FOUL LANGUAGE

A cou­ple of years ago my daugh­ter spent a sum­mer in the south of France. As get­ting her to her des­ti­na­tion in the mid­dle of the French coun­try­side on a com­bi­na­tion of planes and trains would be com­pli­cated, my wife and I de­cided to drive her there and at the same time take ad­van­tage of the trip to enjoy a short hol­i­day.

On the way back, we de­cided to stop off in the city of Nîmes and check out its Roman re­mains. In fact, I found a swish-look­ing bou­tique hotel be­fore we left. The hotel web­site was as styl­ish as the decor, the Eng­lish on the site was im­pec­ca­ble, the re­views from in­ter­na­tional guests were com­pli­men­tary, and in just a few clicks I had a room booked.

Jump ahead a week and one balmy sum­mer evening we are pulling into a free park­ing space that we hap­pened to find right out­side the hotel and look­ing for­ward to ex­plor­ing the city. While my wife fin­ished park­ing, I went into the hotel to begin the book­ing-in process. The young lady be­hind the re­cep­tion desk smiled when I en­tered but as I in­formed her of who I was and that I had a room booked, a blank look came over her face. I re­peated what I had said – a lit­tle more slowly and clearly – but it seemed as if she didn’t un­der­stand a word.

Our mu­tual puz­zle­ment was in­ter­rupted by my wife en­ter­ing and greet­ing us in French. The re­cep­tion­ist re­sponded by clasp­ing her hands in front of her in a ges­ture of ex­treme grat­i­tude while bab­bling at my wife in French, pre­sum­ably thank­ing her for res­cu­ing her from the nasty Eng­lish­man who had in­sisted on speak­ing his foul lan­guage on hal­lowed French soil.

My wife’s French is far from flu­ent but it’s good enough to book us into a hotel, a hotel in an in­ter­na­tional tourist des­ti­na­tion that ad­ver­tises in Eng­lish and wel­comes guests from all over the world, yet a hotel where they don’t ap­pear to speak Eng­lish. The re­cep­tion­ist went on to show us – I say us, but re­ally just my wife be­cause she never again ac­knowl­edged my pres­ence, I can only as­sume due to my lack of French – the hotel fa­cil­i­ties and the room and wished us – my wife – a pleas­ant stay, all in French. It got me think­ing how I should use my new power of in­vis­i­bil­ity.

It’s not the first time I’ve had lan­guage is­sues in France. Just to give an­other quick ex­am­ple, last sum­mer I was in France with my mo­tor­bike friends, who are all Cata­lan and don’t speak French. We were in a town try­ing to find lodg­ings we had booked but needed help. My friends sug­gested that I – as an Eng­lish speaker – should ask for di­rec­tions in a nearby hotel. I went in but the (very pleas­ant in this case) re­cep­tion­ist in­formed me that he didn’t speak Eng­lish, in a four-star hotel, in a tourist area.

You begin to sus­pect that they may be doing it on pur­pose to make a point. I will say this about the French, their bol­shie at­ti­tude to­wards their lan­guage, es­pe­cially given the gen­eral dom­i­nance of Eng­lish, is an­noy­ing but also ad­mirable. They are un­apolo­getic about their pref­er­ence for their own lan­guage and there’s some­thing about that de­ter­mi­na­tion I like.

In this issue of the mag­a­zine we have a multi-page re­port about the de­cline in the use of Cata­lan in Cat­alo­nia and how the lan­guage might be bet­ter pro­tected. Per­haps the Cata­lans should take note of French lin­guis­tic in­tran­si­gence and not be so quick to aban­don their na­tive tongue in favour of Span­ish, or heaven for­bid, Eng­lish.

Opin­ion