“Do not say: ‘Between these ‘two’ alternatives, I do not know which side to take.’ Say: ‘In this alternative, I do not know…'”
“We can never tell ministers, educators, and even those who want to take care of the French language in Quebec (yes!) enough that the word “alternative” means “two possibilities”. We must use the word “choice” in the sentence: “You have the alternative between this and that”. As for “double alternative”, it is a horror […] and a mark of ignorance of the meaning of the French word alternative, and this because English, as usual, comes to corrupt our language.”
Seventy-five years separate these two extracts from language chronicles. The first, signed by Étienne Blanchard, appeared in The Press in 1918. The second, by Louis-Paul Béguin, was published in The duty in 1993. Language chronicles flourished in Quebec, especially from the second half of the 19th centurye century. Linguist Wim Remysen explains that the tone is first and foremost corrective: they often point out the gaps between the French of Quebec and that of Paris, long seen as the epicenter of good speech.
Anglicisms are a recurring subject there: I analyzed the place of Anglicism in chronicles from the end of the 19th centurye century to today. The one who most often deals with anglicisms is the most contemporary, Guy Bertrand, who has just retired as a linguistic advisor at Radio-Canada.
By the way, how many anglicisms are there in French? In Quebec French? Complaints about the phenomenon are never accompanied by figures. Could it be that this age-old concern has never been the subject of scientific studies?
Of course not. It is better to consult them in order to base our thoughts, and especially our policies, on data rather than on impressions where our concern generalizes from the most spectacular statements.
In France as in Quebec, research shows that anglicisms are in fact much less frequent than what the discourse would have us believe. The co-author of Little Robertthe late Josette Rey-Debove, reports that the daily The world account for 0.6%. Shana Poplack, Canada Research Chair in Linguistics, found less than 1% in a corpus of spoken language in the Hull-Ottawa region, which is particularly susceptible to the influence of English on French. She concludes that anglicisms “are very rare, they are ephemeral, and they quickly take on the grammar of the recipient language.” This includes syntactic anglicisms, which are considered “insidious” because they are less easily spotted.
This does not mean that we do not use anglicisms; only, we use fewer than one might think, and they are often the same ones.
Should we stop worrying about anglicisms? Of course not. In Quebec, where French speakers constitute a fragile majority, to use Jacques Leclerc’s words, linguistic planning is important to maintain balance. Quebec French has suffered, throughout its history, a wave of anglicisms. They have penetrated entire lexical fields, particularly after the Industrial Revolution — that of the automobile is emblematic of the phenomenon.
However, Quebecers have not stood idly by. They have taken strong measures: language laws, creation of institutions and reference works, francisation of English terminology. And these measures have borne fruit. Not acknowledging the progress made seems to me to be an affront to those who have devoted their careers to protecting the French language here. If the discourse remains the same as in the 19th centurye century when the situation is not, we feed cynicism and the idea that any action would be nothing more than a stab in the dark.
We must also put things into perspective: not all anglicisms should be banned. Some are completely neutral (camping, steak, etc.). This is one of the reasons why “moufflet,” a suggestion by the Office québécois de la langue française to replace “muffin,” never took root. Generally speaking, in Quebec, there is a tendency to replace criticized anglicisms with their French equivalent in a neat register. Linguist Nadine Vincent has shown that the French equivalents for “chat,” “podcast,” and “email,” namely “clavardage,” “baladodiffusion,” and “email,” have taken root in the written language.
As for “alternative,” more than 100 years after Blanchard’s warning, most reference works still condemn it. However, the criticized usage (one of two options) is much more widely used than the accepted meaning (set of two options), which I have to teach my students. Moreover, the two meanings are not completely unrelated. The French language could very well have ended up, by semantic shift, with this new meaning, as very often happens (“lilac” designated the shrub before the flower, then the color, and “table” designates both the piece of furniture and the room in which it is located).
THE Treasure of the French language records this use of “alternate” and includes a quote fromIn Search of Lost Time by Proust (1922) as well as this one by the French writer Léon Gozlan (1836): “Placed between these two extreme alternatives of cowardice and courage […]their decision is made; their choice is made. » For how many decades must a custom be current to be accepted?