Audiovisual media and the French-speaking world

Most of the letters Arcom receives about the French language concern unnecessary borrowings from English.

It's true that many English words are used on television and radio, and that their use annoys many viewers and listeners, especially when they replace words that exist in our language or for which equivalents have been proposed by the various ministerial commissions on terminology and neology.

French translations of new Anglo-American lexical creations have long been shunned by media professionals.

Poor adaptation of English

For example, it took almost ten years for the word "voyagiste" (tour operator), recommended in 1992 by the Ministerial Commission on Tourism, to be used on television, whereas it had been used on the radio. Voyagiste" is beginning to replace the English tour-operator and the Franglais tour-opérateur.

As for "surréservation" (overbooking), it quickly came into use, although some latecomers prefer to speak of surbooking, a poor adaptation of the English overbooking.

Thank you, Bernard Pivot, for reminding us several times on the four hundred and seventh and final episode of Bouillon de culture that there is a French word for best of : "florilège". "On va donc commencer ce florilège", announced Bernard Pivot, and not as we very often hear on TV and radio: "débuter le best of".

According to dictionaries, a "florilège" (a word dating from 1697) is a collection of selected pieces. This definition is faithful to the etymology of the word, which comes from the modern Latin "florilegium" (from "flos", flower, and "legere", to collect).

So let's talk about florilège and leave florilegium to the English, since this was the translation of the French word in Shakespeare's language, when the best of did not exist...

Adjectives derived from the noun nightmare do include a d, such as cauchemardesque, or more rarely, cauchemardeux, but this d is a linking consonant that does not belong to the radical. Incidentally, cauchemardesque became the adjective "cauchemaresque" at the beginning of the 20th century . The absence of the d in the noun cauchemar is explained by its etymology, which is half-picardic (cauche), half-Dutch (mare with the final e missing), this word designating a ghost in its original language.

The anticipatory agreement of the word "espèce" with a masculine complement in the expression "un espèce de savant fou" is frequent in the audiovisual media, but remains rare in the written press.

Maurice Grevisse points out that the adjectival character of the phrase "species of" is such that species itself frequently takes on the gender of the noun complement: un espèce de prophète. He also notes that espèce was already sometimes treated as masculine in the 18th century: "un espèce de cabinet" (Saint-Simon), "un espèce de grand homme" (Voltaire), "un espèce de musicien" (Diderot).

Despite these lists of our language's history, dictionariesand grammars are clear. As the ninth edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie reminds us, the word espèce is always feminine , whatever the gender of its complement.

While the word "aréopage" is often confused with "aéropage", which doesn't exist in our language, more astonishing is the slip of the tongue noted by a Canadian living in Toronto who, on several occasions in French programs, heard "aréoport" for "airport".

Aéro-, from the Greek aêr meaning air, is a prefix found in a large number of French words: aérodrome, aérodynamique, aérolithe, aéronaval, aéroplane, aéroglisseur, but also aéromètre, and this is not a typo.

Aréo- is a much less frequent prefix than the previous one. It is found in the noun aréopage (too often deformed into aéropage) used today in the sense of an assembly of highly competent people. A copy of the Latin areopagus, from the Greek areios pagos, areopagus designated the tribunal that sat in Athens on the hill of Ares, god of war. The prefix aréo is also found in the word aréomètre: from the Greek araios, meaning sparse, tenuous.

In our language, there are areometers and aerometers (the latter having disappeared from the most recent dictionaries, but still appearing in the ninth edition of Dictionnairede l'Académie française). Aerometers are used to measure air density, while hydrometers are used to measure the specific weight of a liquid.

The subtitles often display whimsical conjugations. Errors regularly found concern the present tense, whether subjunctive: "que nous ayons", "que vous soyez" spelled with an unnecessary "i" ("que nous ayions", "que vous soyiez"), or imperative: "chante", often with an incorrect final "s" ("chantes"); and even the present indicative: "il envoie" written "il envoit" or "il conclut" spelled "il conclue". Similarly, the future tense of conclude raises a number of difficulties: it is found in the form "il concluera" for "il conclura".

Viewers and listeners are always a little annoyed when they hear the name of their town or village mispronounced by journalists.

A majority of the letters received on this subject concern the city of Brussels, pronounced [bruksel] instead of [brussel], just as Auxerre and Metz are pronounced [ausserre] and [mess], as the dictionaries indicate.

Chamoniards also point out that their town is pronounced [chamoni], not [chamonix]. The Albenassiens want to hear the name of their town pronounced [aubena], not [aubenass]. The same applies to the Privadois, with Privas to be pronounced [priva]. On the other hand, some forty kilometers from these two main towns, the small town of Lussas, which hosts the Etats Généraux du Film Documentaire every August, is very often summoned [lussa], whereas its inhabitants let the final s be heard and say [lussass].

While Agen and Le Pouliguen have nasalized endings and are pronounced [in], Pont-Aven rhymes with dolmen.

While the Traité de prononciation française indicates that the l is silent in the names Aulnaye, Aulnoye-Aymeries, the Petit Larousse illustré (1999) gives two variants [aunay] [aunoy] or [aulnay] [aulnoy].

The same development can be seen in the pronunciation of the town and territory of Belfort. There used to be two pronunciations, one regional without the l, the other with an l. The latter prevailed, but today the pronunciation [befort] is found not only among older people, but also among youngsters whose families have been from Belfort for several generations.

It should also be remembered that before it was pronounced [ménilmontant], the Paris district was summoned [ménimontant].

Are you [montpeulier], [montpélier] or [montpéyé]?
A viewer from the Paris region wrote to Arcom to complain about the pronunciation of the town of Montpellier in the audiovisual media, with the exception of one journalist who, according to him, pronounces it correctly as [montpélier] and not [montpeulier].

In Montpellier, the local press echoes the passionate controversy over the correct pronunciation of the toponym.

The Barons and Baronnes de Caravette, honorary titles given to Montpellier residents whose parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born and have lived in Montpellier for three generations, are divided: some claim [montpeulier], others defend [montpélier].

The "authorized" opinion of certain researchers was sought, and a survey was carried out, within the framework of the CNRS, on a sample of 542 people, representative of the Montpellier population. This work led to the publication of a book entitled Les noms de Montpellier.

For Jacques Bres, the book's coordinator, the variation [montpeulier] [montpélier] can be explained in two non-exclusive ways. Montpellier is pronounced [montpéyé] in Occitan.

The Occitan é in the atonic medial syllable regularly becomes [eu] in French. The pronunciation [montpeulier] corresponds to standard French, while [montpélier] is a regional French trace of the name's Occitan origin.

There is also a spelling rule that the letter e is written in French without an accent if it is followed by a double consonant, but is pronounced [é], as in cellier.

This shows that there is no single correct pronunciation, but that both variants are equally correct and equally legitimate.

If today 90% of people pronounce [montpeulier] and 10% [montpéllier], no linguist can predict the future. Whether [montpélier] will stabilize and begin to regain ground, or whether it will diminish or even disappear...

It should be noted, however, that both pronunciations are now attested in Larousse dictionaries, whereas only [montpeulier] appeared in earlier editions.

Traité de prononciation française, Pierre FOUCHÉ, Éditions Klincksieck, 1969.

Les noms de Montpellier, Jacques BRES and Philippe MARTEL, Éditions Praxiling, 2001.

The use of Anglo-American terms in radio and television programs continues to generate a great deal of correspondence. While the proliferation of Anglicisms is not the sole fault of journalists and presenters, it is up to them to set an example and refrain from using words or expressions that are incomprehensible to viewers, such as "business performance management ", which appears on public radio without explanation or translation, or "we're going to focus on this problem"...
Most of the media's favorite English terms have a French equivalent: tireur ambusqué for sniper, tueuren série for serial killer, l'équipe de France for theFrench[tim] team, en direct or enregistrement public for live.

The Anglicism look, a French creation that makes the English and Americans smile, is used for many creations: looking, lookage, relooking, relookage, looké, relooké rhyme with booking, surbooking, booké, surbooké overbooké.

The remake of a film for new version has given: [remékeriser] a cult film or a film in [remakirisée] version, the pronunciation varying from speaker to speaker. The presse mondaine has been replaced by the presse people.

Everything's on the move, and English words quickly become distorted. For example, the dictionary definition of "nominee" as "whose name has been mentioned in order to be worthy of a prize" has been replaced by a new definition imposed by reality TV shows: "whose name has been mentioned in order to be eliminated".

Candidates are no longer selected, but cast [câste], as if the "a" had a circumflex accent, a pronunciation that has now all but disappeared from French words.
This tendency to use English is reflected in the pronunciation and spelling of French words: la [natcheure] for nature, les connections for connections, le language for language.
The checkpoints are checkpoints, the rush is back.

An isolated village in the French countryside is described as a place in the middle of nowhere, which few listeners will be able to understand.

When speaking, it's the future tense and the present conditional that are most frequently overused: "vous metteriez" for "vous mettriez", "vous résolverez" instead of "vous résoudrez".

The verb acquire and, less frequently used, the verb conquer pose problems not only in the future and conditional tenses ("vous acquérirez" for "vous acquerrez") but also in the past tense ("ils ont conquéri" instead of "ils ont conquis").

The verbs croire and voir create even more hesitation and give rise to new forms of conjugation. These two verbs have different written forms in the third person singular and plural, present indicative and present subjunctive: "il croit, ils croient, pour qu'il croisie, pour qu'ils croient", "il voit, ils voient, pour qu'il voie, pour qu'ils voient". And yet they're all pronounced the same, [voi] and [croi].

To distinguish the singular from the plural, we increasingly hear guests, and sometimes even hosts, use forms that don't exist in our conjugation: "ils croivent, ils [voillent] orthographiée ils voyent, whether in the indicative or subjunctive.

In the written word, on the other hand, whether in inlays or subtitles, the present subjunctive of these two verbs is mostly ignored and replaced by the present indicative ("pour qu'il croit" instead of "pour qu'il croie", "pour qu'il voit" instead of "pour qu'il croie"). pour qu'il voit" instead of "pour qu'il voie").

The subjunctive of the verb avoir "qu'il ait" frequently becomes "qu'il aie", through confusion with "que j'aie" or with the imperative aie. The forms "ayons, ayez" and "soyons, soyez", on the other hand, are misspelled (ayions, ayiez), (soyions, soyiez) with an unnecessary and incorrect y.

The verb to conclude has disappeared in favor of the verb to conclude, judging by the frequency, on TV and in the press, of the forms "il conclue, il conclera" instead of "il conclut, il conclura" learned at school.

In the second person, the present imperative of verbs in the first group continues to be spelled with an s: "chantes" instead of "chante", despite the rule: "The second person singular of the present imperative of verbs in -er (except aller, "va") ends in e, except in front of the pronouns en and y not followed by an infinitive.

Compare "Sing, dance, travel" with "Eat some. Think about it. Vas-y" (hyphenated s) or "Va y porter ordre. Ose en dire du bien" (en and y followed by an infinitive) and even "Va-t'en. Retourne-t'en.", with apostrophe, the t not being an analogous consonant as in "Aime-t-il?" but the pronoun te, the e of which is elided, the apostrophe dispensing with the second hyphen.