Out of France: Bois de l'Est rides again, to defend linguistic purity

PARIS - Shortly after 11.30am on Friday 29 April, Francis Apesteguy made a grammatical mistake. A few days later, a letter arrived by second-class post to point out the error.

The wrong use of a preposition, committed during a television programme to which Mr Apesteguy, a photographer, had been invited to talk about his profession, was noticed by Observer No A92.000 of the Association for the Respect of the French Language. Filling in the prescribed form, A92.000 passed the matter to Jean-Pierre Rouhier, the association's secretary-general.

Dr Rouhier then sent a form letter to Mr Apesteguy, explaining the offence and signing off with the words: 'convinced of your attachment to the respect of the French language. . . '

Amid all the hullabaloo created around the Loi Toubon, a law introduced by Jacques Toubon, the Gaullist Culture Minister, to expunge foreign words (principally English ones) from French, the initiatives taken by the three-year- old association are on a different level, aiming to correct poor usage rather than preserve the purity of vocabulary. The organisation's honorary president is Leopold- Sedar Senghor, the former Senegalese president, poet and member of the Academie Francaise.

Dr Rouhier said the association found parts of the new law excessive and believed that foreign words should be allowed where no simple French equivalent existed. He gave 'weekend' as an example.

The Toubon measures, which provide for fines for the illegal use of foreign words, have generated an outpouring of jibes in the French media.

In a report on last month's Cannes Film Festival, a commentator on Europe 1 radio thoughtfully translated the name of the American president of the festival jury into French, renaming him Clint Bois de l'Est.

On the same radio station a few days before, an interviewer talking to Mr Toubon himself bid the minister farewell with a cheery and legally risky ciao.

Earlier this year the fight against poor usage prompted Maurice Druon, the perpetual secretary of the Academie Francaise, to write an open letter to Philippe Seguin, the President of the National Assembly, to complain about politicians' standards.

Writing in Le Figaro, Mr Druon noted that the academy had already attacked the media for 'false meanings, barbarisms, ignorance of the most elementary rules of syntax, defective pronunciation, the invasion of foreign terms and a general tendancy to vulgarity'.

But in parliament 'there are words invented during the course of discussion because the orator did not have the exact word or turn of phrase in his head . . . the word is picked up by his opponent and then by the deputy presenting the law and even by the minister. The press reproduces it and it invades newspapers and the air- waves.' Mr Druon singled out dangerosite, translatable as 'dangerosity', where, he said, a simple 'danger' would do.

In an often tongue-in-cheek reply, Mr Seguin spoke out against the multiplication of 'polysemies, homonymies et neologismes'. He blamed poor vocabulary on improvisations made in front of a microphone and, while advocating increased vigilance for the written word, noted that 'a language which wishes to remain living must take into account the evolutions of the world, minds and techniques; we must obviously guard against freezing French'.

Dr Rouhier said his association had been set up 'to intervene blow by blow' to counter bad French.

With 500 observers listening to the broadcast media and checking the press, he rejected about 20 per cent of complaints. Usually, he said, they concerned spelling mistakes and 'we are often told it's the fault of the printer'.

Only 15 per cent of the 15,000 recipients of the association's 'courteous attempts to improve their style' so far had replied, mostly - but not always - to thank the association.

They included 'a former president of the republic' whom Dr Rouhier tactfully declined to name although the only surviving ex- president is Valery Giscard d'Estaing. 'And we've been trying to get the current President in our sights,' he said, adding: 'there's no political motive.' So far, however, Francois Mitterrand has eluded them.