Living language

First published in Column 8 on the 23^rd March 1994

Being a person fascinated by the wonder of words, I’m amused at France’s futile efforts to preserve the so-called purity of their language.

Recent attempts to reverse the influx of Franglais into French include, among others, the formation of the Higher Council of the French Language (29 wise men and one undesignated woman). A Bill banning the use of foreign words in public announcements, work contracts, advertising, and on radio and television, is planned, and a suggestion that ‘language observers’ should be appointed to monitor television and radio in order to punish offenders.

Haven’t the French anything better to do? Haven’t they realised that the English are subtly getting their own back for the Norman invasion, when poor little Anglo-Saxons, already bamboozled by Danish, Latin and Gaelic, were forced to mouth that most easily mispronounced language, French?

Don’t they realise that English maintains its strength because it’s the most absorbent of languages?

Can you imagine a Higher Council of the English Language back in William the Conqueror’s time (with 30 good men and true – sorry, no women) struggling to retain the purity of ‘English?’ And the English Academy of the day refusing to allow people to eat eclairs, or the trumpet player to worry about his embouchure, or the cooks to glacé their cherries?

One of the most aptly appointed people in the French Higher Council is a comedian, Raymond Devos (a Belgian, incidentally); the whole thing smacks of farce. Perhaps Devos will break through the weighty Gallic seriousness, unlike Maurice Druon, the French Academy’s secretaire perpetual, who with earnestness thanked the Prime Minister in the name of the first and oldest body established to defend their language: the Academie Francaise.

What is it about the French that they need an Academy to protect their language? Is French dead? Perhaps it is, since living languages are pretty much able to look after themselves.

And anyway, if the Academy has attempted to preserve the purity of the French language since 1635 without success, I’d think the Eiffel (sorry, Ivory) Tower Academy might also be a bit of a dinosaur.

At the Expolangues Language Fair, another Francophile, Jean-Pierre Van Duth, regarded the maintenance of one’s own language and culture as a way to ensure peace. (Even though his EEC-type name belies it.) ‘If we think of European nations as natural friends,’ he said, ‘we are doomed to failure.’

He doesn’t begrudge the role of English as a common linguistic currency but claims it’s only good for shouting across borders – it doesn’t allow insight into other cultures.

This from the president of Expolangues, where computers last month displayed their remarkable abilities to teach people each other’s languages.

I sometimes feel the French have a bad case of sour grapes – a possibility, I suppose, considering one of their major industries. French is not one of the prime international languages and standing against the inroads of Franglais is typical French gall, about as arrogant an approach as testing nuclear weapons in someone else’s back yard.

In summary, I’d like to paraphrase: the nation that tries to preserve (or pickle) its language will lose it – the one the loosens it, will save it.

Raymond Devos, comedian, 
cover of book by Stephen Dupre