'Allo, 'Allo ...

Roger Moss reflects on the highs, lows and sheer angst of getting to grips with the original lingua Franca - and its more recent mutations.

It happens all the time. There you are, thinking you might finally be making some real progress in getting your head around what by any reckoning is a seriously complex language, until along comes something new and unexpected to cut you down to size again with a jolt. Or should that be 'une claque'? Not that I go through life expecting to find the linguistic equivalent of a giant boxing-glove on a spring waiting around every corner, you understand. And anyway, who ever said it would be easy? Not me.

Considering which, how did I even get this far? Not surprisingly, a long-term addiction to French cinema (plus a series of lengthy sorties discovering la France profonde in the company of a French girlfriend) provided the kind of insight which forced me to see and hear things very differently from the average visitor. And speak them, too, albeit with a degree of circumspection. Films from directors like Luc Besson, Leos Carax and Cyril Collard may offer a rich seam of hip, street-level French, but since much of the impact of their more memorable dialogues often stems from their blatant indelicacy, it's as well to resist the urge to road-test such new-found expressions by slipping them into general conversation. Everyday life, after all is not always du cinéma.

But a familiarity with some of the more louche expressions certainly adds an extra dimension to the café terrace experience, revealing the occasional blinding insight into the underlying psyche of those around you. To get the joke is to share something more profound, not least a sense of belonging. Get to this point and you'll be soaking up apocopes before you know it. Hang on; ' apocopes'.. ? This most endearing and enduring assault on the noble tongue of France involves - in the interest of injecting a little extra slickness into the delivery - dropping the odd syllable here and there from some of the more prunable expressions otherwise hogging valuable space in conversation. And increasingly, on the airwaves of the younger FM stations. The result is that we might be hearing what happened on the Boule' Saint-Miche' (le Boulevard Saint-Michel, in Paris) during le flash or les actus (news headlines) while enjoying un déca (decaffeinated coffee) with our petit-dej' (breakfast) in our appart (-ment). The lunchtime update is then followed, of course, by the weather forecast for l'aprèm' (the afternoon) and an enthusiastic á plus! (see you later). At times like this a dico (dictionary) is just not enough.

This is nothing, however, compared to the minefield of road signage intended to pinpoint the offices of various official bodies located in and around our cities. Don't know the acronym? Then you have little hope of finding such places as the post office (PTT), the examination point for imported vehicles (DRIRE), social security office (URSAAF), at which rate you could end up on unemployment benefit. If, that is, you ever find its offices (ASSEDIC).

But wait; there is another way, and it involves little more than a change of outlook. If, like me, you adopt the point of view which states that there are no problems, only challenges (who am I kidding?), then you'll be equipped to cope with almost any adversity. To put this theory to the ultimate test you can do no better than get yourself a mobile phone and communicate in French by textos (text messages). If the now démodé , but exquisitely-economical reduction of audio tape compact cassette into K7 (or k-sept) made perfect sense to you, then you should have little trouble in decoding things like 6né (cinema), C cho (it's hot), KDO (gift), ri1 (nothing), etc. Still with me? Good. Now you're ready to tackle more oblique conversions of the calibre of X (believe, from crois or croit ), V1 (come, from viens ) or T (you are, from t'es ). Cool (branché), don't you think? I particularly like tabitou (where do you live?, from T'habites où ?). The prize for weirdness, though, must undoubtedly go to 'now' (which, bizarrely, signifies maintenant or, er, now.).

So there you have it. It's unofficial: the integrity of even text-message French has finally been breached by English. Should we be surprised? Not really. The language of France, like the place itself, is constantly changing, and where it's going nobody really knows. But you can bet that everyone really cares. With a passion.

© Words by Roger Moss, 2005
This text first appeared in everything France magazine