Franglais


Franglais or Frenglish is a French blend that referred first to the overuse of English words by French speakers and later to diglossia or the macaronic mixture of French and English.

Etymology

The word Franglais was first attested in French in 1959, but it was popularised by the academic, novelist, and critic René Étiemble in his denunciation of the overuse of English words in French, Parlez-vous franglais? published in 1964. Earlier than the French term was the English label Frenglish, first recorded in 1937. Other colloquial blends for French-influenced English include Franglish, Frenchlish, and Fringlish.

English sense

In English, Franglais means a combination of English and French. It evokes the linguistic concepts of mixed language and barbarism. Reasons for this blend could be caused by lexical gaps, native bilingualism, populations trying to imitate a language where they have no fluency, or humorous intent. Franglais usually consists of either filling in gaps in one's knowledge of French with English words, using false friends, or speaking French which would not be understood by a French speaker who does not also have a knowledge of English.
Some examples of Franglais are:
  • Longtemps, pas voir.Long time, no see.'
  • Je vais driver downtown.I'm going to drive downtown.'
  • Je suis tired.I am tired.'
  • Je ne care pas.I don't care.'
  • J'agree.'I agree.'

    In English humour

's Prioress knew nothing of the French of France, but only that of Stratford-atte-Bow. 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".
Another example in English literature is found in Henry V by William Shakespeare. In Act 3, Scene 4, 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 that English is too obscene.
A literary example of the delight in wikt:mélange occurs in Robert Surtees' Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities:
The 19th-century American writer Mark Twain, in Innocents Abroad, included the following letter to a Parisian landlord:
The humourist Miles Kington wrote a regular column "Let's Parler Franglais" which was published in the British magazine Punch in the late 1970s. These columns were collected into a series of books: 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.
A somewhat different tack was taken in Luis van Rooten's Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript. Here, English nursery rhymes are written with meaningless French phrases which are meant to recall the sounds of the English words, and the resulting French texts are presented as a historical manuscript and given a pseudo-learned commentary.
Another classic is Jean Loup Chiflet's Sky My Husband! Ciel Mon Mari! which is a literal translation of French into English. However, in this context, the correct translation of ciel...! is 'heavens...!'
In Monty Python's 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the French castle guard orders, when King Arthur does not want to go away, his fellow guards to "Fetchez la vache." The other French guards respond with "Quoi?" and he repeats "Fetchez la vache!" The guards finally get it: fetch la vache, which they then catapult at the Britons.

French sense

In French, franglais refers to the use of English words sometimes deemed unwelcome borrowings or bad slang. An example would be le week-end, which is used in many French dialects which have no synonym; however, Canadians would use la fin de semaine instead, although fin de semaine in France refers to the end of the work week, i.e. Thursday and Friday. Franglais also refers to nouns coined from Anglo-Saxon roots or from recent English loanwords, often by adding -ing at the end of a popular word—e.g., un parking ; un camping ; and du shampoing, which has been standardized and has appeared on many French hair-care product labels since at least the 1960s. A few words which have entered French are derived from English roots but are not found at all in English, such as un relooking, and un rugbyman. Others are based on misunderstandings of English words, e.g.: un footing meaning 'a jog or a run' rather than 'a pediment'; un tramway meaning 'a tram', not 'a tram-track'. Still others are based on meaning 'a lapel pin'; or meaning 'a walkie-talkie'. For those who do not speak English, such words may be believed to exist as such in English. However, in Canada, where both English and French are spoken, expressions such as footing and relooking are not used.
Some examples of Franglais are in fact imagined or examples of words being adopted from one language into another in the opposite direction of what many people believe. People who have no linguistic training or do not bother to consult dictionaries tend to create and perpetuate such urban legends about Franglais. For example, many numismatists think that the French spelling piéfort of the English term piedfort results from an imagined reintroduction of an English misspelling. In fact, the spelling piéfort is found in French dictionaries as an alternative of pied-fort and even as the only spelling given in the 1932–1935 edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française and the etymology derived by professional linguists and shown in these dictionaries shows the change in spelling happened within French.
Owing to the worldwide popularity of the Internet, relatively new English words have been introduced into French. An equivalent for the English word e-mail derived from French roots was coined in Quebec French and promoted by Quebec government: courriel, and this term is now widely used there. The Académie française has also suggested the use of the abbreviation mél. as an analogy with the abbreviation tél. for 'telephone', to be used before an e-mail address; however, the term mél., which roughly approximates the English pronunciation of mail, is now used more broadly in France than that prescribed usage. Another example from French is the word look. The equivalent of the English verb to look at in French is regarder but the noun a look has become un look in French, such that the sentence "This Pepsi can has a new look" in French would be "Cette cannette de Pepsi a un nouveau look".

In France

After World War II, a backlash began in France over the growing use of English 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, ever greater imports of American products led to the increasingly widespread use of some English phrases in French. 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, Franglais is gaining popularity in both writing and speaking.
In recent years, English expressions are increasingly present in French mass media:
  • TV reality shows often use English titles such as Loft Story, Star Academy, Popstars, and Secret Story.
  • A 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 French substitutions.
  • * Note that saying bavardage to a French person instead of Internet 'chat' may confuse them, since bavardage refers in France to real-life conversation and is rarely used in an Internet context. The word clavardage is hardly known outside of Canada. The word chat in writing can be confusing as well since it natively means 'cat' in French; thus, the unique respelling tchat is occasionally seen.
  • In James Huth's movie Brice de Nice, Franglais is used in a satirical way to make fun of teens and other trendy people who use English words to sound cool.
Most telecommunication and Internet service providers use English and Franglais expressions in 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 trendier expressions such as Business Talk, Live-Zoom, Family Talk. France Télécom's mobile telecommunications subsidiary Orange SA runs a franchise retail network called mobistores. Its Internet subsidiary, formerly known as Wanadoo provides a popular triple play service through its Livebox cable modem. The second-largest Internet service provider in France is Free, which offers its freebox. Set-top boxes that are offered by many other providers are also following this trend and the word box by itself is gradually ending up referring to these set-top boxes.
SNCF, the state-owned railway company, has recently introduced a customer fidelity program called S'Miles. Meanwhile, Air France has renamed its Fréquence Plus frequent flyer program to Flying Blue. The Paris transportation authority RATP has also recently introduced a contactless smartcard ticketing system called NaviGO.
Public authorities such as the Académie française and the Conseil supérieur de la langue française generally propose alternative words for anglicisms. The acceptance of such words varies considerably; for example, ordinateur and logiciel existed before the English words computer and software reached France, so they are accepted. On the other hand, vacancelle failed to replace weekend or fin de semaine. The word courriel, equivalent to 'e-mail', coined and used in French-speaking Canada, is gaining popularity in written European French. However, most French Internet users generally speak about mail without the prefix "e-". Note that English words are often shorter, and they are usually coined first. This is partly why they tend to stay in use.
Alternative words proposed by the Académie française are sometimes poorly received by a technologically aware audience and unclear to a non-technologically aware audience. The proposed terms may be ambiguous which results in nonsense. Some words are considered uncool, for example, tchat or dévédé.
The use of English expressions is very common in the youth language, which combines them with verlan wordplay. The letter j is thus sometimes humorously pronounced as in English in words such as jeunes, rendered as /dʒœns/ and thus written djeun's,