Parlez-Vous Franglais?

Languages are the pedigree of nations. --Samuel Johnson

"The French language is a treasure," cries Rene Etiemble, professor of comparative languages at the Sorbonne. "To violate it is a crime. Persons were shot during the war for treason. They should be punished for degrading the language."

As purist and patriot, Linguist Etiemble has declared war against Franglais, the pidgin French-English that has flooded la belle langue with U.S. neologisms. French newspapers speak of call-girls, cliff-dwellers, containment, fairways, missile-gaps, uppercuts. French sociologists analyze le melting-pot, out-groups, ego-involvement. French business roils with words like boom, le boss, fifty-fifty, soft-approach and supermarket.

Calling for drastic fines against Americanolatres (America worshipers), Etiemble estimates that Frenchmen soft on English have allowed 5,000 common Anglicisms (and 30,000 technical ones) to divide Gaul. The august French Academy is so alarmed that it has decided to "unleash an offensive in favor of the defense of the French language." Mounting the barricades, the academy's dictionary commission will prepare a blacklist of "foreign" words that are impropres `a la langue.

Planetary Phenomenon. All this may be the most quixotic war in French history, for English is currently the world's most irresistible language. In two world wars, British and American troops spread it to common people everywhere. The dynamism of U.S. culture and technology has sped the process. Flexible, expressive and relatively simple, English is circling the planet at a phenomenal rate.

Spoken as first language by 250 million people and as a second language by hundreds of millions more, widely dispersed English is becoming the universal tongue of trade, diplomacy, science and scholarship. Pilots of all nations use it for airways communication. Jazz teaches it to youth the world over. In emerging Asia and Africa, polyglot people take up English as the only way to comprehend their neighbors. The Chinese Communists speak English in propaganda broadcasts to East Africa. The Russians use it in broadcasts to the Far East, and stamp their Near East exports with the English legend, "Made in U.S.S.R."

Aber No Sweat. As a result, Anglicisms are now weirdly lodged in most major languages. Russian futbol fans cheer a fourvard's goal, jeer an offside penalty. Western-vowed stilyagi (Teddy boys) call themselves Tom, Dick or Harry, and breakfast on corn flakes.

In Japan, the mysterious East went West as soon as the G.I.s arrived with jiipu (Jeeps) and gamu (chewing gum). Every modan garu (modern girl) is now avid for nairon sutokkingu (nylon stockings), the hittu parado (hit parade) and the popular magazines sekkuso sutori (sex stories). In showbiz, which is naturally fantazikku, starlets grapple with ojishon, kamera tesuto and doresu rihaasaru (audition, camera test, dress rehearsal). "Aimu sori," says the Japanese businessman as he breaks a kakuteiru (cocktail) date with his garufurendo (girl friend). He has time only for hassaru (hustle) and greater purodakuchibichi (productivity).

West Germans have literally translated American expressions, such as Imgleichen Boot sitzen (to be in the same boat), and Germanized others, such as Beiproduct, brandneu, Eierkopf, Herzattacke, kalter Krieg, (byproduct, brand-new, egghead, heart attack, cold war). They assimilate the unassimilable by total adoption--beatnik, baby sitter, bootlegger, bulldozer, king-size, scooter and stripper. Hundreds of American words have become German Verbs--parken, twisten, hitchhiken. The Luftwaffe fills the air with bilingual babble: "Aber no sweat, boy, no sweat. Ich habe normal letdown procedure gemacht."

Linguistic Sin. French zeal to avoid all this is rooted in feelings of national identity. French until recently was the world's diplomatic language. Only 65 million people now speak it as a first language; less than one-fourth of the U.N.'s 111 member nations still use it in debates. Franglais is spreading so fast, argues Parisian Linguist Alain Guillermou, that U.S. French teachers may soon have nothing to teach. Guillermou calls for a national commission to police Americanolatres on the ground that Franglais is not only a linguistic sin but is also "bad for morals."

Guillermou has a certain point: words are themselves ideas that shape a people's self-image. French purists are thus aghast at the eat-and-run tone of le snack-bar as opposed to the civilized Gallic pace of le cafe. The Franglais word teen-ager is rebellious worlds apart from the dutiful jeune fille. The traitorous notion that "American is the only living language," cries Linguist Etiemble, will lead straight to what he calls, in ironic Franglais, "I' American way of life."

Linguistic Ellis Island. In the 17th century, France "purified" its language, striving for utmost clarity and "incorruptible" syntax. "What is not clear is not French," boasted an 18th century linguist. Etiemble thus argues that Franglais may cause disastrous misunderstandings.

To avoid the worst, Etiemble is preparing a dictionary (Parlez-Vous Franglais?) of French equivalents for Anglicisms. Even where there is none whatever (for Jeep, say), he will insist on French spelling (Jipe). Guillermou is devising a linguistic decompression chamber: a new French glossary with three sections--white pages for acceptable words, red for inadmissible ones, and green pages that "will be a sort of Ellis Island of the French vocabulary. After suitable nationalization, the words may move into the white pages."

Even this seems futile. Language is the greatest smuggling operation in the world. When the French blast juke-box as an American atrocity, for example, they might better blame West Africans for the original Bambara word, dzugu (wicked), which evolved into joog (disorderly) in the Gullah language of sea-island Negroes living off Georgia and South Carolina. It is virtually impossible to keep a language "pure." Mustafa Kemal tried it in Turkey, failed for the simple reason that half the Turkish language is borrowed from Arabic and Persian. Mussolini purged Italian of such "foreign" French (but Latin-derived) words as hotel, menu and chauffeur. His so-called "Italian" substitutes --albergo, lista, autista--come from old German and Greek.

And what is French, anyway? A rich ragout of corrupted Latin spiced with Arabic, English, German, Spanish and Greek. Pure French is so scarce that scholars in search of it must look to men like Nicholas Chauvin, a legendary soldier noted for his blind devotion to Napoleon. He at least gave the world a truly French word--chauvinism.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.