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Franglais
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Franglais (slang), a portmanteau combining the words "français" ("French") and "anglais" ("English"), is a slang term for types of speech, although the word has different overtones in French and English.
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In English, Franglais means a mangled combination of English and French, produced either by poor knowledge of one or the other language or for humorous effect. If one tries to speak French and fills in gaps in knowledge of French with English words or false cognates with their incorrect meaning, the result is Franglais. Franglais may also mean a diplomatic compromise such as UTC.
Examples:
- Je vais driver downtown. — I'm going to drive downtown.
- Je suis tired. — I am tired.
- Je ne care pas. — I don't care.
For the former tendency we have only to remember Chaucer's Prioress, who (he tells us) knew nothing of the French of Paris, but only that of Stratford-atte-Bow ('Cockney French'). Similar mixtures occur in the later stages of Law French, such as the famous defendant who "ject un brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist".
An early literary example of the delight in mélange occurs in Robert Surtees' Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities:
- "You shall manger cinq fois every day," said she; "cinq fois," she repeated.--"Humph!" said Mr. Jorrocks to himself, "what can that mean?--cank four--four times five's twenty--eat twenty times a day--not possible!" "Oui, Monsieur, cinq fois," repeated the Countess, telling the number off on her fingers--"Café at nine of the matin, déjeuner à la fourchette at onze o'clock, diner at cinq heure, café at six hour, and souper at neuf hour."
The humorist Miles Kington wrote a regular column Parlez vous Franglais which, for a number of years starting in the late 1970s, appeared in the magazine Punch.
Books published by Miles Kington include: Let's Parler Franglais, Let's Parler Franglais Again!, Parlez-vous Franglais?, Let's Parler Franglais One More Temps, The Franglais Lieutenant's Woman and Other Literary Masterpieces.
Another classic is Jean Loup Chiflet's Sky My Husband! Ciel Mon Mari! which is a literal translation (and a correct one too, for comparison) of French into English.
Perhaps the oldest and the funniest example of Franglais in English literature is found in Henry V by William Shakespeare. A French princess is trying to learn English, but unfortunately, "foot" as pronounced by her maid sounds too much like foutre and "gown" like con. She decides English is too obscene a language.
In French (and sometimes in English), the term refers to the use of anglicisms (English words) for which there are French equivalents, the most notorious of which is le week-end. These anglicisms are sometimes regarded as unwelcome imports, and as bad slang. Plus, the term refers to nouns created on Anglo-Saxon roots, often by adding "ing" at the end of a popular word, e.g. un parking (a car park or parking lot), un camping (a campsite), le marketing, un smoking (a tuxedo), le shampooing (shampoo, pronounced ʃɑ̃pwɛ̃ and not ʃɑ̃puiŋ). A few words that have entered use in French are derived from English roots but are never found at all in English, such as un relooking (a makeover), un déstockage (a clearance sale). Others are based on mistaken ideas of the meaning of English words eg "le footing" [jogging, not a pediment], English grammar eg "un pin's" [a lapel badge,for which there was a collecting craze in the 1990s] or English word order eg "talkie-walkie" (walkie-talkie, the term for a hand held two way radio). For those who don't speak English, those words are often mistaken for true English nouns. Owing to the worldwide popularity of the internet relatively new English words have been introduced into French, like the words 'e-mail' and 'mail'[e-mail or e-mail address]. The French and Quebec governments have proposed the use of a French alternative: courriel (courrier électronique), which is indeed widely used. Also the Académie française has suggested the use of the less popular mél. Also, at least in Canada, the French word look. The verb "to look" in French is régarder, but the noun as in "a look" or the way that something looks, is look. So the phrase "this Pepsi can has a new look", in French would be Cette cannette de Pepsi a un nouveau look. This is obviously a borrowed word as native French words, like all romance languages, do not have the letter k (or w).
Franglais should not be confused with Quebec French, which has a number of longstanding borrowings from English as the result of the historical coexistence of two linguistic communities inside Quebec and especially the Montreal area.
Similarly, English spoken by the anglophone minority in Quebec has borrowed certain Quebec French words such as dépanneur for corner store, autoroute for highway, PAB (from préposé aux bénéficiaires) for nurse's assistant, stage for internship, or metro for subway. These are permanent and longstanding features of local usage rather than the incorrect speech improvised by any given individual user with poor knowledge of the other language. They have mainly become part of a common ground tongue born out of mutual concession to one another. In fact, the substantial fluently bilingual community in and around Montreal will occasionally refer to "Franglais", usually after it is pointed out that someone has used a variety of French and English words, expressions, or propositions in a 'correct' fashion in the same sentence or point, a surprisingly common occurrence. In this sense, the term "Franglais" is used as much in a European context as in Canada (except Quebec). However, the term Franglais is used in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and some parts of Northern Ontario and northern Maine to refer to the mix of English and French spoken there, which is itself a longstanding dialect (see chiac). This mix uses just about as much English as French, although it is more likely to be understood by a francophone, since it usually uses English words in French pronunciation and grammar.
Other strange Franglais occurs across Canada owing to the rise of immersion programs across the country. A good example of an anglicism turned Franglais is the unintentional translation of English phrases into French by students unaware of the 'proper' ones generally used in Quebec French. One such example is mistranslating a hot dog as "chien chaud" (literally a dog that is hot) when in fact the correct translation is "hot dog". In some ways, confusion over which expression is more correct, and the emphasis many immersion schools place on eliminating anglicisms from students' vocabulary, has promoted the use of Franglais.
Franglais can also slowly creep into use from mispronunciations and misspellings by many bilingual Canadians. Common mistakes that immersion or bilingual students propagate and tend to repeat beyond their student life include incorrect inflection and stresses on syllables, incorrect doubling of consonants, strange vowel combinations in their spelling, and using odd combinations of prefixes and suffixes opposite to the language they mean to use at a given time.
Sometimes youth culture purposely uses Franglais for its comical characteristics. In recent years, especially in British Columbia and southern and eastern Ontario, Franglais has become popular with teenage culture. Teenagers will frequently replace English words with their French equivalent for comedic or euphemistic value. This occurs most often with swear words. Some Anglophone Canadians euphemistically use the Québecois "sacres" instead of swearing in English. This is somewhat ironic because sacres (religious words such as sacrament, used as expletives) are considered the worst and most offensive type of swearing by native Francophone Canadians, however.
After World War II, a backlash began in France over the increasing use of Franglais there. Corruption of the national language was perceived by some to be tantamount to an attack on the identity of the country itself.
During this period imports of large amounts of United States products led to increasingly widespread use of some English phrases throughout French culture. Measures taken to slow this trend included government censorship of comic strips and financial support for the French film and French language dubbing industries.
Despite public policies against the spread of English, the use of Franglais is increasing in both written and oral expression.
In recent years English expression are increasingly present in French mass media:
- TV reality shows generally use English titles such as Loft Story (Big Brother), Star Academy (or Star Ac') and Popstars.
- The leading national newspaper Le Monde publishes a weekly article selection of The New York Times entirely in English and uses anglicisms such as newsletter, chat, and e-mail instead of substitutions ("bavardage" for "chat" or "courriel" for "e-mail").
- Note that saying "bavardage" to a Frenchman instead of Internet "chat" will baffle him, since "bavardage" is never used in an Internet context. In fact, many English technical words have a very restricted domain in French. However, "chat" can be confusing in that sense as well, because it means "cat" in standard French (only when written, because they are pronounced differently)
- NRJ (pronounced énergie), the leading radio station, which targets a young audience, is known for a massive use of Franglais expressions.
- In James Huth's blockbuster movie Brice de Nice (to be pronounced as if it was English), Franglais is used in a satirical way to make fun of the teens and other trendy people who use English words to sound cool.
Almost all telecommunication and Internet service providers generally use English and Franglais expressions in their product names and advertising campaigns. The leading operator France Télécom has dropped the accents in its corporate logo. In recent years it has changed its product names with smart sounding expressions such as "Business Talk", "Live-Zoom", "Family Talk". France Telecom's mobile telecommunications subsidiary Orange runs a franchise retail network called mobistores. Its Internet subsidiary, formerly known as Wanadoo (inspired by the American slang expression "wanna do"), provides a popular triple play service through its Livebox. The second largest Internet service provider in France is Free and proposes its freebox. Set-top boxes offered by many providers followed the trend (neuf-box, alice-box...) and the word box taken as is gradually ends up referring to those set-top boxes, in the Internet context.
SNCF, the state-owned railway company, has recently introduced a customer fidelity program called S'Miles, at the same time Air France renamed its frequent flyer program Fréquence Plus as Flying Blue. The Paris Transportation Authority (RATP), recently introduced a handfree pass system called NaviGO.
The Académie Française (French Academy) and public authorities such as the High Council for the French Language (Conseil supérieur de la langue française) generally propose alternative words for Anglicisms. The acceptance of these proposals varies a lot : "ordinateur" and "logiciel" have definitely replaced the English words "computer" and "software", whereas "vacancelle" failed to replace "weekend", as did "fin de semaine", which did catch on in Québec. The word "courriel", a translation of "e-mail" initially proposed by the Office québécois de la langue française, is slowly coming into use in written French. However, most of French Internet users generally speak about "mail" without the prefix "e-". Note that English words are often much faster to say, and they are usually coined first (with the French alternatives being thought of only after the original word has been coined, and are debated at length), which is partly why they tend to stay. Alternative words proposed by the Académie Française are sometimes not well understood/received by an aware (often technical) audience, unclear to a non-aware audience, become ambiguous (often because they are artificially created based on phonetics, thus etymology becomes hidden and people end up talking "nonsense" about e.g cédéroms réinscriptibles: rewritable CD-ROMs), or simply sound weird (often because of a convoluted source, e.g spam became pourriel, which comes from pourri (rotten) and courriel, itself being a portmanteau), uncool (e.g the tchat attempt for chat to conform to french phonetics is often perceived as if a parent trying to use young slang and failing at it) or even ridiculous (like dévédé for DVD), which is certainly another root of their slow acceptance.
The use of English expressions is very common in the youth language, which combines them with verlan and expressions of Arabic origin. The letter J is often prononced in the English way in words like jeunes (young). The word black referring to people of African descent is considered to be more politically correct than Noir.
There is an English equivalent to the concept of the French word "Franglais" - it is usually called "Frenglish". Many Anglo Montrealers grew up learning English in schools but living in a society dominated by French; French language media and outdoor signs are mandatory under Quebec Law.
A person who is said "to speak a perfect Frenglish" means he/she speaks an English riddled with common French expressions. Examples:
-"Open/Close the lights” instead of “Turn on/off the lights" ("Open/close" is actually a Montréalism, and incorrect in both French and English. "Allumer/éteindre la lumière" is correct, not "ouvrir/fermer la lumière". A literal translation would be "light the light/extinguish the light").
-"Pass the vacuum in the livingroom" instead of "vacuum the livingroom". In French "passer l'aspirateur".
-"This story doesn’t have sense” instead of “This story doesn’t make sense".
-"Let's go and drink sangria on a teRASse" instead of "Let's go and drink sangria on a TERrace" (pronunciation) or "Let's go drink sangria on a patio."
-"Let's take a coffee" instead of "let's have (or drink) a coffee".
-"I bought two pair of pants" instead of "I bought two pairs of pants", omitting the "s" that signifies multiple items. (This is also a common phenomenon in the Lower Great Lakes dialect of English.)
Frenglish is a term widely used in Montréal English.
Frenglish also occurs in other communities where imperfect English-French bilingualism is common. UN officials in Geneva often speak of "the UN Office 'at' Geneva" (immitating the French "à Genėve"). Some "well educated" English-speaking people interlard their conversation with French words and expressions, some of which they misunderstand, e.g. "to look at some one 'de haut en bas'" [to look them over from head to toe] whereas the French expression means "to look at them as from on high", as from a superior to an inferior.
Cameroon has substantial English- and French-speaking populations as a legacy of its colonial past as British Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun. Despite linguistically segregated education since independence, many younger Cameroonians in urban centres have formed a version of Franglais/Franglish from English, French and Cameroonian Pidgin English known as Camfranglais or Frananglais. Many educational authorities disapprove of Frananglais in Cameroon and have banned it in their schools. Nevertheless, the language has gained in popularity and has a growing music scene.[1]
- Globish, macaronic, Quebec French, Portuñol, Namlish, Englog
- Cultural identity, Cultural imperialism
- "I went to the market, mon p'tit panier sous mon bras", a song by Gilles Vigneault
- Code switching
- Chiac
- Miles Kington