einarwriting:

epicene-street-light:

SO

yall
remember that post that went like…… “why is french… Like
That”?

well,
time for An Education from ur
local french literature student

SO,
BASICALLY, WHAT HAPPENED

first
of all, well, it’s like the 9^th
century and the king is like…… hey what if….. and bear with me
on this one but….. what if…….. we wrote………. the
things about our country………… in the language……. actual
people living in this country….. speak?

and
people were like “holy shit youre the king so okay” and then the
king was like “i want YOU to write this laws and THINGS in FRENCH!”
and the monks were like “aw okay” so they started doing that

EXCEPT

that
they had a big fucking problem. what
was that problem, you may ask? well,
the problem was thaT THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS DIDNT HAVE AN ALPHABET TO
WRITE THIS FUCKING EXCUSE OF A LANGUAGE

lemme
explain. all
they knew was latin and the latin alphabet. bc
like knowing latin was the whole thing when u were a monk. also
latin was like… the Serious Language. but
french doesnt sound like
latin like at all. french
sounded like some bitch ass demon had bitten their tongue and was
trying to order a latte in the middle of an exorcism incantation. and
i
say “sounded” on purpose bc their pronunciation was wild,
man. like
ultra wild. like
even WORSE than what we have to deal with now. and
it had NOTHING to do with motherfucking
latin.

so
what did the monks do? well,
they were like “aw this is a mcfucking embarrassment of a
situation, ay” and had a choice. basically,
they could invent a whole new mode of transcription for french weird
ass sounds… OR they could do their best to try and adapt the latin
alphabet to its demonic sprouting.

which
is, pretty sadly if you ask me, what they went for.

so
they started planning strategies that were complex at shit bc like
how tf are you gonna write “cheval” with
a fucking LATIN ALPHABET???
so basically they all went with whatever felt best to write in
the moment and there were no
rules and it was a weird fucking mess of a situation lemme tell you,
ive seen the manuscripts, those men went APE SHITT

and
like…. some
of them never used the same spelling twice. also
there were like no accent and punctuation and things that allow you
to write like a fucking normal human being so jot that down

so,
that was a big fucking mess and they started adding letters e v e r y
w h e r e like……….. ok some of them were actually smart like
they did their best to add letters that no one pronounced
but it made it look like some latin thing. like
basically they put up a pink hairband on a fucking DEMON CHILD and
went “aaaawww look how CUTE it is, looks like its mommy so
much!!!!” and prayed to god it would end up
well (spoiler: no. no
it didnt. bitch)

so
you got things like “veult” for “veut” bc the “l” made it
look a bit like the latin “vult” or something. but
then as i said
some of them went APE SHITT and were like, WOOHOO FREE LETTERS and
started adding weird letters to words that had literally no
etymological link to that letter. so
they were writing “peut” like “peult” just because….. idk
they felt like to??

so
its Like That in the middle ages and then people started thinking
about french as a language and they went like….. MAAAAW THERES A
WEIRD FUCKING STRAY WRITING OUTSIDE!!! MAAAAAAAW!!!! IS THAT EVEN A
FUCKING LANGUAGE???? BLINK
MOTHERFUCKER!! AAAAAAAAAAAA
and everyone was losing their shit alright

so like english students started
going to college in france and they were like “bitch
you live like
this??” and the french were like :/// whelp

and like they did their best to like
help non-native writing
french but it had no rules so it didnt work out well and like….. in
the 1500’s some guys were like “okay guys this makes no
sense from now on well use a
RATIONALIZED WRITING i
built MYSELF” and their idea was basically to write french as they
spoke it which i
know SOUNDS like a good idea but actually AINT

bc first of all there are a shitton
of words that have the same pronunciation in french and you
need those weird spellings to actually know what the word is there
for like….. they wrote like “me” for “mai” and “mais”
and “mes” and “met” and basically that was wild

and some
of those guys who knew a lot about grammar went like “ooookayyyyy
so were removing those letters we dont pronounce buuuuuuuuuut its not
alwayyyyyys like thiiiiiiiiis” and like…. right-wing
people like the 1550 equivalent of republicans or some shit went
like, foaming at the mouth like rabid fucking dogs when they saw “pe”
instead of “peult” “oooooohhhhhh but you DIDNT and its not EVEN
REALLY RATIONAL” and like they had a ton or arguments and it
actually became a kinda linguistic war and all

plus they didnt pronounce the same
things everywhere in france so in paris they wrote “otr” for
“autre” and in lyon they wrote “aotr” and they were like………
“we got a problem here” bc the whole thing was to get a language
that was the same everywhere in the country basically

so u got those reformist guys on the
one side and the reactionaries on the other side and honestly,
reactionaries’ arguments are so fucking funny they were like…

“okay so some of the letters are
useful bc it helps understanding that the word comes from latin”
this ones rational alright

“also some mute letters are used to
link the words from an
identical background together and
create semantic links like
“sang” (blood) does have a mute “g” bc it links it to
“sanguin” (sanguine) and other words like this” alright cool

but THEN you got some weird fucking
ideas like

“but actually writing IS the
standard bc written things Are More Noble, Actually” which is
like……. weird
flex but ok

“yes, it makes it harder to learn,
but so it repels women and non-educated people who would soil The
Language if they could write
it” like DUDE are you
FUCKING SERIOUS

and finally – their main idea –

“bUt iT loOkS FaNcY” aka
#aesthetics and thats basically it

also. the
printing press workers were like……… guys are you SURE you
want to get us to COMPLETELY CHANGE AND UNLEARN OUR WHOLE JOB LIKE
C’MON so it kinda weighed in favor of the reactionaries

also the reactionaries won in the
long term

tl;dr so french is Like That because 1.
its a demonic language that monks desperately tried to tie back to
latin and 2. old white men with bizarre aesthetic tastes hated women and The Poor

thanks for coming to my ted talk my
language makes no sense and neither does its history

@deadcatwithaflamethrower linguistics!