Minae Mizumura - The Fall of Language in the Age of English

Many people both in Japan and abroad would disagree with this description of the contemporary Japanese literary scene, and they may be right. But even if this description happens to be true, that in itself would be no cause for alarm. In the course of history, every art form rises and falls and rises again. There is no need to fear for the future of Japanese literature — not unless the Japanese language is falling, not unless Japanese people keep on letting it fall or, even worse, keep on doing everything in their power to accelerate its fall (which I’m afraid may be the case) now that we have already entered the age of English.

The language that gained dominance in the modern era, from the eighteenth century onward, is of course English. However, during much of this time, English was not the world’s most revered language. Mais non! It was French.

Let us begin by taking a look at A Little Princess , a children’s story written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in 1905. Now a classic, it has continued to be read all over the world as well as adapted into films, television programs, musicals, and, naturally, anime. Its heroine, Sara Crewe, is an English girl born in India whose father is a very rich man, mining diamonds in the distant colony and contributing to the resplendence of the British Empire. The story starts when she is sent to live in a boarding school in London. Sara is not only a wealthy heiress but also someone with an exceptional mind, both intelligent and noble. Yet her unquestioned superiority over others becomes established on her first day of school, before anyone knows anything about her except that she is rich.

The title of the first chapter is “A French Lesson.” Miss Minchin, the school’s owner and headmistress, introduces Sara to the other pupils and, as if to demonstrate her authority, imperiously orders the new girl to begin studying the textbook before the French master Monsieur Dufarge appears. Mean, narrow-minded, and domineering, Miss Minchin epitomizes the nasty adult. She is convinced that Sara knows no French. Sara tries to explain to her that, though she “never really learned” the language, she knows it because she always used it at home, her deceased mother being French and her father loving the language. Miss Minchin has a secret: to her shame, she herself does not know the language. Not wishing to discuss the matter any further, she cuts the new pupil short: “If you have not learned, you must begin at once.” Too polite to retort, Sara waits until Monsieur Dufarge enters the classroom, whereupon she rises from her seat and begins to explain to him in French how she came to know the language.

It is as if Sara has been enthroned that instant. Monsieur Dufarge exclaims to Miss Minchin, “Ah, Madame… She has not learned French; she is French.” The rest of the class is in awe of her, or deathly jealous. Miss Minchin is mortified. The first French lesson has determined Sara’s fate. Several years later, when the unexpected death of her father leaves Sara penniless, Miss Minchin, who despite her profound dislike of the girl had been treating her as the school’s prize pupil, instantly turns against her. Sara, the “little princess,” is quickly shoved up to a maid’s room in the attic with only her doll and a dress that’s already too short for her, and she becomes the target of repeated abuse.

Reading A Little Princess in translation while munching rice crackers in our Tokyo home was when I first vaguely understood the magical power of the French language. My own French lessons began in junior high school in the United States. Everyone was required to study a foreign language (though for me English was already foreign enough). We had three options: French, Spanish, or Russian. French was my natural choice, for I could not picture what it would be like to become a Japanese woman with a command of Spanish or Russian, never having read a novel with such a heroine. But I could easily imagine a Japanese woman speaking French. She would be elegant; she would have class. The lovely nobleman’s daughter in Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s short story “The Ball” (Butōkai, 1920) waltzes with a handsome French officer while fluently conversing with him in his language, which seemed a bit fanciful even to a young girl but still quite wonderful. The French teacher in our junior high school had black, curly hair and was not exactly handsome; he was not even French but Belgian. But he was kind to me, the only Asian in the class, and soon, though I made no active effort to learn English, I would hole up in my room listening over and over to a record exclaim, “ Voilà Monsieur Thibault. Voilà Madame Thibault. Ils habitent à Paris, à la place d ’ Italie .”

My ties with the French language lasted long beyond what I ever imagined at the time. After graduating from high school, I first entered art school but soon quit, and then, as I mentioned before, I ended up studying French literature not only in college but also in graduate school. I did not choose this path with a specific goal, aside from that of avoiding English. As a Japanese middle-class girl of the time, I took up French basically in the same spirit as one studied other things Western like piano and ballet. Circumstances led me to endlessly continue in this path almost by default — or that is how I understood the whole course of events until much later.

Only when I went back to Japan, was freed at last from having to deal with English, and even forgot most of the French I had learned did I finally begin to see another motive, a less innocent one. I had lived in the United States as an Asian girl without an adequate command of English. French was the perfect language with which a girl like me could gain an advantage over the monolingual Americans.

When people found out that I was a student, they would invariably ask, often out of courtesy, “What do you major in?”

I would proudly answer, “French literature!”

In the United States at the time, it was unusual for Asians to study French literature. Hearing my answer, Americans would often open their eyes wide with amazement and look at me with sudden new respect. I would return their gaze, cool as you please.

The journey of French toward becoming the most revered language in Europe perhaps started in the seventeenth century with the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, which lasted seventy-two years (1643–1715) and made France, with its cultural, political, and military eminence, the grandest nation in Europe. The refinement of the French court became the model for other monarchs. The venerable Académie française had already been established earlier under the Sun King’s father, Louis XIII, with a mission to vigorously regulate the French language, to “render it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating arts and sciences” (founding document of 1637). French went on to become the lingua franca of the European ruling class. What later came to be known as the Age of Enlightenment followed in the eighteenth century with France and the French language at its center, thanks to philosophes like Montesquieu, Rousseau, Alembert, Voltaire, and Diderot, among others. In the nineteenth century, while the British ran the most powerful empire and Great Britain enjoyed military, political, and economic dominance, French continued to be revered as the language that embodied the essence of European civilization. Not only was French recognized as the official language of diplomatic affairs among European nations, but command of the language was considered integral to life as a cultivated person in Europe.

To most Europeans, having a command of English did not matter unless you aspired to be an intellectual, which required familiarity with more than one language. Yet all Europeans of a certain social class and above were expected to know French, just as European women of a certain class and above were expected to know how to do embroidery. This was true of the British as well, and it continued to be true even up to the early twentieth century, when the British Empire was at its zenith. Enough familiarity with French trickled down so that most people were on at least nodding terms with the language. Agatha Christie, writing in that period, created her famous detective Hercule Poirot, who is Belgian (and thus not at all dashy, as a Frenchman would be) and who — aside from throwing in French ejaculations such as “ Parbleu! ” and “ Au nom de dieu! ”—often speaks strange English that’s a direct translation of French. Instead of “Do you understand?” he says, “You comprehend?” Instead of “Allow me to tell you,” he says, “Permit me to say to you.” Scattered throughout the novel, these peculiar English forms produce comedic effect, humorously highlighting the detective’s foreignness. And it was because Christie knew her readers, representing a broad spectrum of ordinary people, would appreciate the humor that she invented a hero like Poirot in the first place.