I’ve always loved languages; from the time I was a toddler on a Miami bus hearing Spanish for the first time. To my nascent consciousness the rhythms of the unknown language, with its fluttering tongue and coded sounds were not frightening----they were mesmerizing. It was a mystery just as interesting as those beautiful dark-haired, dark-eyed people were in my eyes.
I heard many different languages growing up at the Kennedy Space Center area: the familiar- yet-alien Spanish, yes; but also its cousin Portuguese, with its love of “o” sounds and more pronounced tongue flutters. I heard it spoken by the Brazilian exchange student at my high school during my senior year. And Tagalog, spoken by my half-Filipino friend Bunny. And Japanese. And Egyptian. And Hungarian, that was spoken by my friend Debbie’s mother.
But it was French that snared my heart. I am not sure exactly when I was captured, but I think I was primed for the seduction by a cartoon character. Um-hmm. You read that correctly. A Warner Brothers character named Pépé Le Pioù. Poor Pépé…forever trying to court female tuxedo cats who had somehow gotten a white stripe painted down their backs; and forever being spurned by them. I didn’t catch the adult undercurrents swirling around beneath the surface of every episode then. But I do now. But I digress.
What really turned me into a Francophile was a travel show on public TV the summer I switched from junior high to high school. The show offered viewers a tour of France, from Cherbourg to the Pyrenees, to the Rivièra, to Grenoble, to the Alsace-Lorraine---and of course, Paris. I fell in love…with a country. Somewhere in the course of watching that show, I made two decisions:
- At some point in my life, I HAD to go to France
- Beginning with my upcoming freshman year, I was going to learn the language.
The fulfillment of decision #1 is in the not-too-distant future; I am going to France. . . enfin (finally). I am thrilled beyond my ability to communicate it, but there is a distinct drawback in going at this point of time…which I will explain in just a moment.
However, I did make #2 a reality. I studied French for 3 years in high school and an additional year in college. I was very good at it all: speaking, reading and writing. But that was 40+ years ago. Today I realized that the window for visiting France and being able to converse freely with French people in their language closed some time in the past 20 years.
During my studies most of my teachers stressed how the French people resist the hybridization of their language and culture. That vigilance must have been wearied and eroded by the ever-encroaching English-speaking world, because something insidious has happened to la langue français. That “something” appears to be political correctness. Let me explain.
From its earliest usage French, as well as other Latin-based languages, assigned a gender to each noun. For example, words for house, morning, book, bread and wine were deemed masculine. Words meaning life, heart, room, car and music were considered feminine. There doesn’t appear to be a pattern behind the assignment of genders; it just is as it is. Or rather, it just was as it was.
Over the past week I have been watching French language instruction videos, with an eye toward brushing up my knowledge. But each video only deepens the suspicion that the French language has changed, and rather substantially.
Every language is a living thing and is being constantly updated and amended by the people who speak it. But in a gender-assigned language, those changes are more impactful and obvious than those in a hybrid, Teutonic-based, highly abstract language like English. Those changes that have been made to French are not merely lexiconic: they are metamorphic.
In the French that existed prior to the mid-1990s, questions were commonly formed by having an adjective or interrogative first, followed by the conjugated verb with a pronoun attached with a hyphen at the end. For instance, if I were shopping for a skirt in France, I would ask the salesclerk: “Combien coûte-elle?” (Elle is the third person female singular indirect pronoun. A skirt---jupe—is considered feminine.)
But now the way to ask that same question appears to be: “Combien ça coute?” There is a neutral pronoun (ça) used in place of the indirect pronoun now, thereby skirting the erstwhile “elle”. (Pardon the pun. But it was intended.)
And I can’t help but be saddened…on two accounts. First, that the French people are abandoning their centuries-old credo of language and cultural purity. It is tragic to me that they would sacrifice a major portion of their national identity on the altar of Political Correctness.
The other cause for my chagrin (another French word!) is the realization that those revisions have rendered most of my (imagined) conversational fluency anachronistic. There is not the time nor the inclination for me to update my skills. In fact, I regard such as being tantamount to participating in the usurpation of the French language.
So I will go to France and speak mostly English…which is as ubiquitous in Europe as any other language. Those few French folks I attempt to speak to in their language may or may not tolerate yet another American tourist butchering their soft yet complex language---and sounding like a time-traveler from the past as she does.
*Translation of the title: I Am a Lover of France and French Things…but the French People May Not Love Me.
