French the most legal language, say the French

[Dennis Baron]

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French the most legal language, say the French

Because of its precision, the French language is safest to use for  
the European Union’s legal business, says French writer and former  
permanent secretary of the Académie Française Maurice Druon.  ... EU  
rules presently stipulate that the language controlling the  
interpretation of any given law is the one in which it was originally  
written.  But the EU has 28 official languages (Irish, the most  
recent, was added only last month).  Druon’s answer to this Tower of  
Babel: use French to resolve legal disputes – after all, it’s related  
to Latin and it’s the language of the Napoleonic Code.  .... But  
following that sort of logic, the EU’s legal language should be  
Italian – it’s closer to Latin than French is – or maybe even  
English.  After all, the American Constitution predates the Code  
Napoléon by a good fifteen years, and Britain was governed by a  
Parliament long before France started chopping off the heads of  
monarchs. ....  Druon acknowledges that other languages are useful in  
their own limited ways: “The Italian language is the language of  
song, German is good for philosophy and English for poetry.”  But,  
Druon insists, “French is best at precision, it has a rigor to it.   
It is the safest language for legal purposes.”   Nonetheless, the  
idea that French is better than any other language is hardly new,  
especially to the French.  ... While the French do their best to  
protect Europe and the rest of the world from English linguistic  
imperialism, other EU delegates are rejecting Druon’s promotion of  
legislative French because more of them understand English than  
French. ... In fact, despite romanticized notions of how language  
relates to culture, languages don’t ever sort themselves out as  
primarily poetic, musical, scientific, or legalistic.  And speakers  
of every language are capable of rational, precise thought or, as in  
the case of Maurice Druon’s proposal to interpret all of Europe’s  
laws according to the French version of the text, of irrational,  
highly-subjective, and thoroughly self-aggrandizing reasoning as  
well.  And that's a linguistic law that no parliament can repeal. -----

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Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

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