Living in a Bilingual World (The One About the Festival of New Words)

If I was to choose my favourite word of the year that's about to finish it would be neither a neologism nor a slang term, but a quaint, short beauty I came across whilst reading The Road: "bivouac". It means "a military encampment made with tents or improvised shelters, usually without shelter or protection from enemy fire" and it encapsulates in its brief but complex spelling the tribulations that the two main characters in the book have to face on a regular basis.

However, having a "word of the year" is not an activity in which I normally indulge. I usually have a record or book that becomes my highlight of the previous twelve months, but very rarely does my attention centre on a word that stands out amongst the myriad vocables I come across every day whether they are just a sequence of sounds or considered as a unit of meaning. Sometimes, though, I put on the mantle of eccentricity when it comes to linguistics. Especially when it's about sticking two fingers up to the establishment.

In France they have a similar attitude. Since 2002 in the Gallic nation, a festival has been held in both Paris and Le Havre in the third week in November to choose a new word and sound. As reported in The Guardian recently the latest winner at the Festival XYZ was attachiant(e), a term whose literal translation could be something like captivating or attractive nuisance. Or Marmite in good old British English. You either love it or hate it. Speaking of the famous yeast extract which usually ends up spread on so many of our sandwiches ( I love it), it had something of a PR disaster recently when a lorry carrying more than 20 tonnes of the stuff got overturned on a busy motorway. Cue endless jokes about the driver "being yeast extracted from the wreckage" or people wondering if the accident had affected the "yeastbound carriageway". And that's the key to language and its uses sometimes: humour. Which is an element usually found wanting in the puritanical bodies tasked with looking over our languages, for instance, L'Académie Française and La Real Academia Española for French and Spanish respectively.

Unlike these rather austere meddlers, the organisers of the Festival XYZ, by their own admission, seek to highlight the contributions that keep French live and kicking. Whilst having a jolly good time. As they put it succinctly and clearly on their Facebook page, " ce festival d'hiver apporte sa contribution en musique et en textes à une langue vivante et sonnante... Le Français. En y associant un son nouveau, elle va plus loin encore dans le déchiffrement du mot Mot (mo), n.m. (lat. vulg. mottum, mot et grognement, du v. muttire, grogner, murmurer). Son articulé, composé d’une ou plusieurs syllabes réunies." You have to love the etymological component in their mission statement.

Some of the terms included in the newspaper's article made think of English equivalents. Thus, the new French word "aigriculteur", a farmer upset with the hand life's dealt him/her, could easily become "angryculturist" or "angrycultor". This would describe a farmer from a developing nation really vexed with the huge subsidies enjoyed by members of the European Union.

Likewise, the Gallic "bête seller", the type of novel that hasn't got much going for it from a literary and artistic point of view, but sells in its thousands (no names mentioned, but there's a certain author who writes political thrillers that comes to mind), could easily morph into "beast-seller". In Cuban Spanish we've come very close to a literal translation. When a movie or a book is really good, especially from a commercial point of view, we sometimes tend to say: "¡Qué monstruo de película/libro!"

We need more events like the Festival XYZ to remind ourselves that a language is a living body of words and it cannot be confined solely to a canon of syntactic and grammatical rules. I'm all for the correct use of our linguistic norms including syntax and grammar, however these standards do not operate in an abstract world but in a very practical one. Even if we sometimes, unfortunately, we have to deal with "phonards".

© 2011

Photo taken from the Festival XYZ Facebook page.

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflection and Music”, to be published on Sunday 11th December at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

We're in a transition period. Slowly autumn's auburn skin peels away and reveals the ominous and stern London winter. The one that flicks open its sharp razor every year and, with its white foam, shaves the remaining leaves off the branches, thus, finishing off autmn's job. It's that time of the year when the early twilight tempts us to a cup of steaming hot chocolate or coffee. Or maybe a tall Mocha, to balance things up. The weekend paper lies on our lap. Looking through the door on to the back garden I see the fading sun rays spilling on to the shrinking undergrowth. I bend down to grab my mug and what's left of my coffee and when I look back up it's gone. The light's gone. The neighbouring houses are sinking rapidly into a monochromatic landscape of dark greys and blacks, like 2D figures in a shadow animation.

I've never been a big fan of the London winter except for its mornings and nights. The former brings rich lashes of mist layering themselves on top of each other, sandwiched between a never-ending humidity on the ground and a crisp, howling northeasterly wind whipping my face and a label that announces "Best served chilled". In those early hours the sky is yet to acquire its Arctic-blue complexion, usually attained at midday. That's why sunrise presents us with a combination of hues that travel from a pale rosé to a fierce claret. For a moment you forget about the hot (but not boiling) water you have to pour regularly on the car's windshield and windows to get rid of the ice and the manoeuvres you have to perform every day to warm the car up before setting off on your journey in case the engine switches itself off because of the cold.

Winter nights appear as downward spirals whose motion remind me of curtains closing on a memorable performance. You're left with the indelible memory of a bright - or, as in London, most of the time grey - day and a cold snap. Summer is all about the moment, the here and then. Heat is conducive to lapsus mentis. Winter likes to lie back in its seat and enjoy the show. The sky darkening at around three in the afternoon. The morning mist, temporarily dissipated during the day, surfacing again on the urban horizon at tea time. Our shapes being swallowed by the early evening blur. This is winter playing hide'n'seek as usual.

It's not the thermometre clocking in at -5C that disconcerts me. It's the lack of snow. Without a white carpet laid out on my doorstep it's hard to take in the bare landscape. It's as if someone's written an essay and left all the verbs out. With no active or passive voice, how am I to make sense of the big, yellowish-orange arch fast plunging into the total darkness?

And yet, when it arrives this absence of light is welcomed. As my surroundings become dimmer, I position my reading lamp by my side and sit cross-legged either on the couch or at the kitchen table with a mug of a hot, steaming concoction of chamomile, mint and green tea in my hand. Winter is here, I might not like it, but I'm ready to let it in.

© 2011

Next Post: “Living in a Bilingual World”, to be published on Wednesday 7th December at 11:59pm (GMT)

Photo taken from the Town and Travel website.