Publish at May 05 2019 Updated May 21 2026
Everything evolves, at all times and in all places. Our society is changing faster and faster, thanks to advances in science and new technologies. The same applies to language: it changes, modernizes, adapts and modifies with the times, fashions and eras.
The French language has now become monochordal, appearing to be one of the least singing languages in the world. Its vocabulary, syntax, grammar and spelling have evolved, and what do you think?
On the one hand, we have the purists, those who still resist and participate in the defense of the French language. On the other, we have the evolutionists, who keep up with the times and move forward with world history.
Which side do you come down on? Are you a purist or an evolutionist? Reflections on the evolution of the French language...
July 14, 842 is a date to be remembered in the history of the French language, as it was here that the first text written in Romance language, "proto-French", appeared. The Strasbourg Oaths are manuscripts of extreme geo-political importance, as they deal with the division of the empire from Charlemagne to his grandsons, including the part of the kingdom that would later become France.
The game of conquests holds an important place in the history of the French language, and I suggest you learn more about it by consulting one of my earlier articles entitled La réforme évolutive de la langue (April 2016).
In a nutshell, French has never ceased to recreate itself in order to evolve. From Romance to Old French to contemporary French, the language has come a long way!
The French language has always aroused passions and inflamed spirits, starting in 1549 with a small group of literati known as La Pléiade (including Ronsard and Du Bellay), who published a work entitled Défense et illustration de la langue française. Its aim was to protect the new, unified language, in response to the Latin still widely used at the time. In this sense, the members of the Pléiade were evolutionists, progressives, even anarchists. They wanted to abandon the vernacular of the time (Latin) in favor of the popular language, French.
The creation of the Académie française in 1635 by Cardinal de Richelieu, followed by that of the Encyclopédie in 1751 by the philosophers Diderot and D'Alembert, would continue to anchor French as a "new language" for good. The Age of Enlightenment was resolutely evolutionary, not only in terms of ideas, but also in terms of language. As proof of this, new terms appeared, starting with the names of the months, which were changed in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789 (brumaire, thermidor, vendémiaire...).
But has it always been this way? No. Not everyone is an evolutionist, and that's precisely the debate and thesis animated by the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, at the end of the 17th century throughout literary, linguistic and artistic France!
Indeed, here, there was no question of being open-minded and going with the flow. The Ancients (led by Boileau and Racine) opposed the Modernes (led by Perrault) and advocated a conservative, purist French, far removed from all that "decadent modernity". Who won the day? No one, or at least not concretely, since a compromise was finally reached in 1694, when it was stated that "the century of Louis XIV shines through the works of those who have surpassed the limits of the past.uvres de ceux qui ont dépassé les "anciens" au-delà de leurs œuvres, en se appuyer sur le génie propre de la langue et du siècle. Pascal points out that those we call the ancients were moderns in their own time. "Everything is said: 1-1, equal scores.
The Académie française and the protectors of the language continue to stand proudly against the linguistic incongruities that have appeared since then. Between the reform of spelling, grammar and vocabulary... the holders of the language's knowledge have their work cut out for them, often earning them the nickname of the "dinosaurs" of the French language! Recently, in 2017, the big debate concerned inclusive writing ("the answer" to linguistic inequalities between men and women), then came that of questioning the agreement of the past participle, initiated by our Belgian neighbors. There's no shortage of topics.
The French language evolves, creates and transforms itself. Of course, the ideal is to know how to adapt your language to your interlocutors, but it's not always easy to find the right words at the right time.
To be able to do so is to recognize those who have truly mastered the language, those who know how to popularize and adapt it, to speak as much in scholarly terms to an audience of enarques as to a class of primary school children. I'm thinking in particular of Hubert Reeves, the great Canadian astrophysicist (b. 1932), whose science and wisdom no longer need to be proven, and who has rightly written several popularized scientific books.He has written several popular science books, such as "L'univers expliqué à mes petits-enfants" (The universe explained to my grandchildren), published in 2011.
So, evolutionist or purist? Whether you're a purist or an evolutionist, we're all speakers of French. After that, it's just a question of adaptation!
Illustrations
Livres de la Pléiade, https://pixabay.com/images/id2606859/
Liberty guiding the people, Delacroix, https://pixabay.com/images/id63022/
Hubert Reeves meets schoolchildren, Petite République,
https://images.app.goo.gl/Kj4YgjbQ25QAL8QXA
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