Everyone knows it, or feels it: languages are the expression of a sensitivity, of a certain relationship to the world, of a particular outlook on life. In this, they are a treasure for all humanity.
However, France allows its exceptional linguistic wealth to sink into general indifference. If nothing is done, most of our so-called “regional” languages will have disappeared by the end of the century, according to Unesco. As for our national idiom, it is certainly not threatened, but it is often abused, in particular by our collective mania for Anglicisms.
This newsletter therefore aims to support the weaker languages against the stronger ones. To simultaneously protect French against Anglo-American, but also Corsican, Picard and Breton against French, when the latter becomes overwhelming.
For languages to live. All the languages.
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All you have to do is take a walk in our streets or listen to advertisements to see it: there are many – too many – Anglicisms in France. And again: it could be much worse. Do you know, for example, that we escaped “land take” for “soil artificialisation”, to “car pool” for “carpooling”, and to “mountain bike” For “Mountain bike” ?
These successes are due to the very underestimated “French language enrichment device” created by a decree of 1972. A device that relies in particular on about twenty terminology commissions, each specializing in a specific field , such as education, automotive, energy or sports. They are the ones who invent, imagine, forge and construct the words intended to enrich the specialized vocabulary, to name the technical innovations and to find equivalents to Anglicisms.
In Parisian-trendy circles (redundant pleonasm?), it is fashionable to make fun of them. Aren’t they supposed in principle to be “useless”? “Be corny”? To put forward only “ridiculous” proposals? Except that they defend linguistic diversity against all odds, which is to culture what biodiversity is to ecology. It is therefore appropriate to pay tribute to them by reminding the distracted of a (brief) selection of their successes:
– “group action” instead of class action
– “helper” instead of “caregiver”
– “biofuel” instead of “biofuel”
– “artificial intelligence” instead of“artificial intelligence”
– “intended mother” instead of commissioning parent
– “hybrid vehicle” instead of “hybrid-vehicle”
Who would think of replacing “shuttle” by shuttle ?
Oh sure, that doesn’t always work, that would be too easy. Support that “frozen cases” have dislodged “cold boxes” and that “airbag” has struck down “airbag” would be to flatter. It must also be recognized that other proposals, without constituting real failures, cohabit more or less comfortably with the English loanword that they were supposed to kick out of France: “courriel” and “e-mail”, “big data” and “big data”, “underpriced” and “dumping”, “infox” and “fake news”, etc.
Perhaps you will have noticed that it is enough for a French word to be well established to seem legitimate: who would think of speaking of “shuttle”, while “shuttle” is commonly used? The problem is that the reverse is also true. Once Anglicism is installed, it is this that seems natural and the attempts to replace it, artificial. “In flux” seems to have as much chance of hunting “streaming” than a star model to become front row in a rugby team.
Hence the importance of deadlines. “It is essential to arrive early enough,” emphasizes Etienne Quillot, responsible for coordinating and monitoring the terminology commissions within the general delegation for the French language and the languages of France. However, it is precisely on the question of time that, sometimes, the shoe pinches. Because the commissions do not content themselves with proposing local terms, they also spend long hours developing their definitions. Being mainly made up of volunteers – credit to them – they meet at best once a month. Moreover, they do not have the final decision-making power; their mission is limited to forwarding their suggestions to the commission for the enrichment of the French language – which entails additional exchanges and, sometimes, many comings and goings. They still have to wait to obtain the approval of the French Academy – which is not always self-evident – then the publication in the Official newspaper. Result ? Sometimes several years pass between the find and its consecration, a period during which the Anglicism that is claimed to be rejected has had plenty of time to circulate… “It would be better if the commissions were content initially to propose a term French and to distribute it as soon as possible. The precise definitions could come later”, pleads one of its members.
A form of self-colonization typical of culturally dominated groups
Other rules determine the success or failure of the company, starting with the use of these creations by an influential personality. “At the end of the 2000s, when a child was failing at school, it was said that he was in ‘dropout’. The commissions proposed ‘dropping out’ and Nicolas Sarkozy, then President of the Republic, was undoubtedly inspired by it to speak of ‘dropouts’. The term caught on immediately”, says Etienne Quillot. The same phenomenon had occurred a few years earlier, when Laurent Fabius, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, had used “euro zone” instead of “Euroland”, which disappeared pretty quickly.
It is therefore essential to convince the professionals upstream, because they have a strong prescribing power. “When Orange or Bouygues send messages to their customers to warn them against ‘phishing’ attempts, this has a double advantage, underlines Etienne Quillot. Not only is the term distributed to millions of French people, but media tend to reuse it.” The phenomenon obviously plays in the opposite direction when Renault baptizes its electrical industrial center in Hauts-de-France, “Electricity”, or when Emmanuel Macron organizes – in Brest – a “One Ocean Summit”…
This is how. In a number of professional circles – the press, advertising, fashion, IT, video games, business circles – we are addicted to “globish”. Without realizing that this is a form of self-colonization – an attitude typical of culturally dominated groups. “By adopting the language of the enemy, the French ‘elites’ hope to take advantage of it on the material level, or to assimilate to him to benefit symbolically from his prestige. Those who indulge in these little games give themselves the illusion of being modern, when they are only Americanized”, stings severely – but precisely – the linguist Claude Hagège. “It happens that eminent representatives of the State judge on principle that a French word is old-fashioned, even reactionary”, confirms a senior official. In 2018, Françoise Nyssen, then Minister of Culture, dared to launch, with the approval of Edouard Philippe and Emmanuel Macron, a culture “pass” (without e). Shocking!
We are far, very far, from the requirement of General de Gaulle, who, in 1962, had written to his Minister of the Armed Forces to complain about the excessive presence of Anglo-American terms in the military field. With his inimitable style, the founder of the Fifth Republic had demanded that instructions be given “so that foreign borrowings are prohibited whenever a French word can be used”. Before adding by hand: “That is to say in all cases.”
THIS LETTER IS INTERRUPTED DURING THE SUMMER. SEE YOU AT THE BACK TO SCHOOL!
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