “thesis”, while Italian and Spanish respectively opt for “tesi” And “tesis”, according to Latin “thesis” ? “They behave like slaves!” supported the grammarian Dominique Bouhours in the 17th century. The demonstration was as rigorous as Didier Raoult’s work against Covid, but it worked.
Fueled by what appears to be an inferiority complex, a veritable cult around French has arisen over the centuries. With its Vatican (the French Academy), its sacred book (the dictionary), its most glorious saints (Racine, Hugo, Voltaire), its faithful ministers (the black hussars of the Republic) and its tables of the Law, according to which French would be, of all languages, the most “pure”, the most “clear” and other nonsense. A speech which will reach heights under the Third Republic and from which we have not completely freed ourselves.
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(1) An orphan languageby Bernard Cerquiglini (Editions de Minuit).
(2) Glory to Pierre-Nicolas Bonamy, who put a definitive end to the debate in 1750. In Italy, faced with the same reality, this truth had been admitted a century earlier.
(3) Creolization: process which from several cultures creates a new one.
(4) Preface to the first dictionary of the French Academy, 1694. It will be noted that, since then, some of these letters have been abandoned, but not all.
FIND VIDEOS DEDICATED TO FRENCH AND THE LANGUAGES OF FRANCE ON my youtube channel
Emmanuel Macron’s communicator announces his departure… in English
It’s a symbol that says a lot. It was in a text written… in English that Emmanuel Macron’s communicator, Frédéric Michel, announced on December 14 his departure from the Elysée. In the midst of a conflict over pensions, it was he who advised the Head of State to grant an interview to the children’s magazine Pif Gadget, with this argument: “American presidents do it all the time.”
Between 2024 and 2027, the Brittany region will invest 13 million euros to safeguard, enrich and share Breton and Gallo. Elected officials unanimously voted for this plan, while requiring the State to keep its commitments in this area.
What if we opened, in a regional capital, a city of French languages, counterpart to the International City of the French Language, recently inaugurated in Villers-Cotterêts? This is the suggestion of academic Martine Boudet, specialist in cultural anthropology and author of the recent The emblematic languages of France (Editions du Panthéon). A way according to her to break with a French exception: the cult of the single language and the loss of multilingualism in mainland France.
According to a survey carried out by the Moroccan Center for Citizenship, 89.6% of respondents want English to replace French as the first foreign language in Morocco.
The French Association for the Teaching of French supports the proposed reform of the past participle agreement rules proposed by the International Council of the French Language and the International Federation of French Teachers (FIPF). According to this reform, any past participle conjugated with the auxiliary “être” (pronominal or not) could agree with the subject and any past participle conjugated with the auxiliary “avoir”, remain invariable.
Nearly twenty years after the creation of Lofis la lang kréol, an association guardian and promoter of Creole grammar, expressions and vocabulary, the language spoken by 80% of Reunion Islanders will have a public institute of Reunion Creole, a new sanctuary . This is one of the main measures provided for in the linguistic pact signed by local elected officials and the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak.
Short stories, stories, novels, poetry: this competition is open to all writers in the Picardy language (Picard, Chti, Rouchi). The texts must be sent before March 1, 2024 by post to the Regional Agency for the Picardy Language, 4, rue Lamarck, 80000 Amiens, or by email to: [email protected]
The Occitan Educational Animation Center (Cap’oc) is the only space that creates the tools (album, books, mathematical files, etc.) for teaching Occitan in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie regions. It has just been weakened by the suspension of two of its three teaching facilitators. A petition was launched on the Internet to oppose this decision.
The special mention of the Rimbaud prize was awarded on December 14 to the young Gascon poet Paulina Kamakine for the collection The Angel that was reborn (“The Angel Who Reborn”), written in langue d’oc in collaboration with Franc Bardòu, published by Troba Vox. The grand prize of the House of Poetry was awarded to Nicole Brossard as well as Gilles Jallet for all of their works.
Did you know that, in the Middle Ages, the phrase “too good” was completely correct? That “basket” was originally an object intended exclusively to transport bread? That “duchy” and “county” were feminine (hence “Franche-Comté”)? Do you know the surprising origins of cedilla and diaeresis? Do you know that Corneille was reprimanded by the Academy for having written “after” with a grave accent? Find the answers to these questions – and many others – in my latest work: Let’s cultivate the French language! which partly brings together articles from this newsletter.
Let’s cultivate the French language! by Michel Feltin-Palas (Editions Héliopoles).
On January 2, TV5 Monde will celebrate its 40th anniversary. Originally deployed in France, Switzerland and Belgium, the channel is now present in 198 countries, always with the same objective: to promote French-speaking programs around the world. Its CEO, Yves Bigot, was the guest of Franceinfo.
Here is my Christmas present: a religious polyphonic song magnificently performed by the Corsican group L’Alba. To convert the most hardened of unbelievers!
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