The Story of French (48 page)

At the same time, some E sounds are disappearing. The French E is a ubiquitous vowel that often works as filler in a language that has few groupings of consonants (the kind one sees in
swim
or
sprout
in English, or in
bleibst
or
abschneiden
in German). But now the French are beginning to group consonants in their sentences, at least through pronunciation, by dropping the vowels between consonants, especially the E’s. Sentences like “
Je me le demande
” (“I am wondering”) are now pronounced
j’m’le d’mand
or
je me l’demand.

The consonant system of French has changed very little. However, the pronunciation of vowels, known as vocalization, has changed considerably, and is continuing to do so. Diphthongs disappeared in Paris long ago. Other changes that started centuries ago are now reaching completion, such as the disappearance of long vowels. Around Paris today, words like
mettre
(to put) and
maître
(master) are pronounced exactly the same way (with a sharp
è
sound; the
ai
used to be a long vowel in the latter). The two pronunciations of the short A have also been blurred:
pâte
(dough) used to sound like
pawt
but now sounds like
patte
(leg). Finally, nasal vowels such as
in, an, on
and
un
have almost been merged into a single vowel (a cross between
an
and
on
). As a result, in France a phrase like “
un bon pain brun
” (“a good brown bread”) now tends to sound like
ahn bahn pahn brahn
(the vowels still have distinct sounds in other places, notably Quebec). This change in pronunciation explains why French children write A2M’1 (literally,
à deux m’un
) for
à demain. Un
used to be pronounced
uhn
but it is now pronounced so it rhymes with
demain.
A similar process of merging is happening with two pronunciations of the vowel E. The È (
eh
) is moving towards É (
ay
), which is why
La Croix
’s sample SMS message read
Je V
for
je vais—
such a shorthand could not have occurred three generations ago, when
vais
was pronounced
veh.

Of course, these changes in pronunciation apply mainly to Paris, and are not happening in other parts of France or in the francophonie at the same pace, if at all. A Quebec teen not already familiar with the expression would probably have to make a real effort to decode a French teen’s “
Je VO6né. A2M’1
” (although the codes are crossing the Atlantic). And the process is advancing quickly in France. A recent cover of the French magazine
Historia
’s language special edition said “
1539: f1 du Lat1
” (
f’un du Lat’un,
or
fin du Latin:
the end of Latin).

In addition to pronunciation, some considerable shifts in French grammar are taking place. The way to ask questions, for example, has changed. In 1900 the acceptable way of asking “What is a cormorant?” was “
Qu’est un cormoran?
” Today, there are five ways to ask the question: “
Qu’est-ce qu’un cormoran?
” “
Qu’est-ce que c’est qu’un cormoran?
” “
Qu’est-ce que c’est, un cormoran?
” “
Un cormoran, c’est quoi?
” and “
C’est quoi un cormoran?
” Finally, in France and throughout the francophonie, speakers are tending more and more to substitute
on
(one) for
nous
(we) and drop the
ne
in the negative in
ne
…
pas.

But the most considerable change in grammar has been the almost total extinction of an entire verb tense, the
passé simple
(simple past). This is true throughout the francophonie. Nobody says
je marchai
(I walked). They say
j’ai marché
(literally “I have walked,” but understood as “I walked”). The
passé simple
is now restricted to some genres of literature and used only in the first or third person singular. In everyday speech it has been replaced by the
passé composé
(equivalent of the present perfect) or the
présent historique
(the present tense used to convey the past).

This shift is not happening because francophones are losing their capacity to conjugate verbs, or their grasp on time. It is happening because verb conjugation in the
passé simple
is clumsy, so speakers decided to find a way around it. French verbs are divided into three groups: the first group, those ending in -
er
(
marcher, manger, chanter
); the second group, regular verbs ending in -
ir
(
finir, salir, rôtir
); and the third group, irregular verbs ending in
-ir,
-
oir,
-
aindre,
-
endre
(
sortir, voir, craindre, rendre
). The endings for most tenses follow pretty much the same pattern for all three groups. For instance, the
imparfait
(imperfect, equivalent of the past continuous) for
marcher
is
je marchais
; for
courir
it’s
je courais
; and for
voir
it’s
je voyais.
But in the
passé simple,
endings vary according to the verb group, making these verbs
je marchai, je courus, je vis.
In the plural it gets even more complicated:
vous marchâtes, vous courrûtes, vous vîtes.

Before universal schooling in France, when only a few
lettrés
spoke the language, the
passé simple
stood the test of common usage. But after the Second World War, when millions of people were speaking French in their day-to-day lives, people found the
passé simple
just too complicated. To avoid engaging in linguistic gymnastics every time they opened their mouths, they started using the
passé composé
instead, where the past is marked by a standard auxiliary (
être
or
avoir
) combined with the past participle. Any speaker would need to know the past participle to conjugate a verb in other past tenses anyway. By the same logic, another verb tense, the
subjonctif imparfait
(past subjunctive), has been completely assimilated to the present subjunctive, or even the regular present tense, because of its clumsiness.

French speakers might not have abandoned the
passé simple
had French grammarians been more attuned to their needs. In Spanish, the Real Academia systematized conjugations, and the simple past is still used. But since no one ever simplified it in French, francophones just voted with their feet and walked away from it. It’s not the first time francophones have taken grammatical problems into their own hands, and it won’t be the last. Linguist Louis-Jean Calvet has noticed that all the new verbs created since the 1950s have the regular
-er
ending, as in
solutionner,
which is more convenient than the grammatically clumsy
résoudre
(find solutions). In other words, francophones have developed a way of simplifying the verb system on their own, without waiting for academicians to move on the matter. Like many linguists, Calvet believes that it’s popular French—not grammarians or the French Academy—that is doing the work of standardizing French today.

The jury is still out, however, on some extreme grammatical oddities of French such as
accord
(agreement in gender and number) of the participles of
verbes pronominaux
(reflexive verbs such as
se parler,
to talk to oneself) and the even more common
accord du participe passé avec avoir
(agreement of participles of verbs whose auxiliary is the verb “to have,” as in
j’ai voulu,
I wanted). Normally, French verbs agree with the subject’s number—a single person
veut
(wants), but three people
veulent.
And in the participle form, verbs also agree with gender:
elles sont allées
. However, in the cases of the participle of pronominal verbs and those of verbs that have
avoir
as an auxiliary, things have never been easy. Here, the verb should agree with the object, not the subject, if it is a direct object and the object is placed before the verb. A good example is
je les ai voulus
(I wanted those, or them), where the past participle is put in the plural form even though the subject is singular, because
those
or
them
(the plural direct object) is placed before the verb. As if that’s not complicated enough, the rule has plenty of exceptions. Ninety-nine percent of francophones never fully master the exceptions to the rule and require a dictionary, a grammar or a spell checker to get it right. Most francophones who claim to have mastered the rule have actually just learned to avoid the exceptions.

Strangely, nobody has dared to challenge the
accord
rule in order to simply make all participles agree with the subject. This is all the more surprising since the problem of agreement of participles pops up in regular use much more than the complicated
passé simple
does—and francophones did away with that. The reason no one has challenged the
accord
rule is probably that most participles in agreement, even if they are written differently, are pronounced the same way in conversation. That makes it easy for francophones to hide their ignorance. “
Je les ai voulues
” and “
Je les ai voulu
” sound exactly the same. But it’s a different matter in writing. Why have so few writers dared challenge the existing rule? They are probably afraid of looking ignorant or illiterate.

(We are toying with the idea of doing away with the agreement-of-participle nonsense in the French edition of this book. We will probably have to negotiate this as part of our publishing contract and include an explicit warning to our readers about the change. Even then, we may not overcome resistance from our editors.)

Though French has undergone—and is still undergoing—some significant changes in pronunciation and grammar, neither of these topics attracts nearly as much commentary as the appearance of new words does. New vocabulary and new definitions of existing words are the most visible and spectacular evidence that French is changing. Even foreigners with very little command of French comment on them.

But in a way, new words are the least significant of the changes happening in the language. Vocabulary and definitions shift all the time. A 1976 study of words in the authoritative
Larousse
dictionary showed that, between 1949 and 1960, French dictionaries modified one entry in seven, by changing definitions or by replacing words with others. There is no reason to believe that this process has either slowed down or accelerated in recent years. Dictionaries simply have a limited number of pages, and editors are forced to shed obsolete words in order to make room for new ones. One difference is that while borrowings among international languages used to come from varied sources, now most come from English. That makes them more noticeable, but not necessarily more numerous, nor a bigger threat.

For that matter, words that disappear aren’t necessarily gone forever. Before the 1960s the word
obsolète
was itself regarded as obsolete. It reappeared in French most likely because the same term was being used in English. Sometimes the source of the “re-entry” words is documented; for instance, Charles de Gaulle, a very well-read statesman, was notorious for dragging archaic terms such as
quarteron
(small band) out of obscurity for his speeches. In many cases, however, the source remains obscure. One of the great curiosities of French slang in the 1990s was the reappearance of the world
maille
(dough, in the sense of money, a meaning that dates back to the Middle Ages).

The language used in
les cités
is an important source of new vocabulary. The main form of jargon is a word-crunching system called
verlan,
whose origins date back to the seventeenth century.
Verlan
has been popular in France’s suburbs since the 1970s. It consists of reversing syllables and writing them phonetically; the term itself is
verlan
for
à l’envers
(in reverse). It has produced one of the most interesting expressions of the political landscape in France:
les beurs, verlan
for
rab,
the Arabic term for Arabs, referring to French of North African descent.

The jargon of the
cités
is evolving constantly and regularly entering mainstream usage, often through publicity. Suburban kids don’t speak of
français
but rather
céfran.
The
beurs
who make it to the middle class are now called
les beurgeois.
A
femme
(woman) is
meuf,
a
flic
(cop) is
keuf, mère
(mother) is
reum, père
(father) is
reup
and a
prof
(teacher) is a
frop. Verlan
goes as far as reverlanizing its terms, so that Arabs, first
beurs,
have become
rebeus,
and
femmes,
first
meufs,
have become
feums. Comme ça
(like that) was first verlanized as
comme aç,
then as
askeum,
and then as
asmeuk.

Verlan
is closely associated with another popular form of argot called
tchatche,
which is strongly influenced by Arabic. The word
tchatcher
comes from Algerian argot and means
to chat
—itself a derivation of the Spanish
chacharear.
Some
tchatche
terms, including the word
tchatche
itself
,
have made it into mainstream French. A famous example is
niquer,
derived from Algerian slang for
fuck.
Although the words that make it into mainstream French are mostly of Arabic origin, Wolof, the principal language of Senegal, has contributed words such as
gorette
(woman), while Malian contributed
intourie
(you’re crazy).