Rise of Franglais | The French Academy sounds the alarm

In a report made public on Tuesday, the French Academy denounces an “invasive anglicization” of French in the communications of companies, but also of institutions.

Suzanne Colpron
The Press

The examples are numerous. Air France has its “skyteam”; Citroën, its “Connect Box”; Canal+, its “My Canal” and the best “live” and “replay” programs; Carrefour stores have their “pedestrian drive”; Ma French Bank uses “cookies” and offers the “Let’s Cagnotte” service.

There is indeed, on the other side of the Atlantic, a surprising invasion of English into the common language which always surprises Quebeckers who set foot in France. This is partly due to the fact that this country does not have tools to counter the invasion of Franglais like the Office québécois de la langue française.

It is in this context that the French Academy created, in January 2020, a commission made up of six academicians – Gabriel de Broglie, Florence Delay, Danièle Sallenave, Dominique Bona, Amin Maalouf and Michael Edwards – to study institutional communication from 15 years old. The result takes about thirty pages.

“Syntax is messed up”

First observation: if the addition of foreign words was done through a process of progressive francization until the XX^and century, the opposite is happening now.

The “almost immediate entry of an ever-increasing number of Anglicisms now makes it difficult to assimilate them and produces effects on the very structure of the sentence: the syntax is disrupted, which constitutes a real attack on the language, in that the very logic of thought is affected, the analytical structure of the French sentence being supplanted by that, synthetic, of the English”, worries the Academy, guardian of the language of Molière.

This is reflected in particular by the disappearance of prepositions (eg: the Works Manager) and by the inversion of the order of words (eg: a QR code).

The Academy adds that this risks causing a double linguistic, social and generational divide in society.

Slogans used to attract attention (“I Love Nice” or “Only Lyon”, “Maubeuge, Creative Cities”, “My Loire Valley”, “Alpes IsHere”) are not always well understood by the public. “Sarthe me up”, for example, is the brand of Sarthe, in the Pays de la Loire region. And “Made for Sharing” is the slogan of Paris’ bid for the 2024 Olympic Games.

There are also puns retained by companies or institutions for their sound, but whose meaning is not obvious: “CY (“See Why”), name given to the University Cergy Paris, FUN (France Digital University) or Saikle (cycle recycling).

Internet and digital

Unsurprisingly, the most strongly “anglicized” field, after fashion and sport, is that of the internet and digital.

In France, a community manager has become a “community manager”. The data analyst is a “data analyst”. The game designer, a “game designer” and general skills, “soft skills”.

The use of certain English words is widespread: blog, booster, coach(ing), live, miles, smartphone, tag, cookies, hashtag, mail, newsletter… Others are used very frequently: box, cloud, collector, follower , low-cost, playback, podcast, tech, web, workshop, top ten, gamer/gaming, playlist, teaser. And others are of more recent appearance, but widespread: big data, blockchain, Fab Lab, fake news, millennials and pitch.

We also note that French words lose ground compared to the corresponding Anglicisms, the use of which is not justified by any necessity. This is the case of “matching” instead of concording or corresponding, “dispatching” instead of deploying or distributing, “packaging” for packaging, “mix” for mixture, “fake” for false or misleading, or even ” implement” to achieve.

Moreover, a large part of these Anglicisms has no orthographic consistency (start-ups or startups, data or Data).

In conclusion, the academicians note that “it is important not to accommodate complacently to excessive standardization and simplification, not to enter into a single mold, to let yourself be drawn into a single thought”.