In a speech on Thursday, Emmanuel Macron angered many of his compatriots by declaring: “La démocratie est le système le plus bottom up de la terre” (“Democracy is the most bottom-up system in the world”). He meant “inclusive”, “participatory” or “non-elitist”. But there is a phrase for that concept in French: it’s démocratie ascendante. There’s also one for English words in French: franglais, writes Pauline Bock in The Guardian.
From “basket” and “chewing gum” to “blockbusters” and “bestsellers”, English words are common in my language. The film industry regularly “translates” English film titles using another English phrase, usually more transparent, to look “cool” (for instance, Silver Linings Playbook became Happiness Therapy).
But to many French people, “bottom up” is more confusing: was Macron making a risqué joke? Was it “bottoms up” (or “cul sec” in French)? His words, coming only days after he had launched a grand plan to promote the French language, were heavily criticised. “This sentence devalues French-speaking democracy,” Bernard Pivot, a fervent defender of the French language, tweeted.
On the Today programme on Friday, the French ambassador to the UN, François Delattre, defended Macron’s choice of words, declaring that although “bottom up” is not exactly proper French, “it’s like weekend, rugby, football, and so on”.
He was right in the sense that in a typical conversation among friends, franglais is common: – Tu fais quoi ce weekend? (“What are you doing this weekend?”)
– Je joue au foot. (“Playing football.”)
– Cool!
English words like weekend are permitted because there is no real equivalent (no one says fin de semaine) or because, like cool, they’re trendy (it’s cooler to say cool than to say sympa).
But bottom up would never come up in a casual chat: it crosses the fine line between English words familiar from pop culture and those derived from management jargon, like brainstorming or updater.
Read more of this comment article by Pauline Bock in The Guardian.