In the 1980s, at a time when I was very much alive but still far too young to understand the scope of any serious and important thing, Quebec society was tussling with each other in the public arena over a sensitive subject. : the color of the margarine. In the eyes of the dairy producers of the time, turning the vulgar condiment yellow to give it the appearance of butter was an unspeakable sling against the noble product from our dairy cows. It was then argued that consumers would undoubtedly become confused.
In 2008, however, after a social and legal saga, the government finally allowed the seditious dye to be incorporated into margarine. Quebec broke, not without risks for the maintenance of our social fabric, this food glass ceiling.
Recently, we learned that the Quebec Association of French Teachers wanted to reform the rules for agreeing past participles, with the aim of simplifying their mastery. It was enough to inflame certain forums of our beautiful province and the bickering between educated neighbors with strong opinions.
For my part, I remain doubtful as to the merits of the arguments put forward by those who reject out of hand any modification to the rules of agreement of past participles. Most often, we invoke the need to preserve the “beauty” and the “logic” of our language, we fear a “dumbing down” of our admirable grammar and, in the same spirit, we emphasize the importance of ” work hard to learn how to write well”. There is no denying it: the devil is with the cows!
Now, on the basis of what objective criteria can the “beauty” of a language be established? Where is the boundary of the irreversible “race to the bottom”? How does the complexity of a linguistic code contribute to its finesse or its effectiveness? In reality, written French suffers from a historical narcissism that is very difficult to deal with today. Over the centuries, according to clerics and grammarians trying to ennoble our vocabulary to excess, here we are today prisoners of a spelling that is byzantine to say the least.
By browsing its astonishing history, you will quickly notice that our written language appears in part to be the result of an overweening elitism, the fruit of a cultural imperialism that has long since fallen. In this sense, the agreement of past participles is a convincing example, particularly with the use of the auxiliary “avoir”. Imagine the hours spent by millions of students chasing the direct complement in a sentence! It’s disconcerting to the point of not being able to distinguish butter from yellow margarine.
French is to our identity what spread is to bread: one does not go without the other. Discussing grammar once again gives us the opportunity to sit down to discuss our language collectively. In doing so, beyond the points of view on the subject, I can only rejoice and have fun with the proposal of these courageous French teachers.
Hoping by the end of the XXIe century an opinion of the French Academy on this subject, I maintain the mad hope that we will give our past participles a more appetizing color in writing!