Her Culture Bi-Monthy Magazine February/March 2015 | Page 88

The French “Faute” Versus

the English “Mistake”

A Language Culture Clash

Learning to speak a different language is never easy, and thus neither is moving to another country where the first language isn’t your mother tongue. You are always going to have hiccups, translation fails, and moments when you just don’t know how to express yourself. So, it’s natural to make mistakes: no one has it all figured out, especially since everyone is a learner. At home, in England, if a foreigner, or even a local, makes a grammar error or uses the wrong word, it’s just a mistake, and it’s forgotten about instantly. But the French have a very different attitude to their language: if you use the wrong word it’s not a mistake but a “faute”, a fault. You’re instantly noted as a foreigner and often corrected by someone you’ve never met before.

At first I wondered if people were trying to help me; I had people keep trying to teach me what I should be saying. But it wasn’t until I heard one of my lecturers say that these little errors I was making were faults, not mistakes, that I realised the gravity of the situation. In fact, I’ve even had my grammar corrected in oral exams, which is just as off-putting and distressing as it sounds.

The French have a very particular history with their language: it was a major part of the rebuilding of their society centuries ago, and it was a mark of conveying intelligence. Historically, the French language was a way of making the French people French, as in 1830 three-quarters of the French population didn’t speak the same language.

The French even have “l’Academie Francaise”, or the French Academy, to police and control their language: a concept and an organisation that is totally unknown to the English-speaking world.

by Lauren Hudson