August 5, 2021 - 3:03pm
You know it’s officially la saison des marronniers (silly season) in France when a somnolent country suddenly gets up in arms for a Great National Cause nobody really paid attention to before. Win extra points if you can somehow accuse the government of dereliction toward a national symbol! Double those if it has to do with the English (language, fishermen, PM, food, football team, whatever)!
This time, it’s Emmanuel Macron who’s kick-started the summer’s most tantalising clickbait, right between stories on masks-only beaches and the best recipe for a true Salade Niçoise. His entry? Introducing a new national identity card.
The carte d’identité nationale is a mandatory card that has existed for exactly a century, although a passport, issued by the same government office, can replace it anywhere. (I haven’t renewed my CI since it expired in 2008, and I’ve never been taken to task over this dog-eared plastic-laminated piece of paper — in fact, it is 15 years out of date).
The replacement for the carte d’identité, is credit card-sized, laser-engraved, memory-chipped and made of supposedly non-tamperable polycarbonate. You’d think, after the recent demonstrations that saw almost a quarter million people across France protesting against the erosion of civil liberties, the uproar would be over privacy issues (the identity card contains a number of your distinctive biometrics and a QR code). Mais pas du tout. Forget about your fingerprints eternally recorded on a silicon wafer; the real scandale is that the card’s inscriptions are captioned in English under the French version.
“What we see here is a gesture of linguistic submission!” thunders the Québecois Le Figaro columnist Mathieu Bock-Côté. “The State no longer intends to embody the fundamental identity of France…but agrees to pilot a symbolic transition…to internalise the demands of the anglicisation of the world.” Phew. The Académicienne Française Barbara Cassin is equally up in arms. “Why only English?” she wails, calling the decision not to use a third EU language on ID documents — mandated by a Brussels Directive — “symbolic stupidity”.
Worse, the decision was taken after Brexit: it confirms the “supposed” place of English as the “universal language of communication”, even though it is no longer one of the main languages of the EU 27. “The State itself… consents to its own linguistic downgrading and cultural folklorisation,” bemoans Bock-Côté in his 1,600-word rant in a piece he wrote five months ago, but which has been hastily updated on Le Figaro’s website.
That’s some boulder on our collective shoulder. It’s not any foreign language we object to. What we hate about English is that it’s winning the battle. In the late 19th century, the Third Republic built national consciousness on the eradication of local languages — Breton or Occitan children daring to speak the regional tongue in primary schools were harshly punished. Today we find ourselves the Bretons of a larger bloc, one we bought into, yet which is betraying us and our particular exceptionalism.
I have no beef with English captions on my new CI (when I get round to finally getting one). And I can’t help noticing that not only my current passport but the previous one (delivered 2003) carry English translations. After all, the Paris Métro announcements now blare in seven languages (French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Chinese) that you should beware of pickpockets on the line, and nobody has yet whined that the first victim of robbery here was the French language itself.
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SubscribeChere Mme Moutet, I am with the linguistic nationalists on this one. Never mind that the Third Republic chased away the old languages of Mistral and co; it was perhaps a crime, but it cannot be undone; nor can it be made right by allowing a further intrusion of English into the official life of France. Britain has left the EU – with my approval, incidentally; therefore, there is no need for any EU country to treat English as an official language any more. One might have thought that perhaps German or Italian should receive this honour, now that we have departed, but that is neither here nor there. The point is to defend and assert the living tradition of French by using its natural roots and patterns as the basis for coping with the modern world, NOT to give way to the spread of international English. This will help those of us who prefer traditional English, too, by decreasing the reach of the vulgarised, north American tat now passing for our tongue. It will also force us to try a little harder to acquire another language ourselves – we are notably incompetent when it comes to such accomplishments. Je vous prie de continuer la lutte pour un monde de culture, ou nous sommes obliges d’apprendre d’autre langages, meme si c’est impossible de parler francais au niveau de votre anglais.
I agree with the sentiment – and one of the curses of English is that everyone else speaks it so well that it leaves only the die hard and bloody-minded to perfect another language.
In my experience, as Katherine points out above, most other nations just prefer speaking and learning English, not least because it’s easier and more people speak it.
So I doubt its popularity, reinforced with the ‘cultural’ weight of the US, is waning anytime soon.
Now this is what I like about the English: a thoughtful comment, expressed with elegance and courtesy. Thankyou.
I love this article and the fact the French are fighting for their language. At least we have one Western nation proud of its language, culture and heritage and willing to stand up for it, even in small matters.
“What you have to understand, Katharine, is that the French language is not a language. It is a temple.”
> my former French flatmate, dispensing pearls of truth back in 2002.
The reason why French is not winning is because it’s too hard. English might be full of weird pronunciations and so many exceptions that you may as well not bother with having a rule but you don’t need much of it to be able to communicate.
French, on the other hand, demands a pretty high level of knowledge and precision before you can speak and be understood. I’ve mastered German – another tough nut – but my goodness, the correct usage of “en” and “y” and all the other itty-bitty words (ce, que, qui) in French have me completely foxed. I don’t think I’ll ever get word order right – negations trip me up endlessly.
But it is marvellous to attempt such a thing, isn’t it? Imagine a world without mountains, or where there were no difficult musical instruments. The reward of climbing the one and playing the other is extraordinary – it is mastery and widens the scope of the mind.
English might be full of weird pronunciations and so many exceptions that you may as well not bother with having a rule…
I do believe you have singlehandedly, in a sentence, solved the pernicious problem of English exceptionalism. Well done! May I borrow this quote to use elsewhere?
Although wait a minute—was it the language that made them like that, or did they shape the language?
A memorable piece. I very much enjoyed reading it. I shall not forget “a boulder on the shoulder”.
Nor Msr “Coq-Bloc”!
The only point in having English on the CI is if it’s accepted outside of France. I wonder if it is.