Here Parla Man Marcommunish
By ANTHONY BURGESS
TT was, I believe, a certain M Etiemble who 'devoted a whole book to the condemnation of what he ,caljed Franglais—the long-term debauching, of French by commercial English (strictly speaking, commercial American). How- ever such a liaison may be refused benefit of academy, nothing can prevent its becoming a common law marriage : languages only give house-room to foreign words when they can't get on without them. Nobody told the French to adopt niou loque (new look), rocanrole (rock 'n' roll), best-seller, kidnappe and so on : they had to go into the language because their referents couldn't be named more succinctly out of the native word-stock. I can understand M Etiemble's being annoyed that brassiere—which has a basic denotation of `shoulder-strap'— should threaten to take over the function of soutien-gorge (which does its job well enough), but generally speaking he has no right to denounce a linguistic process which is as old as speech itself. Languages in contact, as Mario Pei reminds us, are bound to mix.
English has become a great exporter of words, but this represents a kind of historical justice. After all, we've had—in the formative years of the language—a great mass of French and Italian dumped upon us. Grateful for loan- words which became an indispensable part of our lexicon, we've expected gratitude from Italy for futbol and colcrem and from Russia for khuligan (hooligan) and loder. (This last word, which means 'lazybones,' comes from 'loader': visiting Russians were greatly struck by the slowness of the stevedores on British docks.) We're not sym- pathetic to 'pure language' slogans. But, if any foreign nation thinks we've foisted too many words on it, the time has come to show that English can still absorb an alien lexis with a good grace. The Common Market will give us an opportunity to start a new wave of Euro- peanising English.
But, before we think about words, let's think about the setting-down of words on paper. If the Arabs were to join the Common Market, I'd suggest that we follow them in doing without upper-case letters, thus saving much typing and printing time, as well as the expense of two different kinds of typeface. As it is, we can at least follow Romance usage by employing lower-case initials in proper-name adjectives- british, french, wilsonian, and so on. German, which—consulting majority usage in the Com- mon Market—will have to throw away all its noun-capitals, nevertheless sets an example to english in its willingness to eschew hyphens and to made word-compounds into real words. If it can use Grundbuchamt, we ought to have 'landregistry,' and Insurancebrokee need be no more eccentric than Versicherungsmakler.
Of course, it would help our german market- partners if we dug up germane wordroots, turning `menstruation' into `monthflow' on the analogy
of Monatsfluss, and making a nipple a breastwart (Brustwarze). But the french spent centuries
knocking latin into us, and `education' is
education to them, just as it is educazione to the italians. `Updragging' is altogether nordic
and has a coarse unupdragged quality about it.
Besides, languages don't make that sort of de- liberate adjustment. We take in loanwords
because we need them. We need ombudsman and sputnik and Autobahn and, presumably, dis- cotheque, boutique and espresso. `The sweet life' means little, but la dolce vita means a lot. I, personally, should be happy to see terms like bistro and Bierstube absorbed into english, if
the referents too could be absorbed with them.
For neither a bistro nor a Bierstube is subject to british licensing laws. And though minijupe derives from `miniskirt,' the french term implies elegance, while the quantian original suggests big knobbly clumsy british teenagers. A brassiere could have been a `bustholder (german Biisten- halter), but it was right to regard bosoms as a french delicacy. Yet everything finds its own level: the vulgar 'bra' is a typically british com- pound of prudery and immodesty.
Mr Wilson, if it is he who is going to lead us into the Common Market, will no doubt be found equal to the linguistic demands of the inauguration ceremony. He will have two alterna- tives. First, he can tell the europeans that the britannic nation has emerged from a mattvaise époque in which the Lwnpenproletariat, rendered torpid by la noia of the ancien regime, with its Unrealpolitik of it faut cultiver noire jardin, possessed no viable Weltanschauung, has, nel mezzo del cammin of the socialist renaissance, rediscovered, through Sturm and Drang and the empressenzent of the Zeitgeist, its elan vital and is, con brio e con amore e molto accelerando, becoming au fait with the nouvelle vague polilique, fatigue as it is with the faux-naivete of passe chauvinistes and the verloren hoops to whom laissez-faire was the dernier cri.
Second, he can, with the help of philologists like Mr Patrick Gordon Walker, burst out with a new lingua franca (british copyright) called, perhaps, Marcommunish—a name which would ease in, eventually, other socialist countries, if the senior partners agreed. Thus: `Vu savvy, wijnu in Grobritannia av, post de frichtful en terrible tempo de tory reglierung, wirklich en actualmento shlekt en cattivo en mal reglierung, moltifeel bocoop de gross ding en shoze en cosay registrato. Nu, nun, actually, wijnu begin en commence en initiate un novo tempo . . .' It's amazing how, whatever, c the gibberish, the authen- tic tone of Mr Wilson comes through. I've always felt he was somehow above language.
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