French Is A Logical Language
French Is A Logical Language
French Is A Logical Language
Anthony Lodge
Myth: French is a logical, clear language. (What the French have been claiming over the
past three and a half centuries.)
Question: What do they mean?
1647, Claude Favre de Vaugelas (French purist grammarian): clarity is a property which French
possesses over all other languages in the world
1784, Count Antoine de Rivarol (self-styled aristocrat, son of an innkeeper, winner of the prize
for the best essay at the Berlin Academy): describes French as having order and structure of the
sentence. In French the subject of the discourse is named first, then the verb which is the action:
This is the natural logic present in all human beings... French syntax is incorruptible. [...] what
is not clear is still English, Italian, Greek or Latin.
Rivarol claims that "French was preferred by all rational-minded people on account of its
inherent logical structure". What about France being a top nation in Europe for a century and a
half?
19th century, C. Allou (mining engineer turned grammarian): One of the chief characteristics of
French is its extreme clarity which renders it less susceptible than any other language to
obscurity, ambiguity and double-meaning.
F. Brunetiere: [...] it is not the French language which is in itself clearer and more logical than
the others, it is French thinking.
1910, Abbe C. Vincent: Our national language, so clear, so subtle, so logical, so distinguished,
is becoming increasingly fuzzy, turgid, deformed and vulgar.
The eve of the First World War, J. Payot: We find everywhere among French people the
courageous striving after clarity.
1963, J. Duron: I doubt whether there has ever existed since the time of the Greeks, a language
which reflected thought so transparently... [...] it makes clear the most difficult ideas [...] It
carries further than any other language the requirement and the capacity for clarity.
President Mitterrand (socialist): talks about the French language and its clarity, its elegance, its
nuances, the richness of its tenses and its moods, the delicacy of its sounds, the logic of its word
order.
Professors of French in Britain: Looseness of reasoning and lack of logical sequence are our
common faults... The French genius is clear and precise... In translating into French we thus
learn the lesson of clarity and precision. (Ritchie and Moore)
The French language conforms much more closely to the demands of pure logic than any other
language. (W. von Wartburg)
MAIN CLAIMS
Main argument - word order (agent, action, patient), SVO (unlike Latin or German)
But...
... French is not the only SVO language, English is also SVO (Rivarol describes it as unclear
and illogical)
... how fundamental is the SVO order in French?
- in formal style subject-verb inversion (1) is frequent;
- in informal style dislocated structures (2) seem to be the rule not the exception;
- passive sentences (3) seem to be a breach of the natural order.
2. The organization of French grammar and vocabulary with the 'natural' ordering of time and
space
Expectation: one linguistic expression for every distinct idea, and one idea for every linguistic
expression
But...
... the speakers of most languages consider their mother tongue to provide the most natural
vehicle for their thoughts
... the ideas that human beings can have are unlimited. There are surely many ideas for which
French provides no "neatly coded expression".
Examples:
- the French past-tense system provides no distinction between the English I sang and I have
sung;
- same words for sheep and mutton, ox and beef;
- numerous words with more than one meaning (e.g. poser = put down/ask (a question)/pose (for
a picture);
- numerous words which sound the same (e.g. ver = worm, verre = glass, vert = green, vair = a
type of fur, vers = towards/verse)
=> no more clarity, ambiguity
1980, Raymond Barre (politician): The first of the fundamental values of our civilization is the
correct usage of our language. There is among young people a moral and civic virtue in the
correct usage of our language.
1
Standard language = a set of ideas about what constitutes the best form of a language, the form
which everyone ought to imitate.
Bibliography:
Lodge, A. 1998. French is a Logical Language. In Bauer L. and Trudgill, Language Myths, 23-
30. London: Penguin Books.
Lodge, A. Language Myths and the Historiography of French. Speech held at the University of
Saint Andrews. http://diobma.udg.edu/handle/10256.1/3135. Accessed on March 22nd 2017.