Letters
Learn to love the complexities of the French language
Reader argues that weird spellings and homophones are part of the soul of a living language
Many English speakers fail to spell correctly the contextually different their, there and they’re
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To the Editor,
My wife and I spend five months each summer in Dordogne. The local people are great fun, and we have made quite a coterie of French and other friends.
My only problem is understanding French. I have a positive gift for languages and speak several, including a lot of French, and I am told my accent is quite good.
Most normal conversations work well but the use of contractions and argot, the redundancy of several letters at the end of words, and same-sounding words (particularly verbs) that need context to understand, all make French vaguely infuriating.
On top of that, French people speak really fast.
I will continue to strive with the help of my lovely French friends, but I do think it is time the Académie française stepped in and simplified things somewhat.
C.M., by email
To the Editor,
While I am sure that C.M.’s words were somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I suspect that the Académie française would accuse him of having more than a little culot (cheek) when he seeks simplification of spelling and similar-sounding words in the French language.
Académiciens might point out, for example, that English has nine ways of pronouncing the “-ough-” group of letters and the seemingly random application of -able and -ible (albeit most people pronounce them in a similar manner).
Moreover, many English speakers fail to spell correctly the contextually different their, there and they’re!
I recall a story that circulated when François Mitterrand was president: somebody – most unlikely to have been the august Académie – proposed a spelling reform, one result of which was that the president’s name could be spelt Mitéran.
Cher François was apparently not amused; the proposal was quietly dropped.
The point is surely that weird spellings and homophones are part of the soul of a living language: to eliminate them would reduce human language to the level of a computer machine code.
M.S., Ille-et-Vilaine
Do you get by without speaking French in France? Tell us how you manage at letters@connexionfrance.com
