The Point of View section is seeing the blossoming of a new branch, Point of Language, with Professor Mireille Elchacar as its guide. During the summer, the Quebec lexicologist will invite you to think about French differently in a one-off format halfway between an essay and popular science.
“We will defend ourselves from saying “writer”, that would not be serious, and women, as we know, want to be taken seriously. Haven’t they launched themselves in recent days, all chirpy, on the exhilarating path to liberation?” Albert Beaudet, The LawOctober 17, 1970.
“Grevisse ranks “écrivaine” among the feminine forms created “in passing, by way of banter, or by fancy, or by individual whim.” René de Chantal, “Defense and illustration of the French language”, The LawAugust 25, 1955.
These excerpts from language chronicles make us smile today. These men were not totally against feminization, but the arguments used to contest certain forms do not seem very solid to us.
To oppose feminization, homonymy has often been mentioned: a feminine form is rejected because the word already designates an object, such as the cooker or the coffee maker. However, most words have several meanings and a word is always used in a context that disambiguates its meaning.
Then there are purely subjective arguments, such as those relating to the aesthetics of a word. The 1er February 2005, not so long ago, the author Frédéric Beigbeder devoted his column in the magazine Read in the form “writer”: “I can’t stand “writers”, it’s physical. I get a rash as soon as I read this filthy term which is quietly invading the entire literary press.”
Linguist Maria Candea relates that, according to some academics, “‘writer’ was to be proscribed because we hear ‘vain’, without realizing that in ‘writer’ we also hear ‘vain’.”
We are reassured that such arguments come either from the past or from elsewhere. Quebec has overcome these reservations and feminization is now a given. Unfortunately, when it comes to other aspects of the language, it is difficult to get past the commonplaces.
Lack of knowledge
The arguments that are put forward against any change in French spelling, in particular, are often subjective and betray a lack of knowledge of the reforms or of spelling itself. It is difficult to have a real societal debate on spelling because we lack knowledge.
The only spectrum through which we are presented with the French language at school is that of spelling mistakes. We teach little about the functioning of the language (very far from what the spelling suggests), and its history, not at all.
First, there was never any question of writing French by sound. The serious proposals currently circulating are very targeted. They concern the reform of past participle agreements and spelling corrections, which affect the joining and plural of compound words, the diaeresis, the non-distinctive circumflex accent on the “i” and the “u”, as well as some historical errors.
In general, specialists are in favour of changes but do not advocate reforming the entire spelling system. Let us remember, however, that writing by sound, even if it is today very negatively connoted, would simply amount to applying the principle at the base of our writing, the alphabetic principle. Writing by sound is the ideal towards which most languages tend (Spanish, Portuguese, German, etc.).
Some fear that Quebec will go it alone. In fact, the proposals come from working groups that bring together linguists from several countries. All recognize the advantages of a common system.
We can also see the difficulties of having two simultaneous spellings. However, we only have to look at how other languages have done when they have often modified their writing: the two systems coexist while waiting for children to learn the new forms at school, quite simply.
Leveling
The most frequent argument is that of leveling down. In fact, French spelling is so illogical that it is the one that cruelly lacks rigor. Albert Dauzat relates how certain decisions were taken at the Académie française: “The oddities of spelling cannot find any serious defender.”
How many French people, even educated ones, know that the Academy orders us to write “démailloter” with one “t” and “emmaillotter” with two “t”, because chance would have it that at the session where the first word was discussed, the majority of the Forty were in favour of simplification, while the wind blew in the opposite direction at a later session?
This fact is not isolated, because we have “charrier”, from “chariot”, and many others. Improving spelling, updating it, could only be a leveling up. We do not change spelling because speakers make mistakes, but because it contains flaws.
Above all, we must distinguish between language and spelling. Changing the spelling does not change the language. Georges Legros and Marie-Louise Moreau explain this eloquently: “Whether we write clé or clef, we always refer to the same word, with the same meaning, the same connotations; it is always a noun, feminine, usable in the singular or plural, which can be combined with articles, adjectives, which can function as the subject or complement of a verb, etc. Therein lie the fundamental linguistic properties of the word. Spelling does not alter any of them.”
The linguistic concerns of Quebecers have been the subject of a multitude of studies. Going beyond received ideas does not mean accepting everything. Rather, it is about basing our public policies on the advances of scientific research. French is too important not to do so.