Franglais () or Frenglish ( ) is a French blend that referred first to the overuse of English words by French speakersLe petit Robert and later to diglossia or the macaronic mixture of French () and English ().
Etymology The word Franglais was first attested in French in 1959, but it was popularised by the academic, novelist, and critic René Étiemble in his denunciation of the overuse of English words in French, published in 1964.Le petit Robert Earlier than the French term was the English label Frenglish, first recorded in 1937. Other colloquial blends for French-influenced English include Franglish (recorded from 1967), Frenchlish (1974), and Fringlish (1982).
English sense
In English, Franglais means a combination of English and French. It evokes the linguistic concepts of mixed language and barbarism. Reasons for this blend could be caused by lexical 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, using false 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:
Longtemps, pas voir.'Long time, no see.' Je vais driver downtown.'I'm going to drive downtown.' () Je suis tired.'I am tired.' () Je ne care pas.'I don't care.' () J'agree.'I agree.' ()
In English humour Geoffrey Chaucer's Prioress knew nothing of the French of France, but only that of Stratford-atte-Bow ('Cockney French'). Similar mixtures occur in the later stages of Law French, such as the famous defendant who "ject un brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist" ("threw a at the said Justice, which narrowly missed").Legal Language, Peter Tiersma, p. 33
Another example in English literature is found in Henry V by William Shakespeare. In Act 3, Scene 4, For best viewing of hypertext annotations, disable browser autotranslation. a French princess is trying to learn English, but unfortunately, foot as pronounced by her maid sounds too much like (vulgar French for 'semen', or 'to have sexual intercourse' when used as a verb) and gown like (French for 'cunt', also used to mean 'idiot'). She decides that English is too obscene.
A literary example of the delight in occurs in Robert Surtees' Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities:
The 19th-century American writer Mark Twain, in Innocents Abroad (1869), included the following letter to a Parisian landlord:
The humourist Miles Kington wrote a regular column "Let's Parler Franglais" which was published in the British magazine Punch 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 in Luis van Rooten's Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript.1967, New York: Viking Adult, Here, English nursery 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's Sky My Husband! Ciel Mon Mari! which is a literal translation of French into English. However, in this context, the correct translation of is 'heavens...!'
In Monty Python's 1975 movie Monty 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 "" and he repeats "Fetchez la vache!" The guards finally get it: fetch ('the cow'), which they then catapult at the Britons.The French Castle scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
French sense
In French, refers to the use of English words sometimes deemed unwelcome borrowings or bad slang. An example would be (also ), which is used in many French dialects which have no synonym; however, Canadians would use ('the end of the week') instead, although in France refers to the end of the work week, i.e. Thursday and Friday. 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., ('a car park or parking lot' is alternatively in Canadian French, although means 'the action of parking or the state of being parked' in European French); ('a campsite'); and ('shampoo', but pronounced , not ), 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 as ('a makeover'), and ('a rugby player'). Others are based on misunderstandings of English words, e.g.: un meaning 'a jog or a run' rather than 'a pediment'; meaning 'a tram', not 'a tram-track'. Still others are based on (with the apostrophe in both singular and plural) meaning 'a lapel pin'; or 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, in Canada, where both English and French are spoken, expressions such as and are not used.
Some examples of Franglais are in fact imagined or examples of words being adopted 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, many numismatists think that the French spelling of the English term piedfort results from an imagined reintroduction of an English misspelling. In fact, the spelling is found in French dictionaries as an alternative of and even as the only spelling given in the 1932–1935 edition of the and the etymology derived by professional linguists and shown in these dictionaries shows the change in spelling happened within French.Trésor de la langue française informatisé, 1971-19948th edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, 1932-1935
Owing to the worldwide popularity of the Internet, relatively new English words have been introduced into French (e.g. and , referring to either e-mail or an e-mail address). An equivalent for the English word e-mail derived from French roots was coined in Quebec French and promoted by Quebec government: (from ), and this term is now widely used there. The Académie française has also suggested the use of the abbreviation (from ) as an analogy with the abbreviation for 'telephone', to be used before an e-mail address; however, the term , which roughly approximates the English pronunciation of mail, is now used more broadly in France than that prescribed usage. Another example from French is the word . The equivalent of the English verb to look at in French is but the noun a look (i.e. the way that something looks or is styled) has become in French, such that the sentence "This Pepsi can has a new look" in French would be "".
In France
After World War II, a backlash began in France 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 government censorship of comic 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:
TV reality shows often use English titles such as Loft Story, Star Academy, Popstars, and Secret Story. A leading national newspaper, Le Monde, publishes a weekly article selection of The New York Times entirely in English and uses anglicisms such as newsletter, chat, and e-mail instead of French substitutions (/ for 'chat' or for 'e-mail'). Note that saying to a French person instead of Internet 'chat' may confuse them, since refers in France to real-life conversation and is rarely used in an Internet context. The word (a blend of 'keyboard' and 'chat') is hardly known outside of Canada. The word chat in writing can be confusing as well since it natively means 'cat' in French; thus, the unique respelling is occasionally seen. In James Huth's movie Brice de Nice (to be pronounced as if it were in English), Franglais is used in a satirical way to make fun of teens and other trendy people who use English words to sound cool.
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 subsidiary Orange SA runs a franchise retail network called . Its Internet subsidiary, formerly known as Wanadoo (inspired by the American slang expression wanna do) provides a popular triple play service through its Livebox cable modem. The second-largest Internet service provider in France is Free, which offers its freebox. Set-top boxes that are offered by many other providers are also following this trend (e.g. Neuf-box, Alice-box, etc.) and the word box 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 Plus frequent flyer program to Flying Blue. The Paris transportation authority RATP has also recently introduced a contactless smartcard ticketing system (like the Oyster card in London) called NaviGO.
Public authorities such as the Académie française and the Conseil supérieur de la langue française generally propose alternative words for anglicisms. The acceptance of such words varies considerably; for example, and existed before the English words computer and software reached France, so they are accepted (even outside France in the case of ). On the other hand, failed to replace weekend or (the latter being in current usage in Canada). The word , equivalent to 'e-mail', coined and used in French-speaking Canada, is gaining popularity in written European French. However, most French Internet users generally speak about mail without the prefix "e-". Note that English words are often shorter, and they are usually coined 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. for CD-RW (literally 'rewritable CD-ROMs', despite ROM meaning 'read-only memory'). Some words are considered uncool, for example, (formed by adding t- to chat) or (formed by writing DVD phonetically).