"On dit souvent," said a woman next to me at lunch, "that the French language is the best for diplomacy because it is the most precise language." She smiled at me. Of course as a civilized person I would share this universal faith.
"That is a complete myth which the French believe dur comme fer," I answered.
She looked shocked. Shocked. The French do universally believe that French is more precise than English (or any other language). This is such an idée reçue that no one ever questions it. I think they're probably all even taught this in catechism.
In the days when France had the largest population and most powerful army in Europe (before 1814), French was the language of diplomacy. This had nothing to do with the precision of the French language and everything to do with the population, wealth, prestige and army of the country concerned, just as the use of the English language does today.
Notice I am not saying English is more precise than French. All languages are precise when spoken or written with precision, and any concept can be expressed, eventually, in any language. But French is certainly no more precise than any other language. The examples French people use to illustrate the superiority of French are laughable.
Several people have sent me this article, which is entitled, "To impose a language is to impose a way of thinking" and consists of Claude Hagège, an eminent linguist, discussing the dominance of English in the world. For the most part, I agree with what he is saying. Of course the French are right to defend their language and insist that people in France speak French. Personally, I love the French language. He's good enough to say that there is no "superior" language. In so many words. But then his emotions carry him off, and he starts ranting against English. "We are talking about an imprecise language, which makes its pretensions to universality even less acceptable." And he gives two examples of this imprecise "language of the enemy" (as he actually calls it).
On December 29, 1972, an airplane crashed in Florida. The control tower had ordered, 'Turn left, right now'...but the pilot had translated 'right now' as 'turn right now' which caused the disaster. Or look at diplomacy, with the English version of the famous Resolution 242 of the UN in 1967, which recommends the 'withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.' The Arab countries believed that Israel should withdraw from 'the occupied territories'-- implying all of them; while Israel considered that it was enough to withdraw from 'occupied territories'-- that is, from only part of them."
In the first example, it is odd that a Frenchman doesn't see that the phrase 'right now' to mean 'immediately' is exactly as 'imprecise' as 'allez tout droit' ['go straight ahead'] in French-- a phrase that literally means 'go completely right.' But isn't it always easier to see the mote in one's neighbor's eye?
In the second example, I actually happen to have read about the translation of this Resolution. The ambiguity in the English was deliberate so that the Resolution could be signed by two sides that disagreed completely. To make it unambiguous, all that would have been needed was the 'the'. It was not a lack of precision, but a lack of honesty (ambiguity is so often useful in diplomacy).
And all examples French intellectuals give of the imprecision of English (because for them, English has to be inferior, since French is superior to all other languages) that I have ever seen are in the same silly vein.
So, for your viewing pleasure, here are a few similar examples of the imprecision of the French language. Please send in more!
kind versus nice -- In French, you translate these both by gentille, but that does not convey the genuineness of kind; you can pretend to be gentille when you're not really.
like versus love -- In French that poor word aimer has to serve for both.
edit versus publish -- Éditer can mean either one.
Il se tue. --He commits suicide, or he accidentally kills himself? Could be either.
Paul reçoit la lettre de l'étudiant -- Does it mean Paul receives the student's letter? Or does it mean Paul receives the letter from [the hands of] the student? Not very precise, is it?
l'amour de Dieu --Does this refer to God's love for you, or to your love for God?
la fille du fermier qui nous vend des légumes --Does this mean the daughter sold the vegetables, or her father the farmer sold the vegetables?
elle ne connaît que les plages de la Floride -- Has at least three different meanings in English
un desarmement des navires dans les ports français sous le contrôle allemand could have FIVE different meanings in English.... *
Basically, if language is imprecise, it is the fault or responsibility of the speaker or writer, not the language; all languages can be clear and precise. French has no special gift for it. But perhaps the very belief in this precision of French contributes to carefully written language. Le Monde has a very lively blog written by its copy editors and it receives hundreds of comments a week from the passionnés of the French language. Good for them!
Lastly, if imposing a language on non-native speakers is wrong (um, I'd speak French in that case), Claude Hagège and all those who think like him should logically also be fighting for the non-imposition of French on speakers of Breton, Occitan, Basque and Alsatian German. Mais que nenni! What they really want, if they are honest with themselves, is just for French to be top dog again. I suppose I'd feel the same way.
*These last five examples are from an article called Structural Ambiguity in French by Robert Trammell and Marie-Geneviève García.
Entertaining post. Merci.
Posted by: chrissoup | 13 April 2012 at 01:45
What I find hilariously ironic is that the French don't even have a word for "rude". The best they can do is say that someone is bad at being polite!!!
Posted by: | 13 April 2012 at 17:08
Was linked over to this from David Lebovitz. Interesting! I remember asking my "French sister" way back when how to say "warm". She said "chaud". Wait, what? I thought that was "hot". How do you say "hot"? The answer--"tres chaud". How's that for precise?
Posted by: Elle | 18 April 2012 at 02:16
Ha ha! That's another example. People can never judge their own language correctly, of course. It's like being totally rational about your own baby.
Posted by: Sedulia | 18 April 2012 at 17:51
People usually believe that THEIR language is the most precise. You can't tell anything better than in your mother language
Posted by: Sinaloasurseine | 18 April 2012 at 20:40
The examples of imprecision you give are just the fruit of your incomplete knowledge of the french language: you are probably trying to make literal translations from Engligh, which is not good enough to conclude the french version would be imprecise since it would probably be completely different in the choice of words and the overall structure of the sentence. A very simple thing to explain the higher precision of french language over SOME of the other languages (not over German for example)is that grammar is extensive, and in particular it uses word genders. Word genders alone can bring a huge amount of clarity to complex sentences.
Some deconstruction of your examples:
- Kind versus nice: french can use sarcasm (which is mostly unused by english speakers
- Like versus love: like is "aimer bien"
- "allez tout droit" will NEVER mean "allez à droite" (don't forget the "e"
- "la fille du fermier qui nous vend des légumes": you could write "la fille du fermire, celui qui nous vend des légumes, etc..."
To finish: "rude"is "malpoli", "warm" is "chaud", "hot" can be "brûlant"
Posted by: JY | 26 April 2012 at 14:42
Thank you for your letter, which I believe was kindly meant. However, you are not proving your point. Of course you can express the ideas above more precisely. But the language in the examples was still imprecise. This proves that French is not always precise. And yet, all the examples which French people use to show that other languages (specifically English) are imprecise are the same kind of examples as "la fille du fermier...." In other words, they could be expressed more precisely, but they weren't. This does not prove anything. In fact, it is impossible to prove French is more precise than other languages, but French people (as illustrated by your letter) believe it firmly.
"Kind" versus "nice"... Do I understand you to say that the French way to specify two separate concepts with the single word "gentille" is to say "gentille" sarcastically?
It was also interesting to learn that sarcasm is mostly unused by English speakers.
You say "Allez tout droit" will NEVER mean "allez à droite." Well, that's because you are a native speaker of French. You have to admit that "droit" means "right." In exactly the same way, "turn left, right now" will NEVER mean "turn right" to a native or fluent speaker of English.
"Mal poli" has an exact equivalent-- "impolite"-- in English. French doesn't have a word for our word "rude"-- which means deliberately, aggressively impolite. French "mal poli" is less precise.
"Chaud" in French is imprecise-- it can mean either "hot" or "warm" which are more precise concepts. "Brûlant" means "burning" as in "burning hot" --even hotter than hot. English is more precise here.
Sorry, but there is not one iota of proof that French is more precise than English or any other language.
Posted by: Sedulia | 26 April 2012 at 19:54
This post was most excellent, but the highlights were JY's letter and Sedulia's response! They require a separate post, I think.
I'd write more, but I'd better go work on my sarcasm!
Posted by: Michelle | 16 May 2012 at 21:28
To prove that French were more precise than other languages, you would have to come up with a bunch of sentences in French and other languages that COULD NOT be translated precisely into other languages, only into French. That's ridiculous on the face of it. Mais bon.
Posted by: Sedulia | 17 May 2012 at 14:33
Yes! But I am interested in the idea that word genders make things clearer in complex sentences and would be interested in seeing examples. I've never heard that and was disappointed not to have at least one sample sentence!
Does this make those languages which use noun genders more precise? Nope. Does it make them more efficient? I suppose you could argue that it's more efficient to use fewer words to get your point across, but there are plenty of other examples that could be made of how French is a lot less efficient than English in that respect, even when talking about word genders. If you were in the same room with a person holding a baby girl in one arm and a flower in the other hand and wanted either of those two things, the English would be automatically clear ("Give her to me" versus "Give it to me") whereas the French would necessarily depend on context, non?
I love this thread.
Posted by: Michelle | 17 May 2012 at 15:21
French people often tell you that gender makes a sentence more precise, which can be true in certain cases (only). But just as often, gender makes it more confusing. For example, if you are describing a "star du cinéma" or a "victime" you have to continue to refer to that person as "elle" even if it's Sylvester Stallone. If it's a woman's breast you have to call it "he", but if it's a male mouse, you have to call it "she." (And why "vagin" and "lait" are masculine is a puzzle to me!)
Posted by: Sedulia | 17 May 2012 at 16:16
Ok. I'm going to give my opinion.
I feel that the more there is "sujet, verbe,subordinate clause" without the use of "préposition", the more imprecise it becomes. And this is something that I noticed a loooot and a lot of times.
I'm going to give you an example with a sentence
(I wrote this sentence a few hours ago, that's why I thought about it,no link with our subject)
Intellectual level, unconscious barriers from childhood living conditions and social environment are all factors that can lead you to a wrong opinion and a wrong result.
Le niveau intellectuel, les barrières inconscientes liées aux conditions de vie pendant l'enfance et à l'environnement social sont tous des facteurs qui peuvent mener à un résultat et à une opinion erronée.
Do you see what I mean ? And I just took one sentence out of nowhere, but there are a lot of cases where in english you have 2 options
-You can repeat the word, and in this case the sentence loses concision and and becomes unttractive due to the repetitiveness
or
-You can leave it without elements of connection and it's up to the reader to understand whether it's a link between the subordinate clauses or the collocation of the latter(s where is the S?!)
KIndly though hein ;)
Posted by: Alfred | 13 September 2012 at 11:24
The word ‘droit’ means ‘straight’ and ‘droite’ means right. Yes there is an extra letter ‘e’. If only you knew how to use a dictionary. Please keep your linguistic IGNORANCE to yourself. English is an easy language to learn thanks to its simple grammar. The French language (and Spanish, German…) is much more complex in terms of grammar and its mastering requires a lot of resilience and rigour from French pupils from an early age and which is obviously lacking in the UK. In France the intellect is paramount and all this is supported by the educative system where the study of PHILOSOPHY is compulsory. Probably the reason why French people are not easy to fool and do not need idiots to think for themselves (unlike your pathetic tendency for “French bashing” in the UK)
Posted by: Sophie | 17 July 2013 at 22:25
I'm not British... Your comment speaks for itself.
Posted by: Sedulia | 19 July 2013 at 09:08
Vous n'êtes pas très doué en français, vos exemples sont sans valeur car ils sont délibérément abstraits, seriez-vous capable de dire la différence entre grossier, vulgaire, ordurier, insultant, malpoli, gras, graveleux, impoli, inconvenant, malhonnête, irrévérencieux ? Ce sont tous des synonymes, mais chacun est employé dans des circonstances très précises, il existe, pour ceux qui croient qu'il n'y a pas d'équivalent français à "rude" en anglais, 45 synonymes, et le mot grossier possède plusieurs sens selon que l'on parle d'une personne ou d'un objet. N'oubliez pas qu'il est pratiquement impossible de faire des traductions littérales du français vers l'anglais ou toute autre langue, sauf pour les phrases basiques.
Posted by: Desalpages | 08 March 2014 at 17:53
What exactly is "abstract" about "il se tue" or "la fille du fermier qui nous vend des légumes"? Seriez-vous capable d'expliquer la différence entre rude, artless, unwrought, unpolished, inelegant, crude, tacky, rustic, churlish, currish, uncivil, gruff, brutal, coarse, tough, brutish, ungraceful, boorish, impolite, discourteous, uncouth, ill-bred, unrefined, rugged, impudent, insolent, impertinent? These words are also "employed in very precise circumstances."
Traduttore tradittore-- ever heard that expression? No translation is perfect, but it's ridiculous to think that French is somehow more untranslatable/sophisticated/clear than any other language. Why on earth would it be? And no one will ever be able to prove that it is.
The more you learn about other languages, the sillier you will see that point of view is. Vous êtes si "doué" en langues étrangères que vous vous permettez de nous donner des leçons?
Posted by: Sedulia | 08 March 2014 at 18:38
Interesting! I remember asking my "American sister" way back when how to say "savoir". She said "to know". Wait, what? I thought that was "connaitre". How do you say "connaitre"? The answer--"to know". How's that for precise?
Posted by: Jean-Pierre Coffe | 15 August 2014 at 09:16
Wow, are you really Jean-Pierre Coffe !? Chapeau !
(Response: English doesn't make any claims to be more precise than every other language in the world. It's French that has to prove something as unprovable as that!)
Posted by: Sedulia | 16 August 2014 at 18:49