A French essayist has launched a one-man crusade against France’s arcane spelling rules, coming out at 75 as a dictionary dunce and insisting it is a doomed art in the age of the text message.
As millions of French children file back to class for the new school year, Francois de Closets, a prominent writer, journalist and TV presenter, decided to admit his shortcomings in a pamphlet called Zero Mistakes.
“Lots of countries have problems with their spelling. What makes France different is that we have elevated spelling to the status of a cult,” he said. “People who can’t spell are stigmatized.”
“Make a mistake on science or geography and people will forgive you. But an accent in the wrong place, and it’s as if you’ve insulted the cross or Allah,” he said.
French schoolchildren are drilled on their spelling until high school, sitting endless spelling bee tests stuffed with trick alliterations, wily verb-endings and devious double-consonants.
Once out of the school system, strong spellers cherish their skills as a mark of sophistication in a country that prides itself on its literary culture, and many revel in the brain-teasing challenge of a good spelling test.
Until 2005, hundreds of people signed up each year for a fiendishly tricky spelling championship, broadcast on national TV, and the international Francophonie organization still holds annual contests around the world.
But Closets says many French adults live in fear of a hiccup — in a letter, a job resume or an e-mail — that will harm them in the eyes of an employer, a client or a friend.
Hammering home the point, French newspapers gleefully printed details this month of a press pack from the new education minister, Luc Chatel, that was riddled with gross errors.
“There are thousands of us who are filled with apprehension the moment we pick up our pens,” Closets said in an interview promoting his book.
He is convinced that millions like him are stigmatized because of a lack of visual memory that leaves them stumped by seemingly irrational twists — a silent “d” at a word’s end, or the 13 different ways of writing the sound “o”.
“People who make mistakes will always make mistakes. It’s not a question of intelligence or work,” he said.
With the advent of e-mail and text messaging, where teenagers the world over chop up and subvert words as a sign of rebellion, Closets is convinced the days of classical spelling are numbered.
“I think we are at a crucial turning point,” he said.
“People are writing more and more — in e-mails, blogs or text messages. But nowadays writing is not about laying down words in stone — it is about conversation, it is a flux, not something intended to last,” he said.
But teachers and linguists reacted coolly, arguing that ironing out spelling oddities will not help those who misspell because they lack a basic grasp of grammar.
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