This week, I decided to make you work a little. So, to get started, read this short extract from Little Prince :
“Who are you? said the little prince. You are very pretty…
– I am a fox, said the fox.
And now, read this same extract, written in Norman:
“– Who are you? What does the little prince say. You’re byin juli…
– Je sis eun goupi, what does the goupi say.”
If you conclude that the second formulation is “distorted French”, I have bad news for you. With such a statement, you would definitely fail any linguistics exam. The correct answer is indeed this: like Italian and Romanian, French and Norman represent two different developments of Latin. The first became the official language of a state, not the second? Certainly. This in no way makes the latter a “patois”, but an unofficial language. That’s all.
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One question remains: at what point should we consider that we are faced with two variants of the same language or two different languages? Scientists, of course, have defined criteria to try to see things clearly, starting with the notion of “intercomprehension”. Let’s take the example of a Parisian discovering a text written in Japanese. A priori, he will not understand anything and we can conclude that Japanese and French are two different languages. Now imagine that this same Parisian is conversing with a Genevan. The latter will perhaps say “ninety” and not “ninety”, but intelligibility will be almost perfect; it is therefore the same language.
So far so good. Unfortunately, this is not enough to resolve the problem, for several reasons.
First, there are intermediate situations. Let’s imagine that between two speakings, understanding is 40%, 50% or 60%. Should we conclude from this that we are faced with two variants of the same language or with two different languages? It is obviously impossible to settle this question clearly.
The other problem is that politics gets involved. “A Dane and a Norwegian can dialogue without difficulty, but the independence of the two countries has led them to promote each local dialect as a national language,” writes the linguist Michel Launey, in a remarkable work* to which I have already alluded here . The opposite situation also exists. An Algerian doesn’t understand a Lebanese? Arabic is nonetheless considered as one and the same language due to the desire of many inhabitants of the Maghreb and the Middle East to constitute a single people (facing Israel, in particular).
To make matters worse, there are a large number of preconceived ideas circulating on this subject, particularly in France. This is not new, that said: after a trip to the south of the country, Racine affirmed that Provençal was a “mixture” of Italian and Spanish. Now if you have followed closely, these are quite simply three different developments of Latin.
What is true is that there are sometimes modest differences between certain dialects. In this case, it is possible to qualify them as dialects of the same language – which, in theory, is not pejorative. Thus, French was originally one of the dialects of the langue d’oïl – to simplify, the evolution of Latin north of the Loire – which also includes Norman, Lorraine, Picard, Franc- comtois, etc. Why did he end up winning? Not because of any supposed exceptional linguistic qualities, but quite simply because it was the language of power. “If France had been formed from Poitiers, it is Poitevin which would currently be our official language and would occupy all the spaces today devoted to French,” underlines Michel Launey. And let’s be sure: there would be no shortage of “intellectuals” to assert that the idiom of Paris is just an uninteresting patois…
It is therefore essential to understand this: over the centuries, languages have a spontaneous tendency to change and, consequently, to diversification. Two thousand years ago, the ancestors of the Italians, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Romanians all spoke, with nuances, the common idiom of the Roman Empire. Today, their descendants no longer understand each other at all. And what is true of the 5 “big” languages is also true of all those which, without necessarily having an official status, are nonetheless legitimate daughters of Latin, whether it is Aragonese in Spain, Sicilian in Italy, Mirandese in Portugal, etc.
We must therefore imagine this linguistic family as a tree, whose trunk would be Latin and which would have all the Romance languages as branches. A group where France plays a big role since it has, in addition to French and the other Oïl languages already mentioned, Catalan, Corsican, Franco-Provençal, Occitan and its variants (unless it is not should we consider the latter as different languages? Some defend this thesis), or even the different French-based overseas creoles. Languages coming from the same branch, which have gradually differentiated themselves, and which, all of them, are as estimable as each other.
I leave the conclusion of this article to Michel Launey: “From a scientific point of view, French is not more brilliant, clearer or purer than the others, which does not mean that it does not have has no qualities and is not worthy of admiration. Simply, it is useless to look for bad reasons to love him when there are so many good ones. To meditate.
FIND VIDEOS DEDICATED TO FRENCH AND THE LANGUAGES OF FRANCE ON my youtube channel
* The Republic and languages, by Michel Launey (ed. Reasons for Action).
READ ELSEWHERE
A couple summoned to court for having named their child Fañch
A couple from Maine-et-Loire is summoned by the courts for having named their son Fañch, with a tilde, a sign which remains officially prohibited in civil registration in France. Despite recurring promises, the 2014 ministerial circular listing the signs authorized on certain letters has in fact never been modified. The president of the Brittany region, Loïg Chesnais-Girard, sees this as “unacceptable social violence”.
The French favor regional languages
“Are you in favor of the development of regional language teaching in public schools?” To this question asked in a survey by the Cluster17 institute (1,924 people, November 26-27, 2023), published by our colleagues from Point, 62% of French people surveyed answered “yes, absolutely” or “yes, rather”. Uniform support regardless of region, socio-professional category or political orientation. The plebiscite is even more pronounced among young people (86% are in favor).
Should we rename the Biarritz district “la Négresse”?
No, replied the Pau court, contacted by the Mémoires et Partages association, which considered this toponym imposed in 1861 on this district of Biarritz to be stigmatizing, in reference to a cabaret run by a black woman. Egoitz Urrutikoetxea, doctor of history, proposes a simple solution here: return to the original Basque name: “Herausta”.
Death of Louis Le Pensec, defender of cultural diversity
Former minister and socialist deputy Louis Le Pensec died on January 10 at the age of 87. He distinguished himself in particular by defending the Breton language, which he practiced, but also all the languages of France, supporting their presence in education, audiovisual and public life. Minister of Overseas Departments and Territories from 1988 to 1993, he also advanced the recognition of Kanak languages and cultures.
“Winter”, “laugh”, “hide”, “run”: 1 in 2 CP students do not understand these everyday words
This is the worrying result of a study of the scientific council of National Education. Unsurprisingly, girls are generally better than boys, while the main variable remains the socio-economic background of origin.
Everything and its opposite: new examples
Following the publication of my newsletter last week, Florian Levy, spelling corrector, introduced me to his site “Let’s no longer be afraid of words”, which lists a large number of “language paradoxes”. Here are two examples: “BAGATELLE nf Considerable sum of money. – Small sum of money.” “DELVATE vt Bring to a state of extreme happiness. – Take away by force, take by violence.” Many more are to be discovered.
The Great Heritage of the Gauls
We no longer speak Gallic, but some 10,000 place names are said to have been bequeathed to us by this civilization, not the least of which are Lyon, Paris, Toulon, Rennes, Vosges, Médoc, from Savoy or Flanders. This is in any case the thesis defended by Jacques Lacroix, associate professor, doctors of letters and civilizations, fervent defender of our Celtic heritage.
The Great Heritage of the Gauls, by Jacques Lacroix (ed. Yoran Embanner).
Towards an Occitan-Catalan space?
At the turn of the 2000s, the Occitan intellectual Robert Lafont launched the Eurocongress of the Occitan and Catalan spaces with this historical reminder: in the 13th century, the crusade against the Albigensians broke “the two-thousand-year-old relationships which made the Pyrenees a link for men and not a border. Will European construction allow these areas to rediscover their old logic, through a Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion? This was the theme of a conference whose proceedings are brought together in this work coordinated by Alain Alcouffe, Joël Raimondi and the Euroccat association.
Agaches. 20 years of Eurocongress 2000, under the direction of Alain Alcouffe and Joël Raimondi (ed. Euroccat).
Learning Provençal in Aix is possible… and it’s free (with the right link)
(The link provided last week led to an error page, so I’m republishing this article in the hope that it works.)
Under the auspices of the city of Aix-en-Provence, two hours of Provençal lessons are given free of charge every Wednesday, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., by Annie Bergèse. Information from Oustau de Prouvènço, Jourdan park, 04-42-26-23-41.
TO WATCH
Zahar Ele, Zuhur Eleby Pantxis Bidard and Primael Montgauzi
One is Basque, the other Gascon. They worked together during the Astaffort meetings, in 2022, under the caring supervision of Francis Cabrel. Pantxis Bidard sings in Basque, Primael Montgauzi in Gascon. Together, they created this moving title. Listen !
REACT, DEBATE AND FIND MORE INFORMATION ON THE LANGUAGES OF FRANCE ON the Facebook page dedicated to this newsletter.
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