2023-10-31 20:00:11
Expressions from here and elsewhere on screens at the Cité internationale de la langue française, in the Renaissance castle of Villers-Cotterêts (Aisne), October 11, 2023. FRANÇOIS NASCIMBENI/AFP
Did you know that the word “ketchup” originated in China, that “shampoo” comes to us from India and that the term “robot” was borrowed from Czech? Words travel from one country to another, span continents and, in their journey, are transformed, reminds us of a digital dome installed halfway along the permanent route of the Cité internationale de la langue française, in Villers-Cotterêts ( Aisne). “It’s import-export”, enthuses the philosopher and philologist Barbara Cassin. The academician signs this journey through words with Xavier North, the former delegate for the French language and the languages of France, Zeev Gourarier, curator at the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (MuCEM), in Marseille , and Hassane Kassi Kouyaté, Burkinabe director and director of the Les Francophonies festival, in Limoges.
Read the survey: Article reserved for our subscribers In Villers-Cotterêts, a castle to think the words of France
The subject is sensitive to say the least. Each change in spelling is the subject of heated forums. Each new entry in the dictionary of the French Academy is fodder for fistfights. “Nothing more difficult, more dangerously slippery, than the relationship of a nation to its language, with its characterizations, its clichés, its caricatures”recognize the commissioners in the thick catalog The Book of a Language (Editions du patrimoine, 328 pages, 42 euros), which accompanies the opening of the City.
These four musketeers claim to have resisted any political manipulation – Emmanuel Macron, who visited Villers-Cotterêts twice, did not intervene in the scenography. The route they have designed also poses more questions than it provides answers.
Test your spelling
Here, no chronology: language as national cement only appears at the very end, with the manuscript of the ordinance of François I, loaned by the National Library of France. No great teaching around the language of Molière either: we don’t wander through an exhibition like we would read a book. The idea is rather to approach serious subjects with lightness.
Avoiding the traps of intellectualism, the introduction is intended to be open to all, directly in today’s reality, with expressions from here and elsewhere. « We want to show that language is everyone’s business », underlines Paul Rondin, director of the City. If a few works loaned by French museums mark the journey through the language, interactive devices are dominant.
The bookstore of the Cité internationale de la langue française, in the Renaissance castle of Villers-Cotterêts (Aisne), October 11, 2023. FRANÇOIS NASCIMBENI/AFP
Thus the “magic library”, where, after answering five questions asked by an artificial intelligence, we are offered the book that suits us. Or these digital terminals that allow you to test your spelling. “It looks like a funfair of wordssaid Paul Rondin smiling. We want to convince that language is within everyone’s reach, that it is fun, that it is the language of humor and love. » This is demonstrated by the extracts from sketches by Raymond Devos (1922-2006) and Dany Boon. Or the allusion to Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798), the Venetian seducer who traveled across Europe but wrote his Memoirs in French.
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