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Franglais (French:[fʁɑ̃ɡlɛ]) orFrenglish (/ˈfrɛŋɡlɪʃ/FRENG-glish) is a French blend that referred first to the overuse of English words by French speakers[1] and later todiglossia or themacaronic mixture ofFrench (français) andEnglish (anglais).[2]
The wordFranglais was first attested in French in 1959,[3] but it was popularised by the academic, novelist, and criticRené Étiemble in his denunciation of the overuse of English words in French,Parlez-vous franglais? published in 1964.[4] Earlier than the French term was the English labelFrenglish, first recorded in 1937.[5] Other colloquial blends for French-influenced English includeFranglish (recorded from 1967),Frenchlish (1974), andFringlish (1982).[6]
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In English,Franglais means a combination of English and French. It evokes the linguistic concepts ofmixed language andbarbarism. Reasons for this blend could be caused bylexical gaps, native bilingualism, populations trying to imitate a language where they have no fluency (sometimes known as creoles/pidgins), or humorous intent. Franglais usually consists of either filling in gaps in one's knowledge of French with English words, usingfalse friends, or speaking French which (although ostensibly "French") would not be understood by a French speaker who does not also have a knowledge of English (for example, by using a literal translation of English idiomatic phrases).
Some examples of Franglais are:
Geoffrey Chaucer'sPrioress knew nothing of theFrench of France, but only that ofStratford-atte-Bow ('Cockney French'). Similar mixtures occur in the later stages ofLaw French, such as the famous defendant who "ject un brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist" ("threw abrickbat at the said Justice, which narrowly missed").[12]
Another example inEnglish literature is found inHenry V byWilliam Shakespeare. In Act 3, Scene 4,[13] a French princess is trying to learn English, but unfortunately,foot as pronounced by her maid sounds too much likefoutre (vulgar French for 'semen', or 'to have sexual intercourse' when used as a verb) andgown likecon (French for 'cunt', also used to mean 'idiot'). She decides that English is too obscene.
A literary example of the delight inmélange occurs inRobert Surtees'Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities:
You shallmanger cinq fois every day," said she; "cinq fois," she repeated.—"Humph!" said Mr. Jorrocks to himself, "what can that mean?—cank four—four times five's twenty—eat twenty times a day—not possible!" "Oui, Monsieur, cinq fois," repeated the Countess, telling the number off on her fingers—"Café at nine of thematin, déjeuner à la fourchette atonze o'clock,dîner atcinq heure, café at six hour, andsouper atneuf hour.
The 19th-century American writerMark Twain, inInnocents Abroad (1869), included the following letter to a Parisian landlord:[14]
PARIS,le 7 Juillet. Monsieur le Landlord—Sir:Pourquoi don't youmettez somesavon in your bed-chambers?Est-ce que vous pensez I will steal it?La nuit passée you charged mepour deuxchandelles when I only had one;hier vous avez charged meavecglace when I had none at all;tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me,mais vous ne pouvez pas play thissavon dodge on me twice.Savon is a necessaryde la vie to any body but a Frenchman,et je l'aurai hors de cet hotel or make trouble. You hear me.Allons. BLUCHER.
The humouristMiles Kington wrote a regular column "Let's Parler Franglais" which was published in the British magazinePunch 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 inLuis van Rooten'sMots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript.[15] Here, Englishnursery 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'sSky My Husband! Ciel Mon Mari! which is a literal translation of French into English. However, in this context, the correct translation ofciel...! is 'heavens...!'
InMonty Python's 1975 movieMonty Python and the Holy Grail, the French castle guard (John Cleese) orders, when King Arthur (Graham Chapman) 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: fetchla vache ('the cow'), which they then catapult at the Britons.[16]
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In French,franglais refers to the use of English words sometimes deemed unwelcome borrowings or bad slang. An example would bele week-end (alsoweekend), which is used in many French dialects which have no synonym; however,Canadians would usela fin de semaine ('the end of the week') instead, althoughfin 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 (themselves not always English in origin), often by adding-ing at the end of a popular word—e.g.,un parking ('a car park or parking lot' is alternativelyun stationnement in Canadian French, althoughstationnement means 'the action of parking or the state of being parked' in European French);un camping ('a campsite'); anddu shampoing ('shampoo', but pronounced[ʃɑ̃pwɛ̃], not*/ʃɑ̃pu.iŋ/), 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 asun relooking ('a makeover'), andun rugbyman ('a rugby player'). Others are based on misunderstandings of English words, e.g.:unfooting meaning 'a jog or a run' rather than 'a pediment';un tramway meaning 'a tram', not 'a tram-track'. Still others are based onmisapprehensions of English punctuation, e.g.un pin's[dubious –discuss][original research?] (with the apostrophe in both singular and plural) meaning 'a lapel pin'; orword order, e.g.un talkie-walkie[dubious –discuss][original research?] meaning 'a walkie-talkie' (hand-held, two-way radio). For those who do not speak English, such words may be believed to exist as such in English. However, inCanada, where both English and French are spoken, expressions such asfooting andrelooking are not used.
Some examples of Franglais are in fact imagined or examples of words beingadopted 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, manynumismatists think that the French spellingpiéfort of the English termpiedfort results from an imagined reintroduction of an English misspelling. In fact, the spellingpiéfort is found in French dictionaries as an alternative ofpied-fort and even as the only spelling given in the 1932–1935 edition of theDictionnaire de l'Académie française[17] and the etymology derived by professional linguists and shown in these dictionaries shows the change in spelling happened within French.[18][19]
Owing to the worldwide popularity of the Internet, relatively new English words have been introduced into French (e.g.e-mail andmail, referring to either e-mail or an e-mail address). An equivalent for the English worde-mail derived from French roots was coined inQuebec French and promoted by Quebec government:courriel (fromcourrier électronique), and this term is now widely used there. TheAcadémie française has also suggested the use of the abbreviationmél. (frommessage électronique) as an analogy with the abbreviationtél. for 'telephone', to be used before an e-mail address;[20] however, the termmél., which roughly approximates the English pronunciation ofmail, is now used more broadly in France than that prescribed usage. Another example from French is the wordlook. The equivalent of the English verbto look at in French isregarder but the nouna look (i.e. the way that something looks or is styled) has becomeun 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".
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AfterWorld War II, a backlash began inFrance 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 governmentcensorship ofcomic 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:
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 subsidiaryOrange SA runs a franchise retail network calledmobistores. Its Internet subsidiary, formerly known asWanadoo (inspired by the American slang expressionwanna do) provides a populartriple play service through itsLiveboxcable modem. The second-largest Internet service provider in France isFree, which offers itsfreebox.Set-top boxes that are offered by many other providers are also following this trend (e.g. Neuf-box, Alice-box, etc.) and the wordbox 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 Plusfrequent flyer program to Flying Blue. The Paris transportation authorityRATP has also recently introduced acontactless smartcard ticketing system (like theOyster card inLondon) calledNaviGO.
Public authorities such as theAcadémie française and theConseil supérieur de la langue française generally propose alternative words for anglicisms. The acceptance of such words varies considerably; for example,ordinateur andlogiciel existed before the English wordscomputer andsoftware reached France, so they are accepted (even outside France in the case ofordinateur). On the other hand,vacancelle failed to replaceweekend orfin de semaine (the latter being in current usage in Canada). The wordcourriel, equivalent to 'e-mail', coined and used inFrench-speaking Canada, is gaining popularity in written European French. However, most French Internet users generally speak aboutmail without the prefix "e-". Note that English words are often shorter, and they are usuallycoined first (the French alternatives are generally thought of only after the original word has already been coined, and then they are debated at length before coming into use). 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 (often because they are coined based on phonetics, thus hiding their etymology) which results in nonsense (e.g.cédéroms réinscriptibles forCD-RW (literally 'rewritable CD-ROMs', despiteROM meaning 'read-only memory'). Some words are considered uncool, for example,tchat (formed by addingt- tochat) ordévédé (formed by writingDVD phonetically).
The use of English expressions is very common in theyouth language, which combines them withverlan wordplay. The letterj is thus sometimes humorously pronounced as in English in words such asjeunes ('youth'), rendered as /dʒœns/ and thus writtendjeun's,to refer to this trend.[dubious –discuss]
Quebec is the only French-majority province in Canada and the onlyde jure (but notde facto) monolingual jurisdiction.New Brunswick is officially bilingual, and the other provinces, while mostlyEnglish-speaking, are not officiallyEnglish-only.
When a speaker usescalques andloanwords in speech which includes English or French words and grammatical structures in a combination, it is sometimes referred to as Franglais, or amixed language. TheMontreal Gazette has examined this so-called "linguistic mosaic".[21]
Quebec French has longstanding borrowings from English due to the historical coexistence of two speech communities withinQuebec (and especially aroundMontreal). Likewise,Quebec English, the language of the English-speaking minority, has borrowed many French words such asdépanneur ('convenience store'),autoroute ('highway'),stage ('internship'),circular ('flyer', from the wordcirculaire, a circulated pamphlet), and many others(seeQuebec English). These are permanent and longstanding features of local usage, rather than the recent slangish improvisation by any speaker or affinity group with poor knowledge of the other language.[22]
These expressions have mainly become part of a common tongue/register born out of mutual concession to each other. In fact, the substantial bilingual community in and around Montreal will occasionally refer to Franglais, usually after it is pointed out by an observer that someone has used various French and English words, expressions or prepositions in the same sentence, a surprisingly common occurrence in various spokenregisters.
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Canadian French is French as it is spoken in Canada. Scholars debate to what extent language mixture can be distinguished from other mechanisms, such as code-switching, substrata, or lexical borrowing. Amixed language arises in a population which is fluent in both languages.
The wordFranglais refers to the long-standing and stable mixes of English and French spoken in some towns, cities, and rural areas of other Canadian provinces:New Brunswick,Nova Scotia,Ontario,Alberta,Manitoba, andNewfoundland. Such mixing is used in the northern regions ofMaine (U.S.) (seeChiac andAcadian French). It has been asserted[by whom?] that this mix uses approximately equal proportions of each language (except in Newfoundland), although it is more likely to be understood by a French-speaker, since it usually uses English words in French pronunciation and grammar.
Franglais is commonly spoken in French-language schools in Ontario and Alberta, as well as in DSFM (Division scolaire franco-manitobaine) schools in Manitoba, where students may speak French as their first language but will use English as their preferred language, yet will refer to school-related terms in French specifically (e.g. "Let's go to thebibliothèque", instead of "Let's go to the library"). As many French schools and French immersion classes have a strict "French-only" policy, English or Franglais is used out of class, between students.[citation needed]
Because of bilingual product packaging, speakers and readers may form new pronunciations that become terms. For example, someone may pronounce the words on a package of strong cheddar and call it "old fort".
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Franglais, in the sense of mistaken usage bysecond-language speakers, occurs across Canada. An example of an anglicism turned Franglais is the mistranslation of English phrases into French by students who are unaware of theCanadian French word. For example, ahot dog is sometimes calledun chien chaud when the French word is simplyun hot dog. (However, the Quebec government has itself promoted expressions such aschien chaud for 'hot dog', andhambourgeois for 'hamburger', neither of which has gained widespread acceptance.) In some ways, confusion over which expression is more correct, and the emphasis that many immersion schools place on eliminating anglicisms from students' vocabulary, has promoted the use of Franglais.[citation needed] Franglais can also slowly creep into use from mispronunciation and misspelling by many bilingual Canadians. Common mistakes that immersion or bilingual students propagate include incorrect inflection and stresses on syllables, incorrect doubling of consonants, strange vowel combinations in their spelling and using combinations of prefixes and suffixes from English.
Recently[when?], Canadian youth culture (especially in British Columbia and southeastern Ontario) purposely uses Franglais for its comical oreuphemistic characteristics, for example, in replacing English swear words with French ones. Some English-speaking Canadians, especially Anglo-Quebecers and those in southeastern Ontario, euphemistically use theQuébécois sacres (i.e., religious words such assacrament asexpletives) rather than swearing in English.
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There is a particular form of Franglish which consists of the adoption of English words with alternative meanings to their usage in English.
These are words likeforcing ('a scramble', 'a rush', 'a strong effort'), orbronzing ('a tan', 'the act of sunbathing'), made by adding the English ending-ing to a verb from French (e.g.forcer 'to force' orbronzer 'to tan') to form a new noun. These are slang or informal at best, and not widely accepted.
Another type of false anglicism comes from the shortening of an English name, keeping only the first word (while the important word is the last). For example, a dress suit is designated by the wordsmoking, borrowed ultimately from 'smoking jacket'. Yet the British usedinner jacket and Americans usetuxedo (ortux); in English,smoking is used only as aparticiple and as thegerund. Another example is the use of the wordclap for 'clapperboard' used in filmmaking.
They are either French constructions which mimic English rules, or shifts of meaning which affect borrowings.
Cameroon has substantial English and French-speaking populations as a legacy of its colonial past asBritishSouthern Cameroons andFrenchCameroun. Despite linguistically segregated education since independence, many younger Cameroonians in urban centres have formed a version of Franglais/Franglish from English, French andCameroonian Pidgin English known asCamfranglais orFrananglais. Many educational authorities disapprove of it, and they have banned it in their schools. Nevertheless, the youth-cultureargot has gained popularity and has a growing music scene.[23]
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Franglais is spoken in London, due to its largeFrench-speaking population.
Franglais also thrives in communities where imperfect English–French bilingualism is common. TheUnited Nations Office at Geneva is so named in an imitation of the Frenchà Genève, rather than the expected "in Geneva".
Another example is provided by the civil servants inEuropean Union institutions (European Parliament,European Commission,European Court of Justice), based in bilingualBrussels (French and Dutch) andLuxembourg City (Luxembourgish andGerman). They often work in English, but they are surrounded by a French-speaking environment, which influences their English (e.g. "I'm a stagiaire at the Commission and I'm looking for another stage in a consultancy", referring to internships).
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