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Tuesday's
issue of Le Parisien
brought us the news that the European Commission issued an infraction against the French
for their law of 1994 "relative to the use of the French language." The
law was an attempt to curb the insidious creep of English words and American slang into
French language and culture. The European Commission says the law isn't fair,
especially when it comes to food labeling. The title of this article (at left) is "It's going to be necessary to speak English to shop." Of course that is a gross exaggeration, very much in keeping with this newspaper's tendency to sensationalize. What's upsetting the French authorities, it seems, is the plethora of food labels bearing English words like nuggets, chicken wings, hamburgers, and brownies. A tempest in a teapot (or, in the French idiom, a tempest in a glass of water) or a justified concern, asks Le Parisien? The Commission has demanded that the French authorities cease imposing French labels on food products sold in France. "All the world knows what a hamburger is. Nothing is served by calling it a chopped steak between two slices of bread," says the French spokesperson for the European Commission. France has two months to comply by changing its 1994 law. If it doesn't, the case will go to the European Court of Justice. And it just might end up there, because the French secretary of state for PME and Commerce says, "We maintain the obligation to label in French, but we add one disposition permitting labeling in one or several foreign languages." This is in opposition to EU decisions made in Brussels that say labeling in English is okay because that is the language that is supposed to be okay everywhere in the EU. Ha! Well, maybe the French have a point because I keep noticing unnecessary uses of English words, not just on food labels but everywhere. Even Le Parisien is guilty; the paper recently carried an article about the decline in the number of drug stores on the Champs Elysées. There is only drug store left on that beautiful avenue. But the article uses "drugstore," an English word, throughout. The French word, "pharmacie," is perfectly understandable in English. Why do they do this to themselves? When we were in the shopping passages the other day (see July 30) we noticed this NON STOP sign on a café window (at left). This is very unnecessary. And here in the Métro we found a billboard that begins with "Price Killer!" Why not "Meurtrier de Prix!"? This is an ad for a web based store, pere-noel.fr, named for Santa Claus. The big department stores have lots of billboards in the Métro that use English words. Here, Galeries Lafayette has "SO CHIC" scrawled across a billboard, instead of "SI CHIC." Do they really think American tourists won't get it if they change that one letter from O to I? Inside the Métro cars we often see a poster advertising help in getting a Green Card to allow one to live, work, or study in the U.S. Now that is an acceptable use of English. A Green Card is a Green Card, and it exists only in America. In other countries, its equivalent is not green and it has another name, such as "carte de sejours" in France. So why does this outfit call their web site carteverteUSA? Seems to me that anyone interested in getting a Green Card would already know the words for Green Card in English. These Green Card ads are interesting. They imply that getting permission to live in the U.S. is easy, if you pay these people, Strategies Internationales, to help you figure it out and to help you "strategize." Somehow, I don't think it is this easy, nor should it be, but I'm wondering about the lottery referred to in the ad. Why do we have a lottery? Can someone please explain that to me? Don't think for a minute that getting a carte de sejours in France is easy. It is easy enough if you were born in a land that was once part of the French Republic, but almost impossible otherwise. Americans born in Louisiana and Arkansas may be able to make a claim, but as for the rest of us, forget it. So, we are limited to 3-month stays in France. Elsewhere in the EU, we can stay for 6 months. Supposedly all these rules will eventually be uniform for the entire EU, and if we wanted to stay another month or so, we could. But for now, three months is it. We're here for three months, and we study our French every day. It is a beautiful language, albeit difficult. The French are right to try to protect it from some of the more vulgar American English phrases and words. I especially like the use of French when it is combined with exquisite French courtesy, such as in this notice, pasted on a shop window, informing customers of the annual closing of the shop for vacation. It says: "Dear customers, the boutique will be closed July 29 to July [they really mean August] 12 for annual vacation. Thank you for your understanding. The management." These days, it is more common for the notice to simply say "annual closing July 29-August 7." No "dear customers," no "thank you for your understanding." |
