My first article as a lobsterman (also known as a harvester) was pessimistically named ‘The Impending Fiasco of the Paris Olympics’. A laughable title, you might now argue, and I would agree. I was wrong: Paris did not succumb to stereotypes of manic disorganisation and surprise protests – rather, it is unanimously acknowledged that these Games were a twinned success for France and for the future of the Olympics.
Yet the French enjoy a little controversy, and so I must oblige by finding an Olympics-related topic which might still spark heated debate. Luckily, I did not have to dig deep, for inspiration struck in the first minutes of the opening ceremony. Aya Nakamura, exhibiting the pinnacle of French craftsmanship in her glowing Dior dress, strutted down the Pont des Arts and gave us a performance to remember… for the wrong reasons?
I would argue so, but my justification does not stem from Nakamura’s performance per se. It was dramatic, bouncy, and festive – in short, everything you would want from the world’s most streamed francophone singer. Rather, I was disconcerted by the odd juxtaposition of performer and place: here was Nakamura, rapping distorted lyrics from Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf, sprinkling them with her own made-up words, and doing it all in front of the domed Institut, the heralded home of the Académie française. Unwittingly or not, Nakamura was as if mocking this establishment, famous for its stringent control over the French language, with her own additions to the ‘langue de Molière’ – ‘djo’, ‘pookie’ and ‘tchouffer’ to name but a few.
Had the performance been delivered on any other bridge, you would not find this article before you. However, the ill-fitting duo of Nakamura and the conservative Académie presents an opportunity to discuss the evolution of language which one would be silly to pass up.
Hardly a day had passed after the opening ceremony that Nakamura was declared an ‘ambassador of the French language’ by a député (MP) of Macron’s government. One might wonder exactly what version of French is being represented. It is certainly not that prized by the Académie, which prides itself on resisting the infiltration of foreign words – especially English ones – into common parlance. This drives their endless struggle of replacing ‘camping’ with ‘campisme’ or ‘parking’ with ‘aire de stationement’. Even more ludicrous is the suggestion of ‘chien chaud’ for ‘hot dog’.
What all of this comes down to is a rather silly losing battle to control the uncontrollable. Language cannot be moulded; it is in constant evolution, and indeed depends on it for its survival. Linguists (which, incidentally, the Académie is cruelly lacking) actually welcome the arrival of new words in a language. They see it as a marker of its health, demonstrating its ability to mutate as it grows. It is an expansive aid to language, enriching rather than depriving it – the inclusion of ‘djo’ will hardly threaten the existence of any other word, just like the commonplace use of ‘mec’ never eclipsed the equivalent ‘homme’.
This ‘centuries-old language watchdog’, as the Guardian refers to it, is not clearsighted enough, it seems, to assimilate this rather simple truth. Consequently, it does not have a credible leg to stand on, and the alarmist statements made by its members in the media are increasingly perceived as irritating rather than authoritative. Nobody wants to be told what they can and can’t say by a group of geriatric writers who seem too far removed from the issues of daily life to comfortably use the word ‘weekend’.
This was not always the case. The Académie’s lifetime started gloriously in 1635 as the first ever such literary establishment. With its successive dictionaries, it prospered as a dominant agent of language, making fundamental alterations to French, such as changing a third of its words in 1740 (mainly through the inclusion of accents). Unfortunately, trouble started brewing as soon as 1882, when the Jules Ferry laws established free education for all. This, coupled with the emerging scientific field of linguistics, placed the Académie in trickier terrain. On one side loomed the more literate and critical masses, and on the other, a scientific opponent, often discrediting the Académie’s positions on language. As a result, its members, whilst retaining their literary reputation as authors, found their hold on the French language eroding. And thus its linguistic influence, once so prevalent, was reduced to a final unfinished dictionary in 1986, barely making it past the letter ‘Q’. No new editions have been attempted since.
Similar institutions elsewhere have nipped this problem in the bud. The Real Academia Española, for instance, boasts a majority of accredited linguists amongst its 46 ‘académicos’. This panel publishes a new edition of its dictionary every 13 years. Other countries have simply circumvented the issue of linguistic control altogether. In theory, the UK should have the greatest grounds for worry that English might be impoverished by its diverse offshoots. It is, after all, the most widely spoken language, with an astonishing grammatical and spoken variety across the globe. Whether to best embrace this, or simply because struggling against it would be too great a feat, Britain has taken the wise stance to restrict its Royal Society of Literature to the ‘reward of literary merit’. It is, after all the Society of Literature, not that of English.
Yet have the Brits swung too far the other way? Perhaps so, according to the latest gossip revealed by its inner circle. Some of the RSL’s greats – namely Fleur Adcock, Ian McEwan, and Simon Armitage – deplore the dilution of talent which the widening of the Society has engendered. It seems good writing may be the price to pay to achieve ever-growing diversity in its ranks.
After this whistlestop European tour (we will keep the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung for another time), we return to the main issue at hand: as always, la France. The Académie needs to find a middle ground: it must renew its panel with younger accredited linguists whilst maintaining the prestige of a select writer’s group. It is a difficult task given the waning enthusiasm for these authors; the Pont des Arts, tellingly, has been fondly renamed the ‘Pont d’Aya’, not the ‘Pont Bergson’ or ‘Pont Hugo’. Perhaps, like Nakamura, the Académie should take inspiration from Aznavour’s ‘For Me, Formidable’ and rejoice in, rather than resist, the melodious pairing of French and English.