As part of the series The Ideas that Made Quebec, we cannot ignore the rout of French in light of the unbridled communications of speakers on social media.
Notwithstanding the inherent complications related to writing French, the pernicious use of words in order to simplify them inevitably leads to abbreviations devoid of any meaning. For example, the word “a beaucoup” sees its spelling transformed into “bcp”, a degrading intellectual laziness, even disrespectful of the language.
In this vein, French draws its origin largely from Latin and, as a result, its etymology reflects this reality in the spelling of the number “seven” which retains its Latin “p” of septem in its French spelling. This is also the case for the word “finger” which retains the “g” of digit Latin. In this sense, it is completely inappropriate to attribute to French the qualifier of “capricious”. Unfortunately, social media users have adopted abbreviations as a mode of reference, thus causing a denaturalization of the French language and, by ricochet, a jargon victim of excess.
To perpetuate itself, our language must remain faithful to its Latin origins, failing which it will sink into excessive barbarism and lose all the prestige it has gained over the centuries in Quebec until its most complete decline.
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