Word Games

WITHIN the family of nations, some relationship have always been more incestuous than others. Early Americans revered "Mother England" until their love subsided into post-Oedipal antipathy America's love affair with the French, on the other hand, until recently has aged well. Ever since De Tocqueville told Americans more about their lives than they knew themselves, the United States and France have shared a particular intimacy.

But the French government is now recoiling from a relationship which it feels has become too close for comfort. In the latest surprise attack in a literal war of words, the French have outlawed several strains of "franglais," English words that have infiltrated the French language. Last month, Communication Minister Georges Fillioud listed 97 Anglo American radio and television terms that are now off-limits to the French.

Moviegoers must now trek to the "cine-pare," not "le drive-in," and listen to the "balladeur," a rechristened Walkman French attacks on franglais are by now virtually de rigueur, but the recent assault appears stricter. A court has already leveled a fine of $200 on the Paris Opera, which allowed an American musical using a Paris theater to print its program entirely in English.

It's too early to gauge French compliance with the new measure, but the government's action has produced an indignant outcry on this side of the Atlantic. Columnists have ridiculed the new law and vowed linguistic retaliation Newsweek's David Gellman sounded the clario for a counterattack.

Words like elan and in lieu and blase

We'll declare hors de combat, passe, declasse

We'll bid bon voyage to rapport and, voila'

Its usage will become a punishable faux pas

To those of us for whom the croissant has become as American as, well, apple pie. French protectiveness for the native tongue may seem a bit absurd. But the new law is simply a valiant--if misguided--attempt to turn back the tidal wave of Americanization France is not the first nation to feel threatened in the face of what amounts to linguistic imperialism by the United States.

Greater interaction between nations has created the need for a universal language. Yet while economic and cultural exchange has been bilateral, linguistic "dialogue" has been markedly one-sided. French who wish to communicate with Americans must still nearly always do so in English. Parochialism keeps Americans well insulated; most do not possess even a working knowledge of another language, and few have felt any compunction to learn even the metric system, despite its use by nearly every other nation on the ever-shrinking planet.

Small wonder, then, that the French feel besieged by "le drugstore." A little sibling rivalry is to be expected, especially in defense against a linguistic enfant terrible.