Why the French are worried about the spread of Franglais across the Channel

Franglais has a long and noble history in England, probably dating back to the day after the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when, I feel sure, Saxon courtiers of the slain King Harold, made peace with Duke William and offered him a “right royal bienvenu”.

In Private Eye, the tradition is kept alive with contributions from the late “Kilometres Kington” including this reported exchange between President Macron and a gilet-jaune:

Macron:  Vraiment, la Grande Bretagne est mad comme un serpent! Après le Brexit, il y aura le trouble sur les rues.

Protesteur: … de Paris?

Macron:  Non, non. De Londres! Le Royaume Uni est un pays divisé et toxique.

Protesteur: Ah, Monsieur le Pot, ou should that être Président Kettle?

But Franglais – as distinct from the centuries-long absorption of French words and phrases into the English language, such as restaurant, menu, silhouette, cliché, depot and the one I’m sure you have all seen before many times, déjà vu   – is essentially a form of verbal pantomime. It is in the opposite direction, from English into French, that the phenomenon properly exists today.

We all know about le parking and le weekend. And you have probably seen references to political “leaders” and “rugbymen”. But yesterday, writing in the leading conservative newspaper Le Figaro, the Socialist Senator and former government minister André Vallini, lamented the fact that just about no area of French life seems capable of resisting the encroachment of English.

He goes on to list dozens of examples of the “menace” of anglicisms, from “Man,” “Woman” and “kids,” now routine in magazine ads, through “actuality” – itself a corruption of the original French actualité – “workstation,” “Le Shop and Collect” and “un run after work” to a plethora of Parisian “weeks” – Design Week, Fashion Week, Urban Week and Welcome Week.

Zut alors! Ee is not ‘appy, you kneow?

“It is not a matter of calling into question the age-old enrichment of the language of Molière by that of Shakespeare, nor of forgetting that everyday English contains more French words than the current French contains English words. But it is a much bigger issue than people think – not least in respect of the unifying factors within French society. An [opinion] poll conducted in 2017 indicated that when asked which were the main constituent elements of feeling that one belonged to the nation, the French language sprang to mind for 79 per cent of respondents, compared to the values of the Republic at 64 per cent; the history of France and its culture, 63 per cent; human rights, 57 per cent; and symbols such as the Tricolour and The Marseillaise at 53 per cent.”

The French, Vallani concludes, love their language, but are not always valiant in its defence. In lordly fashion (de haut en bas, if you like), he warns that if the élites of French society fail to live up to their responsibility to defend the language, the lower orders (les classes populaires) will be left with nothing to live up to, leading to the collapse of l’esprit public – roughly speaking, France’s sense of itself

So here’s a pretty how-de-do. But I wonder if Vallani is not getting a bit too worked up about something that is more show than substance. Take Le Figaro as a case in point. It is no easy read for anglophones (myself included). A cup of coffee, and a dictionary, are usually required if one hopes to battle all the way through its more, er, recherché oped pieces, which are daily lessons in the complexities, as well as the pleasures, of French. By any reasonable standard, the language is in fine fettle, needing no help from either the Government or l’Academie française – the latter the body, first established by Richelieu and restored by Napoleon, whose 40 members, known as Les Immortels, give off more than a whiff of a Molière comedy.

One could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that Vallani is auditioning for admission to the academy should ever one of the existing Immortals turn up their toes.

But he has a point, just as long as you don’t take it too seriously. In the same edition of Le Figaro, the television review, featuring the week’s best and worst viewing, appeared under the headline “Figaro Top, Figaro flop”. An article on skin care noted the arrival of several new serums: “Capture Youth –  Intense Rescue,” from Dior; “Bright Booster” from Laboratoires Filorga; and Estée Lauder’s “Advanced Night Repair”. A full-page ad in the paper’s business section placed by Expleo, the new name for Assystem Technologies of Paris, plays on its company motto, “Think bold, act reliable [sic]”. It begins: “Become a (bolder version) of yourself – join Expleo”. Only up the side of the ad, in tiny letters, do we get the French translation, “Soyez (plus) audacieux. Rejoignez Expleo”. Elsewhere, the headline of a piece about getting good ideas from concept to market in the electronics field, reads, “La difficile croissance des start-up francaises”.

Shouldn’t that be start-ups, with an “s”? Where is there a bilingual Immortal when you need one?

How much any of this matters is surely the point at issue. Would we get worked up if new French words and descriptions of things started appearing willy-nilly every day in our newspapers and, more to the point, online? Possibly. But I don’t think so. English is robust and can handle itself in pretty well any situation. Besides, most of what is creeping into French these days isn’t English at all, but American, and it affects us as much as it does the French. Vous savez que je veux dire – hein?