It’s a phenomenon that goes unnoticed, until you listen. Once noticed, you just hear it: among your friends, your family – and maybe even you, who are reading these lines! –, some tend to speak of “rudby”, rather than “rugby”. In the middle of the Rugby World Cup (with a g) in France, this language tic flourishes almost everywhere, including on radio and television.
This pronunciation is not new: on Amazon, for example, we find the existence of a brand “originating from the South-West”, launched more than five years ago, “Rudby”, which indicates “assuming” the rough side of rugby. In a TikTok video, the influencer specializing in the French language Athéna Sol, 1.1 million subscribers on the social network, was already annoyed a few weeks ago by this poorly pronounced term. “That word, ‘rugby’. Why do you say ‘rudby’? she asked. Can you tell me where you saw a d ? And don’t tell me it’s a matter of accent, there’s no accent that holds up there.” This shift is not even the only pronunciation that the discipline can take. Sometimes, a new variant appears, which also blows the g that the d : the French team then plays “ruby” (like a “ruby”), particularly in the south-west of France. On the Le Petit Robert dictionary website, two pronunciations are recorded: that of a male voice saying “rugby” and a female voice, “ruby”. Regardless of the spelling, the name of the sport seems lastingly marked by a very personal interpretation of its name.
An English word
The explanation is to be found in the origin of the sport and its name. Although some studies see soule, a ball sport widely practiced in France in the Middle Ages, as the original form of rugby, the game was officially invented in England in the 19th century. Its English sound is complicated to pronounce for the French palate. “You have an English word with a combination of consonants which is very rare in the French language, the g and the b, explains linguistic regionalism specialist Mathieu Avanzi, professor at the University of Neuchâtel, in Switzerland. When two consonants follow each other, there is generally a phenomenon of coarticulation: we anticipate the sound that comes after.”
This is for example the case of the word “absent”, where the combination of b and s sometimes transforms the sound “bs” into “ps”: we pronounce “apsent” more than “absent”. “Saying ‘rudby’ is a mechanism that aims to reduce the effort of pronunciation, confirms sociolinguist and sociophonetician Maria Candea, professor at Sorbonne-Nouvelle University. g is pronounced by a small explosion at the back of the throat and the b, via a little explosion on the lips. These are two very distant places to activate. The process is therefore costly.” To reduce the difficulty, some French speakers have therefore decided to transform the g in d. “THE d is pronounced by contact of the tongue against the back of the teeth and is therefore closer to the b labial that follows, continues Maria Candea. This is called ‘assimilation’, when the sounds that touch each other in speech influence each other.”
A rare combination in French
This phenomenon is even more vivid in the South-West, where rugby is very popular (more than 131,000 licensees are counted there, compared to 186,000 in the rest of France, according to figures from the French Rugby Federation ). “Very rare in French, the ‘gb’ combination is even more rare in the regional languages of Gascon and Occitan, explains Philippe Blanchet-Lunati, professor of sociolinguistics and didactics at Rennes II University. In these regions , as in Provence, the ancients often said ‘aumenter’ instead of ‘increase’.” What does it matter if these languages are today only spoken fluently by a minority of inhabitants: their use has had an impact on the local pronunciation of French. “Languages do not support combinations of certain syllables, quite simply because they have never learned to produce them. When we borrow a word, we adapt it,” continues Philippe Blanchet-Lunati.
To facilitate exchanges, French speakers adjust their pronunciation according to usage, going as simple as possible. “Rugby” was not the only word to suffer the consequences. The word “tomato”, from “tomatl” in Nahuatl, the Native American language spoken in Mexico, appeared in French in the 17th century. But the sequence of the two consonants t And L is poorly supported in France and, a century later, the word spread in France in its current form. Another example: the word “port”, whose origin is to be found in Dutch “bakboord”, evolved by shedding a k too embarrassing for French jaws.
“We find the same phenomenon with English words ‘beefsteak’, became ‘biftek’, with abandonment of s, or ‘roastbeef’, transformed into ‘roast beef’. This is also the case for ‘liner’, from ‘packet boat’, which was Frenchified to facilitate its pronunciation”, explains Philippe Blanchet-Lunati. Appearing at the beginning of the 19th century, the term resisted the French onslaught much less long than “rugby”.