Return of the language purists…
X “provides more quality entertainment than any other resorts on the planet.” “It appears to be the case….” “Remenber: their’s almost not any time left to buy…!” Plus misspellings, double negatives, and wrong word usage—are these and other examples taken from TV ads or those banners scrolling at the bottom of the TV screen indicating a deterioration of standard English?
If we add jive, street slang, and idiomatic mixtures (so-called Spanglish, for example), some language purists might be apoplectic. As a writer of sci-fi thrillers, I tend to be more forgiving. English, especially American English (if there is such a thing), is more vibrantly and dynamically alive than any other language. And it seems to become more vibrant and dynamic as the years pass.
But I’m not here to rant about the purity of English—let the Brits worry about that (can an Eton graduate speak Cockney?). I’m just wondering about the resurgence across our northern U.S. border of French language purists in Quebec. Years ago—I confess that I can’t remember how many—a truce was declared. What happened? Did we, those blustering, bloviating, pop culture neighbors from the South, do something to trigger this? Is this just an expression of ethnic hatred long suppressed between Canadian anglophiles and francophiles?
When I lived in Colombia, I made an attempt to preserve my French language abilities that were facing a serious attack from my increasing immersion into the Spanish language. I paid for some excellent conversational courses in the Colombian-French Center run by the French government. I practiced my French with various visiting professors at the university where I taught. I even went to wild parties hosted by those friends where I practiced French slang and marveled at their fascination with jitterbug. All these efforts were largely unsuccessful. I can still read in French but I would not dare speak it any formal setting.
Spanish suffered a paradigm shift about the time of the publication of Don Quijote. Sure, almost every country in South America has its own special words, taboo words and phrases, and regional variations in pronunciation. You’ll find this around Spain also, even if you discount the other languages present in that country (Basque in the north, Catalan in the south, and so forth). But, by and large, an educated Spanish speaker speaks the language of Don Quijote de la Mancha, often called Castillian Spanish.
French, on the other hand, has changed tremendously since the 16th century—at least it has to my uneducated ear. Before I lived in Colombia, before Spanish destroyed my ear for French, my girl friend and I took a trip to Quebec. I turned on the TV the first night at a hotel in Montreal. I heard old French—as I said, to my untrained ear. Even before that, at a truck stop, we both had remarked that the truck drivers seemed to be speaking like Louis XVI. That’s remarkable, we thought, given the changes in France that have occurred since then. This was just our uneducated opinion, of course, but, as McLuhan or someone said, perception is reality. We had stepped back in time.
Canadian francophiles can correct me if this was a wrong perception. I only mention it because it is a possible explanation of this resistance to change. I saw this same resistance among my French friends in Bogota. I can remember heated arguments with them about the purity of English v. the purity of French. These were the guys who insisted that le weekend, used by many French speakers, was an English word borrowed from French (but maybe they were just jerking my chain?). Since these friends were mathematicians and scientists, all those technical terms borrowed from English made their case more difficult, but they tried to make it. (I’ve had the same experience with Russian speakers.)
I find this insularity a bit strained especially in the case where it’s applied to corporate names. English has a good track record there; the French, especially French Canadians, do not. (I believe the French still have l’Academie.) The latest controversy seems to center on these corporate names. Perhaps Le Gap should just be shortened to Gap—translating part of the name, in this case an article, does seem to be a bit over the top.
I’m ambiguous about the trend making English the international language of business and commerce. Its history of absorbing foreign language influences (Germanic Saxon absorbing French Norman, for example, about a thousand years ago) undoubtedly is an influence here. If English didn’t have a term for it, one was borrowed from Greek or Latin or some other language. David Crystal’s The Stories of English followed some of these influences. Nevertheless, this complex history and English pronunciation makes it devilishly difficult for a non-native speaker to master the language.
I suppose the trend just described, which started long before my trip to Colombia, was a possible explanation why mis amigos franceses had a strange view of the relationship between French and English. They were from France. While the English Channel separates France from England and the Atlantic Ocean separates it from the U.S., French Canada is surrounded by anglophiles. But they should lighten up and join the modern world. Or, at least recognize that resisting language changes is about as futile as holding up a hand to stop a hurricane. And also as futile as my trying to stop my increasing immersion in Spanish from destroying my abilities in the French language. C’est la vie.
And so it goes….
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