French as "an index of corruption"
« previous post | next post »
Recent mixtures of English into everyday use in other languages evoke mixed reactions, from amusement through annoyance to alarm. It's important to recognize that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time — probably just as about as long as there have been languages to mix. And it's likely that reactions towards the negative end of the spectrum have also been around for many thousands of years.
Over the next few weeks, I'll post a few older examples. But I'll start with a relatively recent instance: the role of French in the speech of educated Russians of the 18th and 19th centuries.
According to Vernon Hall, "Dostoevsky's Use of French as a Symbolic Device in The Brothers Karamazov", Comparative Literature Studies 2(2): 171-174, 1965:
In most Russian novels of the nineteenth century, characters of the educated classes mix a good deal of French in with their mother tongue. This may be rightly considered a form of realism since it merely reflects the linguistic practices of the time. At first glance The Brothers Karamazov seems conventional enough in this regard. Yet a closer look reveals that the use or non-use of the French language by various characters in this novel, while it never violates the principle of social realism, has a much deeper significance. Its realistic function is small; its symbolic function is great.
Dostoevsky employs French in a most deliberate way. The amount of French spoken by each major character is an important index to the degree of his corruption and fits in perfectly with what is now generally recognized as the moral and symbolical structure of the novel.
I don't recall any explicit meta-linguistic peeving about admixtures of French in Dostoevsky's work, though it won't surprise me if readers are able to supply some examples. (As a technical term for such peeving, I like Jonathan Mayhew's suggestion of nurgling, stimulated by Dierk's discussion of 'Sprachnörgler' [language grumps] in German.)
[I should note that there's a systematic difference here, at least in principle, among several basically different phenomena: code-switching, cross-language vocabulary borrowing, flawed use of a language based on imperfect learning (or bad machine translation, or whatever), and various sorts of genuine language mixtures, such as pidgins and creoles. We should be careful not to treat the French of Dostoevsky's characters, or the English of German cubicle-dwellers, as if they were exactly the same sort of thing as the English of badly-translated signs in China; and both are different from genuinely new languages like Singlish.]
VMartin said,
September 22, 2010 @ 11:35 am
This is exactly what I meant to write to the previous article. Russian writers of the 19th century often used French, be it Tolstoy, Turgenev or the greatest novelist of the modern era Fyodor Dostoevsky. I am sure they must have had depicted the real use of language by their contemporaries.
We must consider also their worldviews – which in the case of old Dostoevsky and Tolstoy was Anti-West.
I remember a Tolstoy's novel, where the main character from high society became a pilgrim. Once a rich French gave to him and another pilgrim some money. He spoke French and the noble man (now pilgrim) understood all and wanted to replay in perfect French – but he let it be considering any conversation in French for vanitas and a sign of pride.
I would say that all those French phrases are not used in modern Russian anymore. I would bet that the same will happen to some English words which became part of our speech – like "meeting" instead "stretnutie" or "pub" etc… It's more vogue influenced by "the world of labor" than any real need or use for such words.
Qov said,
September 22, 2010 @ 12:07 pm
I remember being baffled by learning Russian words like манто (manteau), and одэкалон (eau de cologne). Were the Russians so uncivilized that they had no perfumes before they met the French? And how on earth did the language survive its iconic harsh winters without a word for coat?
mattghg said,
September 22, 2010 @ 12:18 pm
In Dostoyevsky's The Devils there's an awful lot of mid-sentence French spoken by one character (Verkhovensky) in particular, but the impression I get from this is not so much that the character is corrupt as that he's affected – which would fit in with what VMartin said.
Nastasia Filipovna said,
September 22, 2010 @ 12:40 pm
Qov–sure, Russians had no coats or perfumes before they met the French in much the same way as the English had no beef or pork. Or perfume (a French loanword into English, by the way, in case you haven't noticed).
Re: the use of French in Dostoyevsky's novels for characterization. What it signifies is up to interpretation, but I think it is hard to argue that it is NOT significant. In Подросток (The Adolescent), the main character Dolgorukij never code-switches to French, while his father Versilov, a character who is at least at the beginning characterized negatively, sprinkles French throughout his speech all the time. This is hard not to notice.
VMartin said,
September 22, 2010 @ 12:51 pm
mattghg:
Actually Stepan Trophimovich Verchovensky is depicted with great tenderness and Dostoevsky wanted to present in him an old itellectualist who will find his way at last – what actually happened.
I would say that Dostoevsky – who translated from French Hugo(?) if I remember correctly – didn't pay much attention to style or nuances like using French or not. Using French simply means that the person depicted had higher education or pretended to have, but it didn't correspond with his moral qualitiest. He dictated his novel "Idiot" to his stenographist who he married later. His novels are often feverish and yet there is something in his sentences that make them peculiar and you know – this must have been written by Dostoevsky!
This is not very scientific what I will write, but I think that Dostoevsky's sentences are like microcosm and his novels like macrocosm. The first are mirrored in the second and the second in the first. His novels couldn't have been written using another sentences even with the same meaning.
Spell Me Jeff said,
September 22, 2010 @ 12:52 pm
It is of course a cliche in contemporary writing/drama/TV to illustrate a character's snobbishness by having them speak French at random moments. (Though not an unrealistic cliche, as I'm sure many of you can attest.) And it always seems to be French, does it not? I have never heard an American attempt to inflate his ego or projected importance by spouting bits of German, Turkish, Tagalog, etc.
Nathan said,
September 22, 2010 @ 1:06 pm
@Spell Me Jeff: On the contrary, I've heard people sprinkle words like zeitgeist, gestalt, or schadenfreude in their conversation in an unmistakably pretentious way. I would say it also happens with Yiddish words in English. But probably not Turkish or Tagalog, yeah.
George said,
September 22, 2010 @ 1:41 pm
Jeff and Nathan:
For an American to exhibit sophistication and urbanity, French is best.
Spell Me Jeff said,
September 22, 2010 @ 1:43 pm
Yes, that's true, and I suppose I wasn't thinking on all four cylinders. But isn't that more typical of words alone, rather than complete sentences? I'm thinking more of the sort of person who just randomly blurts out a complete thought in French, generally a stock sort of phrase. I don't think I've ever heard someone rattle off a thing like "ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten," though that's the kind of thing you might expect to hear if German were the same kind of marker.
Yiddish, I think, is a whole other thing, probably several other things, depending on context. I wouldn't begin to explain it.
Toma said,
September 22, 2010 @ 1:44 pm
It's just that French already sounds so snobby. "Tout de suite" for cryin out loud.
Jerry Friedman said,
September 22, 2010 @ 1:46 pm
Très bien dit.
(Okay, okay, I admit cliche is an English word now.
Spell Me Jeff said,
September 22, 2010 @ 1:46 pm
@George. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, except that I think that the moment has passed, and now (to me at least) its a marker only of affected sophistication, not the real thing (assuming real sophistication exists, of course).
Xmun said,
September 22, 2010 @ 1:59 pm
You learn something new every day. I always thought that Карандаш was a transcription of the French caran d'ache. No, it's the other way around.
If you want to read lots of French-dropping (so to speak), read any book written by Roy Jenkins.
Xmun said,
September 22, 2010 @ 2:15 pm
@Nathan
If you want to see Turkish in an English novel, read Sweet Confusion in the Princes' Islands, a detective story by Lawrence Goodman, but you'll probably have to go to Istanbul to find a copy. It was published by Islander Editions ADALI YAYINLARI (www.adalar-istanbul.org) in May 2005. All the Turkish in the book is neatly and unobtrusively explained.
Xmun said,
September 22, 2010 @ 2:22 pm
Correction: the title is Sweet Confusion on the Princes' Islands.
Maureen said,
September 22, 2010 @ 2:30 pm
So using French in a Russian novel can be an indication of worldliness or education, depending?
I'm okay with people borrowing words, or even someone going a little too whole hog with it (what the harsher anime fans call a "weaboo"). I think it's kinda cute. But I'm not real fond of people breaking into French conversations in the middle of English novels.
D.O. said,
September 22, 2010 @ 2:36 pm
I am very much baffled by the order of evilness (or corruption, if you will) of protagonists in The Brothers Karamazov in the cited article. Looking at the first page (the only one available at the posted link) it is
Fyodor (père) > Ivan = Devil = Smerdyakov > Dmitri > Alyosha
and it is not clear where other characters stand. My impression (sure, from 20 years ago) was
Smerdyakov > Fyodor > Ivan > Dmitri > Alyosha
Interestingly Smerdyakov did not actually speak French, he just tried to learn.
George said,
September 22, 2010 @ 3:05 pm
Jeff: Affected sophistication? Yes, exactly.
I think the sophistication factor relates to how the language is acquired and who speaks it natively. Too much Spanish is acquired in the home by poor people to be a marker of sophistication. Yiddish is related to ethnicity. Arabic is the language of Jihad. French, however, for 'sophisticated' Americans is learned in school and semesters abroad.
Terry Collmann said,
September 22, 2010 @ 3:16 pm
I'm surprised nobody has yet brought up the famous Miss Piggy quote – "Pretentious? Moi?"
Jonathan Mayhew said,
September 22, 2010 @ 3:24 pm
I can't take credit for "nurgling"; ir was someone else's idea as you can see by following that link.
rpsms said,
September 22, 2010 @ 3:30 pm
So basically, they are using French to indicate whether someone is a douche
J. W. Brewer said,
September 22, 2010 @ 3:31 pm
Those of you w/o daughters the age of mine may not be familiar with the now-popular Fancy Nancy series of children's books, which feature lots of Frenchified vocabulary because, as the title character explains, "everything sounds fancier in French." But arguably an otherwise generic fictional suburban American 6 year old girl trying to sound sophisticated by spouting French lexical items is cuter than a fictional member of the old Russian gentry doing so.
language hat said,
September 22, 2010 @ 4:10 pm
The French used by Russian aristocrats has absolutely nothing in common with that used by Americans in any context whatsoever. In many cases they spoke it far better than Russian, which they used only with the occasional coachman or peasant. The great Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev wrote only his poetry in Russian, conducting the rest of his life in French. Dostoevsky may or may not have used it as an index of corruption, but that is a fact about the novelist, not about the society.
George said,
September 22, 2010 @ 4:38 pm
language hat: "The French used by Russian aristocrats has absolutely nothing in common with that used by Americans in any context whatsoever."
Hmm. That is a pretty strong statement. So, why would a Russian speaker select Russian or French with those who speak both? Why would a Russian author insert French into a Russian text? Is it completely random or could it possibly have some sociolinguistic motivation?
Rubrick said,
September 22, 2010 @ 5:40 pm
language hat wrote:
The French used by Russian aristocrats has absolutely nothing in common with that used by Americans in any context whatsoever.
Vocabulary?
Nathan Myers said,
September 22, 2010 @ 6:53 pm
Isn't this word "nurgling" drawn from the same root as "niggling"? Is there really any difference between their meanings? Should we say that "nurgling" means "language niggling"?
The Ridger said,
September 22, 2010 @ 7:04 pm
What Hat means is that Russians of a certain social class actually used French as their primary language, they didn't sprinkle their Russian with French words or phrases.
And the Goodman books are available from Amazon.
language hat said,
September 22, 2010 @ 8:13 pm
What The Ridger said. It was not an ornament, it was their primary language.
Rod Johnson said,
September 22, 2010 @ 8:18 pm
French was a strong marker of aristocracy (and pretension thereto). The thing about Smerdyakov is that, although he was the evil-est, he was also the only Brother K. who wasn't bourgeois. It doesn't matter how corrupt he was, he wouldn't have any French (except whatever he picked up as Pa K's servant).
groki said,
September 22, 2010 @ 10:00 pm
@Spell Me Jeff I think that the moment has passed, and now (to me at least) its a marker only of affected sophistication
well sometimes (for us affected sophisticates left behind, I guess), some French vocabulary has a real "to know how to do."
marie-lucie said,
September 22, 2010 @ 10:41 pm
For me, French vocabulary is absolutely ordinary.
On the other hand, French people (in France) are adopting English vocabulary and syntax with abandon. Not too long ago I was reading an interview with some French teenagers about pop music. They thought that "Here comes the sun" was "génial", while "Voici le soleil" was boringly predictable.
D.O. said,
September 22, 2010 @ 11:15 pm
The Brothers Karamazov were written towards the end of 1870s and set up at the same time. By that time very few Russians independent of social class spoke French as their primary language. French was a language routinely studied in gymnasiums, secondary and high school for people preparing for University (as opposed to technical school, or not having the secondary education at all). Thus, from all protagonists of Brothers Karamazov only Fyodor might have spoken French as his first language at some point in his life (maybe in childhood talking to a French nanny or such). The others used it in a manner of today Russians speaking English as language of education, refinement, progressive ideas, aspirations, snobbery or whatever.
bloix said,
September 22, 2010 @ 11:24 pm
"Qov–sure, Russians had no coats or perfumes before they met the French in much the same way as the English had no beef or pork."
The English didn't speak English before they acquired the French (actually Norman) words for beef and pork.
bloix said,
September 22, 2010 @ 11:29 pm
It used to be customary for translators of Russian and German novels to leave any French passages untranslated – the assumption being that educated readers might not read Russian or German but they certainly would read French. I remember reading The Magic Mountain and, about half way through, coming to a half a dozen pages of solid French, with no English at all except "he said' and "she said." As this was the intensely dramatic love scene between Hans Castorp and Clawdia Chauchat, it was frustrating, to say the least.
ShadowFox said,
September 22, 2010 @ 11:39 pm
I have no problem with the second part–we more or less know what "is now generally recognized". There is some objectivity in this part. But the first part? Is there an independent measure of "degree of [character's] corruption" in the novel? This sounds notoriously suspect to me.
the other Mark P said,
September 23, 2010 @ 7:15 am
So, why would a Russian speaker select Russian or French with those who speak both?
It's a huge assumption to say that a "Russian" spoke Russian. A fair chunk of the "Russian" nobility was German speaking (from Estonia and Latvia), some were Polish, some central Asian and others Caucasian. In general most "Russians" spoke Russian very poorly (say a Ukrainian or Belorussian variant), sometimes not at all.
And the upper classes traveled a lot. They spoke French for the same reason upper class Brits did – it was [cough] the lingua franca of the time.
The last Tsar spoke English to his family – his wife not being Russian born.
Only monoglot Anglos think this strange. Most of the world grow up with a local language and a language of trade and education.
Steve F said,
September 23, 2010 @ 7:40 am
I once stumbled on an article – which I would love to find again – in which the journalist managed to incorporate just about every French word or phrase that is commonly used in English. The context involved complaints from a French source about the prevalence of franglais in modern French. It was a real tour de force (I think that's le mot juste). I wonder if anyone else remembers it, or could supply a link. All I know is that it was somewhere on the Internet – not very helpful – though I seem to recall that it was a British newspaper, possibly the Guardian.
richard howland-bolton said,
September 23, 2010 @ 7:53 am
bloix "The English didn't speak English before they acquired the French (actually Norman) words for beef and pork."
Have you been lurking on ANSAX-L?
George said,
September 23, 2010 @ 8:05 am
the other Mark P:
I did not phrase my question well and I think it was misunderstood. Let me try again.
What is the motivation for a multi-lingual Russian to "mix a good deal of French in with their mother tongue" (see the post) when speaking with another multi-lingual Russian?
Are you and others claiming that there is no social motivation?
language hat said,
September 23, 2010 @ 11:24 am
The English didn't speak English before they acquired the French (actually Norman) words for beef and pork.
Huh? What an absurd thing to say.
richard howland-bolton said,
September 23, 2010 @ 11:38 am
language hat
There has been a recent discussion of this on the ANSAX-L (hence my comment to bloix)
Apparently there are those like James Fenton and Frank Kermode (not to mention Woody Allen in _Annie Hall_ :-) ) who like to think that OE isn't English. Probably too hard for their little froggy brains.
Xmun said,
September 23, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
@bloix: "It used to be customary for translators of Russian and German novels to leave any French passages untranslated . . ."
Not just translators. English novelists did the same. See, for example, George Du Maurier's Trilby (1894) and Maurice Baring's C. (1924), both of which have lengthy passages of untranslated French. But the World's Classics edition of Trilby has translations of all the French passages in the explanatory notes.
Twitter Trackbacks for Language Log » French as “an index of corruption” [upenn.edu] on Topsy.com said,
September 24, 2010 @ 5:59 am
[…] Language Log » French as “an index of corruption” languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2648 – view page – cached Recent mixtures of English into everyday use in other languages evoke mixed reactions, from amusement through annoyance to alarm. It's important to recognize that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time — probably just as about as long as there have been languages to mix. And it's likely that reactions towards the negative end of the spectrum have also been around for many… Read moreRecent mixtures of English into everyday use in other languages evoke mixed reactions, from amusement through annoyance to alarm. It's important to recognize that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time — probably just as about as long as there have been languages to mix. And it's likely that reactions towards the negative end of the spectrum have also been around for many thousands of years. View page Tweets about this link […]
bloix said,
September 24, 2010 @ 11:30 pm
language hat, you're getting tiresome. You see my name and an insult pops out. It's about as interesting as watching Pavlov's dog slobber. But to the point, which I'm most people here already know better than I –
Before the Norman Conquest, the English didn't speak English. They spoke an entirely different language, or group of related languages. You can call it Anglo Saxon or you can call it Old English, but it wasn't what we call English. The transformation of Anglo Saxon into Middle English, which is recognizably a form of the language that we call English, involved the inclusion of quite a bit of Norman French, including the words that we now have as beef, pork, and mutton.
John Cowan said,
September 26, 2010 @ 12:53 pm
bloix: Oh really? Here's a bit of verse, you tell me: "Anglo-Saxon" or recognizable English? (No fair googling for it.)
Þe fyft fyue þat I finde þat þe frek vsed
Watz fraunchyse and felaȝschyp forbe al þyng,
His clannes and his cortaysye croked were neuer,
And pité, þat passez alle poyntez, þyse pure fyue
Were harder happed on þat haþel þen on any oþer.
Now alle þese fyue syþez, for soþe, were fetled on þis knyȝt,
And vchone halched in oþer, þat non ende hade,
And fyched vpon fyue poyntez, þat fayld neuer,
Ne samned neuer in no syde, ne sundred nouþer,
Withouten ende at any noke I oquere fynde,
Whereeuer þe gomen bygan, or glod to an ende.
Þerfore on his schene schelde schapen watz þe knot
Ryally wyth red golde vpon rede gowlez,
Þat is þe pure pentaungel wyth þe peple called
with lore.
And here's a bit of perfectly grammatical Old English (written by Mitchell and Robinson, slightly rearranged by me), while I'm at it:
Harold is swift. His hand is strong and his word grim. He swam west in storm and wind and frost. His lamb is deaf and blind. He sang for me. Late in life he went to his wife in Rome. Is his inn open?
He is dead and his bed is under him. His cornbin is full and his song is writen [sic]. Grind his corn for him and sing me his song. Stand up and find wise men and bring us gold.
richard howland-bolton said,
September 27, 2010 @ 11:17 am
John Cowan: is that a bit unfair? Surely ModE didn't get a lot from the Gawain poet's dialect. Maybe Langland would have been fair (fields of folk notwithstanding) and the survival of alliterative poetry is suggestive.