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</a></p></div><h1 class="gmail-c-article-title">Belgian teachers who find French conjugation rule 'absurd' want to change it</h1><div class="gmail-c-article-meta-container"><div class="gmail-c-article-meta"><address class="gmail-c-article-meta__author-info"><h5 class="gmail-c-article-author"><span class="gmail-c-article-meta__author-name--default"><span><span class="gmail-c-article-meta__by">By </span><a class="gmail-c-article-meta__author-title" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/cr07cristina">Cristina Abellan Matamoros
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last updated:
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05/09/2018
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</a></div><div class="gmail-c-article-content gmail-js-article-content gmail-article__content"><p>Two
French teachers from Belgium want to "modernise" the French language by
getting rid of one of its most complicated conjugation rules.</p></div><div class="gmail-c-article-content gmail-js-article-content gmail-article__content"><p><strong>Here's what's complicated:</strong></p><p>The verb <em>to have</em>
(avoir) in French is essential for mastering French conjugation because
it’s used as an auxiliary verb with the past participle to make
compound tenses and it can also be used as an adjective. This only
affects, however, direct objects that are either singular feminine or
plural. </p><div class="gmail-teads-inread" style="margin:0px auto 22.4px;height:362px;max-width:556px"><div style=""><div class="gmail-teads-ui-components-label" style="display:block">ADVERTISING</div><div class="gmail-teads-ui-components-credits" style="display:block"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span class="gmail-teads-ui-components-credits-colored">inRead</span> invented by Teads</a></div></div></div><p>Sound like a mouthful? Here's an example to show how it works:</p><p>The sentence: <em>J'ai mangé des pommes</em>
(I ate apples) is one way of writing that you ate some apples. This is
how most people would say the act during a conversation in French. </p><p>In this sentence: <em>Les pommes que j'ai mangées</em> (The apples I ate), teachers pushing for the reform would say the conjugation of <em>manger</em>
in this case is antiquated, and not what French speakers would think
when talking. So advocates for changing the principle are arguing that
the rule should be uniform so that it becomes correct to say: <em>Les pommes que j'ai mangé.</em></p><h2>The two Belgian teachers who find the rule 'antiquated'</h2><p>Arnaud Hoedt and Jérôme Piron find the current conjugation rule way too complicated. In an <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2018/09/02/les-crepes-que-j-ai-mange-un-nouvel-accord-pour-le-participe-passe_1676135" target="_blank">opinion piece</a>
published on Monday, they wrote: “Children ask themselves why the past
participle is conjugated differently depending on the placement of the
direct object."</p><p>To them, the rules detailing “how past participles are conjugated with auxiliary verbs are completely obsolete and complicated”.</p><p>The
French teachers say it takes them "80 hours on average" to teach these
rules to students only for them to "complain about the complexity of the
language."</p><p>To them, time "would be better spent
developing (the French) vocabulary, learning syntax, developing a taste
for literature, understanding morphology or exploring etymology."</p><div class="gmail-teads-inread" style="margin:0px auto 22.4px;height:362px;max-width:556px"><div style=""><div class="gmail-teads-ui-components-label" style="display:block">ADVERTISING</div><div class="gmail-teads-ui-components-credits" style="display:block"><a href="http://inread-experience.teads.tv" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span class="gmail-teads-ui-components-credits-colored">inRead</span> invented by Teads</a></div></div></div><p>"It
would be more valuable to teach kids how to master the language rather
than make them remember the most arbitrary parts of the language,” the
teachers said.</p><h2>So what’s their proposal?</h2><p>The teachers
believe they can simplify these rules to everyone's advantage by
introducing the “uniformity of past participles with the auxiliary <em>to have</em>”.</p><p>“It’s
not about destabilising the system or getting rid of what makes our
spelling, but to maintain a unique rule that makes sense,” wrote Hoedt
and Piron.</p><p>"What we want is to decriminalise how past principles
are conjugated with the auxiliary verb to have ... children should not
be sanctioned for reasoning another way that is grammatically correct,"
Hoedt told Euronews, adding that ultimately what they sought was the
"improvement" of French orthography.</p><p>The teachers came up with the
proposal after talking with linguists who explained the changes would
not affect the grammatical "correctness" of the conjugation.</p><h2>But can their proposal become official?</h2><p>Technically
not. Hoedt explained that unlike the Spanish language, the French
language doesn't have an international body that dictates grammar and
orthography rules.</p><p>"There is no institution that can legally impose orthography to people," said Hoedt.</p><p>L'academie
francaise de la langue — a renowned language institution in France —
"is a false reference since its work is only symbolic," according to
Hoedt.</p><p>Euronews has reached out to the academy for comment.</p><p>However,
the teachers presented their proposal to the French Language Policy
Council of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and the International
Council of the French Language (CILF) who issues proposals on advisable
spellings. In 2015, CILF advised the Belgian government to take up the
reforms in 2015 to no avail.</p><p>In an email to Euronews, Nathalie
Marchal, director of the French language department of the
Wallonia-Brussels Federation, said that her department found the
teachers' proposal "very interesting" since "it offered a real
rationalisation of French spelling."</p><p>But Marchal highlighted that
the final decision on whether this proposal would be suggested to
schools would ultimately fall on the Belgian ministry of education.</p><p>According
to Hoedt, schools and teachers can put in place new orthography rules
if they want to but they cannot be forced to do so.</p><p>Euronews has reached out to the International Council of the French Language for comment.</p></div></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div></div>