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LE FRANGLAIS VU PAR LES ANGLAIS

LE FRANGLAIS VU PAR LES ANGLAIS

Voici un article tiré du Times de Londres, en date du mardi 12 octobre 1999.
Considérant le sujet de l’article, le style est moins ironique qu’à l’accoutumée…

Il est possible d’envoyer des commentaires à l’adresse suivante :

Letters to the Editor
The Times
1 Pennington Street,
London E1 9XN
United Kingdom

télécopieur: +44-20-7782-5046
courriel: letters@the-times.co.uk

Bonne lecture!

Pierre Thibaudeau

P.S.: L’article a été reproduit intégralement, incluant les coquilles!

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French try to stem new tide of franglais
From Charles Bremner in Paris

FRANCE was offered fresh ammunition in the battle to defend its language yesterday, with
the publication of a fat new glossary of terms for fending off the invasion of English.

On stepping down from the Etoile d’Europe (Eurostar), for example, male travellers
would be advised when meeting "une fille sexy" that they should not suggest
"un love story" complete with "le safe-sex". Instead, the girl should
be called une fille froufrouteuse and l’histoire d’amour should be pursued with le
preservatisme.

The expressions are among more than 8,000 offered by En Vrai Français, the latest
attempt to wean the French from their accelerating adopting of American-inspired
"franglais".

Compiled by Alfred Gilder, a senior civil servant who advises the Finance Ministy on
terminology, the lexicon provides a mix of brand-new coinages and French constructions to
replace les anglicismes that are flooding the language, mainly from the world of business,
entertainment and technology.

For example, at "le week-end", "un baby-boomer" should not consider
taking "un break" to eat " un hamburger" while listening to "le
rap" in a club favoured by "le who’s who du show-biz"—all current French
terms. Instead, at la samedime (from samedi-dimanche), le bébé-boume would be consuming
une fricadelle whole on un brec listening to la craque-danse in une clobe frequented by
l’Elitoscope du monde de spectacle.

The record of attempts by the Académie française, official guardian of the language,
to enforce alternatives to franglais suggest that most of these officially inspired terms
will vanish unused. In recent years, the academy has scored only a handful of hits, such
as le balladeur, instead of "le Walk-man", and le logiciel and le sac gonflable,
instead of "le software" and "l’airbag".

The record is better in Quebec, which has tough language laws, but poorer in Belgium,
which is close to adopting English as the best way around its division into French and
Flemish speakers.

The new French lexicon breaks ground by simply gallicising the spelling of many English
terms. "Un must" becomes un moeste, "le strip-tease" becomes le
tripetise; "un scoop" becomes un escoupe, "le disk-jockey" becomes le
joquet-disque and "le business" becomes le bizneuce. This ploy has worked most
recently with the universal adoption of le Cédérom for CD-Rom.

M Gilder says in a preface that the language of Molière is in mortal danger from the
willing submission of the French to "Atlantic jargon". "It is without
precedent that a great, rich, developed and cultivated country should become such a victim
of its own cultural alienation." Saying his quarrel was not with "the beautiful
English language", M Gilder blames international jargon for polluting French with
"dull, sludgy, impoverished" terms.

The lexicon comes amid outrage from purists over Christian Noyer, the French Deputy
Governor of the European Central Bank, who addressed the European Parliament in English, a
language used by only one member of the single currency—Ireland.

*******************On-Message***********************
A selection from En Vrai Français, Dictionnaire Franglais-Français (published by
Cherche-Midi):

bestseller prêt-à-lire
canyoning cagnonage
debriefing debreffage
fair play émulat
groupie admirette
has-been aète
hip hipe
latin lover amant latin
e-mail messageonique
Trafalgar désastre
sitcom télécomédie
Sixties les années d’or
whisky usqué


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