Excuse our French
Sir: I am sure that every one of your read- ers must enjoy Peter Jones's incursions into the arcana of the ancient world as much as I do — especially when the affairs of the classical world seem to impinge as pungent- ly upon our modern times as they do in `Ancient & modern' (23 August).
But I wish that classical scholars would not treat the French language in quite such a cavalier fashion. (And also bridge corre- spondents, if I may digress, who refer pre- tentiously, to finesse evidenteldemandiel for- cee — finesse in this sense is purely English: the French is impasse [au roi, a la dame, etc.].) Surely if any of your contribu- tors wishes to finish off an essai, a memoire, a billet-doux or a belle lettre with a Greek epigram, he or she would at least look up Liddell and Scott, or even go back to North and Hillard.
The French treat zero as a singular which seems to me every bit as logical as treating it as a plural, as we do in English. As part of a rigorous training in the finer points of French grammar and orthogra- phy, primary schoolchildren in France used to be subjected to a weekly dictee — Marcel Pagnol's La Gloire de mon pere gives an amusing account of such an exercise. A pupil would be thus commanded: Tu feras zero faute. So, I'm afraid Professor Jones gets nul point this time.
Emyr Tudwal Jones
University of Wales, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion
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