PARIS/LETTER: Imagine a world where leaders would address each other in French - "allô Georges, ça va?" "oui Vladimir, et toi?" - where billion-dollar deals would be clinched in French, and the language of Molière dominated computer science and the Internet.
It might have been, says Henriette Walter, the author of Honni Soit Qui Mal y Pense; the Incredible Love Story Between French and English.
Prof Walter is not a militant for la francophonie, that pale imitation of the Commonwealth. One of France's most prominent linguists, she dispenses erudite anecdotes about the history of language with a sense of playfulness and delight, and it is in that spirit that she blames the Maid of Lorraine for the declining influence of the French language.
If Joan of Arc hadn't "kicked the English out" - a phrase dear to every French school child - "the English, who would have remained partly francophone, could later have transmitted French to the future United States of America, and the linguistic make-up of the world would be completely different," Prof Walter writes.
For three centuries after the Norman conquest, England was in many respects a French-speaking country. "It was a love story, but it was a story of war at the same time," Prof Walter said in an interview in her book-filled Paris apartment. "In those days, it was all in one direction." France took very few English words - the four points of the compass: north, south, east and west, being a notable exception. "We must have had confidence in the British sense of navigation," she laughs.
Twelve English kings, from Henry II in 1152 until Henry VI in 1445, married French queens, who ensured that French was spoken in the court of England. That is why "Dieu et mon droit" and "Honni soit qui mal y pense" remain mottos of the British royal family. The title of the finance minister, "Chancellor of the Exchequer", is another vestige of medieval French domination. Even before William the Conqueror, the king's secretary (chancelier), received local officials in London and Winchester to collect taxes. For accounting purposes, they placed tokens on the squares of a giant cloth chess-board (échiquier).
Words that appear quintessentially British often hide a French origin. The tea-serving butler was once a bouteiller - old French for a sommelier, while roast beef came from rôt-de-bif - rôti de boeuf in modern French. The French then made les rosbifs a derogatory slang name, every bit as rude as "the frogs".
Joan of Arc and her soldiers attempted to mimic the English, insulting them as godons - a distortion of a word they heard on the battlefield - "Goddam(n)!" "There are countries in Africa where they call the French, 'ou là là' because they hear us say it all the time," Prof Walter explains. "It was a bit like that." The English soldiers of the Hundred Years War had a better grasp of their enemies' language. They cursed Joan of Arc as a vachère (cowherd) and the putain des Armagnacs (whore of the Armagnacs); the French who followed Charles VII as maqueraux mescreants (infidel pimps).
As every language student knows, centuries of interaction left a progeny of words looking deceptively similar, but with different meanings. Actually, presently and eventually, for example, have little to do with actuellement, présentement or éventuellement. The good news, Prof Walter says, is that French and English encompass more "very good friends" than "false friends". Her book lists 3,222 words that have the same spelling and meaning in both languages: anecdote, caricature, garage, horizon, jaguar, moustache, structure, unique. . .
From the 18th century on, the fortunes of French were reversed. The philosophes' admiration for British parliamentary democracy led to the wholesale adoption of British political vocabulary - parliamentary, address, popular, unpopular.
"They're all words of Latin origin," Prof Walter explains. "We could have invented them in France, but we took them because they were ready-made by the English." Even the idea of right and left came from Westminster, because the parties were seated on opposite sides of the chamber.
The Anglo-American invasion of French continues. This week, your correspondent was appalled to read a quote from an actress saying, "j'ai tourné ce pop-corn movie juste pour le fun". But Prof Walter isn't worried. "I don't agree with people who say the French language is doomed," she says. "A language is a living thing; fads come and go. A hundred years ago, it was chic to say fashionable in French. I had a grandfather who said 'eegleef' to mean 'great' - that's how he pronounced 'high life'." During most of the 20th century, French imported "ing" words - parking, dancing, living, lifting . . . Rest assured, French language purists. Prof Walter says the "ing" craze died around 1990.
Henriette Walter will participate in the "Etonnants voyageurs" literary festival in Dublin on April 5th and 6th.
