When Bambi read about what our federal government is suggesting to do to our BEAUTIFUL French language, she almost had the Marie Antoinette syndrome. Yes, her hair almost suddenly turned ALL white (mind you, she is eager to get to that stage, but a bit more gradually).
Today, she was VERY happy to read Dr. Mathieu Bock-Côté’s refreshing and sharp article , published in the Journal de Montréal, about this topic (https://bit.ly/3S6oKVm).
One thing is clear in her own mind: She does not know about you (you are free), but as far as she is concerned, she refuses to to take part in such a masquerade of the French language.
The above being said, below is a very quick translation of Dr. Bock-Côté’s article (thanks to Mr. Google Translate), with a few comments by Bambi inserted here and there. This post will end with Mr. Yves Duteil’s superb song on the French language (i.e., how it is still being spoken in North America). Why can’t we keep respecting it?
Bambi will stop here. Below you can find Dr. Bock-Côté’s thoughtful text. Thanks to him.
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“Radio-Canada [the French CBC] recently informed us that Ottawa has produced a guide to promote and oversee what some call “inclusive writing”.
The latter is based on a paranoid and false thesis: the French language is patriarchal, sexist, transphobic and discriminatory, and it should therefore be reformed by imposing new rules on it, supposed to make visible women, trans people and non-binary people (those who do not identify as either masculine or feminine).
Paranoia
Thus, we will change our way of writing.
It will no longer be necessary to write the students, or even “les étudiants et les étudiantes”, but the studen.t.s. [étudiant.e.s. in French]. This rule can be applied to many words. It has the fault of making the language unreadable by hatching it.
We will also invent words. Rather than “celles” [female of those] et “ceux” [male of those], we invent “celleux” [what an ugly and absurd word]. And rather than he and she, we are pushed to write “iel” [grammatical nonsense].
We will also ban some words. We should no longer speak of deputies, but of parliamentarians, since this word applies to men, women and non-binary people. And so on.
Let it be said: this writing is part of the takeover of the French language by an ideological minority [how sad to make our beautiful French language that ugly, for generations to come, in order to satisfy an ideological minority, which will eventually get tired of being that ideological].
Worse, this way of writing is no longer exclusive to the most radical neo-feminists.
As I said, Ottawa promotes it, and non-binary activists want to generalize it. They even dream of making it compulsory at school in the name of inclusion.
This way of writing is becoming more and more essential in our media and in companies.
Worse: people who hate this way of writing now practice this Newspeak [“Novlangue”, thank you Dr. Mathieu Bock-Côté for this term].
Submission
Why? Because they will get noticed if they don’t. Today, writing in “inclusive” is a way of publicly adhering to political correctness, of showing that one is “progressive”.
But whoever refuses to do so will pass for an ugly conservative. Most dread this bad reputation. So they submit”.
I don’t think the fed guvmint is uniquely to blame for this as people have been talking about it for a long time. Some French speakers prefer it that way and I remember being taught back in the 1970s that girls in our class had an extra burden of learning the feminine forms of words on top of the ordinary grammar. A couple of those mastered those principles so well, they received extra praise from teacher are today both medical doctors in ophthamology. Mind you, when I was coaching my Japanese friend in New York between her French classes, she was so upset over the same thing and declared the French language ”sexist and unfair”.