Paris Perspective #18: The evolution of French and the politics of dialect - Mathieu Avanzi
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French was given its “birth certificate” as an official language in 1539 when King François I declared that French would become the obligatory administrative and judicial language over Latin. Paris Perspective looks at the political and linguistic evolution of the Parisian dialect into standard French and how the language is changing for better or for worse.
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When this 16th century decree was signed into law at the Chateau de Villers-Cotterêts, north-east of Paris, it marked a massive political shift for the dialect that is now known as standard French.
François' move gave the so-called “common people” access to the bureaucracy of early modern France, dethroning Latin as the lingua franca of feudal bureaucracy.
Over the centuries, the hegemony of the Parisian dialect over the French language within the ruling classes was compounded in 1635 with the foundation of the Académie Française - a collection of academics and scholars charged with overseeing and steering its evolution.
For many, the institution is regarded as a stifling anachronism that has no place in the modern world, and one that hinders the language's natural evolution.
The Académie, however, maintains that it only exists in an advisory capacity and only monitors the use of new words being introduced into the language.
"They [académiciens] have a very negative function," says Mathieu Avanzi, linguist and specialist in French dialects.
"They think that their role is to defend the language, but they don't realise that language is evolving."
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'The eradication of patois'
Avanzi, who has authored several books on the linguistic diversity of French across the country, says that it wasn't always that way with the Académie: "If you compare different editions of the first dictionary ... you can see that they were different because they were following the flow [of French], taking in what they observed."
For him, the Académie represents "a bunch of people who want to stop the evolution" of the language.
That said, the development of the French language has always been a deeply political affair.
Once the guillotine went into overdrive in the wake of the revolution in 1789, it became apparent to the new regime that it was essential to rally the country under a unified language to the detriment of regional languages, dialects and identity.
The result is that Abbé Grégoire’s post-Revolutionary standardisation of weights and measures also included “the eradication of patois” in all its forms.
By the 1880s, the Jules Ferry laws were being enforced in France's schools, making French the compulsory medium for education and strictly forbidding the use of regional languages or dialects.
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"There was this idea that French should be used to unify the country because we were creating a republic. The politicians were thinking that everybody [should] speak the same language and set aside dialects," Avanzi explains.
For the revolutionaries, the dialects of France's provinces only served to underline the divisions across the country.
This concept still resonates within the French body politic today. Minister for Education Jean-Michel Blanquer recently stressed that there is only one language in France, and one grammar. It is also noteworthy that since 1992, the French constitution states categorically that “the language of the Republic is French.”
The 'Castex Effect'
Along with the centralised state's total distain for regional languages, the prejudice against regional accents is also endemic in the corridors of power.
Speaking with even the slightest hint of a country accent on the Champs Elysées will raise plenty of eye-brows among those willing to pay €8 for a coffee on the eponymous boulevard.
"It's still going on," says Avanzi, who is also a senior lecturer in linguistics at the Sorbonne University.
"You can still see some students coming from the provinces who arrive in Paris - they will start to lose their accent ... because most people [in Paris] associate a strong accent with being low class."
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However, the tide could be changing when it comes to prejudice against regional accents? This may be the so-called "Castex effect", in reference to Jean Castex who came from political obscurity in France's south-west to take up the position of France's prime minister and bringing a distinctive southern twang to the podium.
Avanzi believes Castex's appointment marks a sea-change with people's attitude towards regional dialects and colloquialisms: "The fact that Jean Castex was nominated to the function of prime minister was a very big important thing in the field of linguistics, because for the first time, we were listening to a politician, with a very high function, with a very strong accent," he said.
"I remember the first time I heard him on TV, I was 'Oh, my God, this is the new prime minister!' So this really marks a change in [the French] mentality."
However, some have remarked that since taking over the running of President Emmanuel Macron's government, his southern cadence has been watered down. "Of course when you move in Paris, you will have less and less of [a regional] accent because you're surrounded by people who believe they don't have an accent."
So after researching his latest book on the how regional dialects have influenced recipes and local cuisine, which patois is the thickest and richest?
"It's very difficult to say," Avanzi concludes. "I can only reply to the ones that we studied the most. The south-west of France is one of the most famous, with the most words."
Yet Switzerland and Belgium have rich lexicons as well: "When you look at them all, you realise there are just so many words and so many expressions."
Although regional French is often treated as uneducated and backward, in the end those regions fully exploit the potential of their dialects and are therefore not poorer, but far richer than the "ruling standard" of Parisian French.
Dialects are an integral part of France's identity.
Paris Perspective #18 - The Evolution Of French And The Politics Of Dialect - Mathieu Avanzi
Mathieu Avanzi is an author and linguist with the Sorbonne University in Paris, specialising in France's regions and dialects
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