Pourquoi Blogger?

The decision to tackle the timeless question, pourquoi blogger? ("why blog?") was, naturally, what drew my interest in this French magazine for teen girls. The magazine itself, however, turns out to interestingly demonstrate that French efforts to roll back franglais don't seem to be faring very well with the younger generation. Est-ce que je suis une party girl? seems like a wildly unnecessary anglicism.

Similarly, the blog article itself runs in the magazine's "Fun Coach" department. Even worse, the TOC page repeatedly uses the word "love" (as in "LOVE SEX: Comment vous faire désirer" on page 88) instead of the familiar-even-to-Americans "amour." Intriguingly, based on the magazine France appears to be the prosperous modern society in which consumer goods are widely available and teens are interested in fashion, dating, and celebrities I've visited in the past rather than the poverty-stricken, strife-ridden hellhole I keep reading about in the newspapers.

Comments

On a recent trip to Paris, I also found an unexpectedly high ratio of adorable kids riding rented ponies in the public park to enraged terrorists-in-training hurling Molotov cocktails.

Posted by Charlie Murtaugh | May 17, 2007 12:30 PM

MY typically overlooks the Trotskyist advice column, "Ask Leon," as well as the fashion feature on 20 mix-and-match outfits you'll want to have ready for the coming surrender to the Islamic caliphate.

Posted by alkali | May 17, 2007 12:38 PM

They have stuff like this in Mexico as well.

Anyway, no one says France is a hellhole. They just say it's poorer than the US and going backwards relative to the US.

Why do income disparities within nations matter, but not income disparities between nations?

Posted by Adam Herman | May 17, 2007 12:49 PM

MY typically overlooks the Trotskyist advice column, "Ask Leon,"

I thought "Ask Leon" was a column about a old man's pedophilic obsession with a 13 year old assassin girl who later goes to Harvard.

Posted by Dan the Man | May 17, 2007 12:50 PM

Why do income disparities within nations matter, but not income disparities between nations?

'Cause it's not all about income, dude. Haven't you been paying attention?

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/vacation.php

Posted by Ryan | May 17, 2007 12:52 PM

Haven't you been paying attention?

This is a rhetorical question right?

Posted by Col Bat Guano | May 17, 2007 12:59 PM

Intriguingly, based on the magazine France appears to be the prosperous modern society in which consumer goods are widely available and teens are interested in fashion, dating, and celebrities I've visited in the past rather than the poverty-stricken, strife-ridden hellhole I keep reading about in the newspapers.

In other words, they're already seeing prosperity as a result of Sarkozy's election.

Posted by Steve | May 17, 2007 1:01 PM

could we make blogging on French teen magazines a regular feature here? and more photos please.

Posted by right | May 17, 2007 1:11 PM

Why do income disparities within nations matter, but not income disparities between nations?

In addition to it not being all about incomes, there's no implication in this post that income disparities between nations (or relative growth in income disparity, such as the incredible diminuition of that between France and the US over the last 100 years over the past few generations) are irrelevant as opposed to the fact that that between France and the US is not that large in per capita terms. The point about "hellhole" was apt hyperbole. While as for the fact that things like this exist in Mexico as well, there may very well be specific signifiers within this magazine suggesting more wide-spread affluence than in a Mexican magazine, in addition to the fact that MY mentions his own experiences in France.

Posted by Trolly McTroll | May 17, 2007 1:39 PM

Intriguingly, based on the magazine France appears to be the prosperous modern society in which consumer goods are widely available and teens are interested in fashion, dating, and celebrities I've visited in the past rather than the poverty-stricken, strife-ridden hellhole I keep reading about in the newspapers.

So Matt, you believe everything you read in magazines?

Posted by Jay C | May 17, 2007 1:51 PM

Wouldn't turning "Blog" into "Blogger" mean that the G gets pronounced wrong?

It should be "Pourquoi Bloguer?"

Damn that franglais, creeping into the conjugations as well as the vocka-byulery.

Posted by Semi-Troll | May 17, 2007 1:52 PM

This is how cultural infusions always works. One culture doesn't really have a word for something that it encounters in another culture, and so it adopts that cultures term for it. Sometimes, we simply like the sound of the word in the other language, or it comes with status connotation that we like. We don't call our soon to be spouses our "Betrothed" (Hell, we don't really even use the word "Troth" anymore). The word sucks. It sounds like someone is going to do, or has already done, something horrible to us. But Fiance/Fiancee, that has class. A Fiance is something you wouldn't mind being. People who hate the merger of two languages often have a problem with change in general. As are people who despise the Emergence of new words (Ginormous) or alteration of old words into new forms (Regardless increasingly becoming irregardless) usually have the same problem. The problem with this is that the languages we speak are "living" languages. They have to change, because the cultures of people speaking them are changing.

Posted by Soullite | May 17, 2007 1:58 PM

There are in fact large stretches of Mexico that are not hellholes.

Also anyone who's actually been to France knows that the country appears to be more prosperous than the US. The infrastructure is much better maintained - the highway system in Normandy is at least a good 20 years ahead of anything we have in the US - the people are better dressed and look generally more prosperous than the average American (I'm comparing Le Havre to Providence, RI), the quality of most goods and services you buy is simply better. I just spent a lot of time working all over Europe. Ignoring the statistics and just going by my impressions of everyday life I would rate median personal wealth like this

1. Germany
2. France
3. Netherlands
4. US
5. London
6. Central Italy (the difference between regions is enormous, and I was only in Tuscany/Lazio)
7. Belgium
8. Catalunya - although probably no. 1 in actual quality of life.

The median person in France certainly appears to live better than the median person in the US, it's just the top 10% in France can't afford to lord it up the way the top 10% in the US can. Also the French keep many of the poor locked up in the banlieues, granted.

Posted by vanya | May 17, 2007 2:04 PM

France appears to be the prosperous modern society in which consumer goods are widely available and teens are interested in fashion, dating, and celebrities I've visited in the past rather than the poverty-stricken, strife-ridden hellhole I keep reading about in the newspapers.

Hehe, I'm fifty. They've been telling me for my entire life that W Europe is on the verge of economic collapse.

Why do income disparities within nations matter, but not income disparities between nations?
Posted by Adam Herman | May 17, 2007 12:49 PM

I don't know about other fields, but people in France and Germany who have the same job as mine are paid slightly more than I am; and they receive much more in government benefits.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 17, 2007 2:07 PM

Soullite--

So are you defending the use of "ginormous" (which I didn't know had been named a new word--I thought it was still used exclusively by confused bimbos) and "irregardless" (I also didn't know that we had agreed to promote spelling and usage errors into new words)?

Change is one thing, but it's also nice to have a language that doesn't sound like it was designed by 8th grade drop outs.

(I'm agnostic on fiancee, since while I don't care much for the word on its own merits, there doesn't seem to be a suitable alternative, in English or otherwise.)

Posted by Ben | May 17, 2007 2:12 PM

"Intriguingly, based on the magazine France appears to be the prosperous modern society in which consumer goods are widely available and teens are interested in fashion, dating, and celebrities I've visited in the past rather than the poverty-stricken, strife-ridden hellhole I keep reading about in the newspapers."

Matt, I am also interested in celebrities you've visited in the past. Do you know Mel Gibson?

Posted by Ted | May 17, 2007 2:15 PM

I'm as liberal as the next guy, but I've traveled extensively in France, and generally observed:

--houses in France (and Europe in general) are smaller and more cramped than U.S. houses

--home ownership rates seem to be lower

--cars are noticeably smaller and older, and there are fewer of them (of course, public transit is much better too)

--the bainlieus are uglier and more squalid than ghetto neighborhoods in the U.S.

--consumer prices are higher due to the VAT.

In general, I would say life is at least as good (better food, more leisure, just a better attitude toward enjoying life, particularly in the south of France), but there is a small but noticeable difference in material wealth once you get out of central Paris.

Posted by mq | May 17, 2007 2:23 PM

Gary Sugar, I'm 60 and I've been hearing about Sweden going bankrupt since before you were born. Socialism not only causes bankruptcy, at also drags it out terribly painfully.

The average Swede is poorer than the average Mississippian, you know. Those poor bastards.

Posted by John Emerson | May 17, 2007 2:49 PM

Wouldn't turning "Blog" into "Blogger" mean that the G gets pronounced wrong?

It should be "Pourquoi Bloguer?"

I think "un bloguer" is "a blogger" whereas "blogger" is the verb "to blog."

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | May 17, 2007 3:06 PM

--houses in France (and Europe in general) are smaller and more cramped than U.S. houses

Americans are fatter and live in a substantially larger country.

--cars are noticeably smaller and older, and there are fewer of them

Ditto.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 17, 2007 3:13 PM

The average Swede is poorer than the average Mississippian, you know.

Which is why I see so many Volvo SUVs here in Mississippi. It all makes sense now.

Posted by Anderson | May 17, 2007 3:24 PM

could we make blogging on French teen magazines a regular feature here? and more photos please.

It would certainly make me a regular reader. (I jest.)

But yes, the whole 'France is on ther verge of collapse' nonsense is trite and untrue. This isn't to say that any society is perfect, but to bash cultural norms of another country because that country's government happens to have a respectful disagreement with one's own has always struck me as pigheaded foolishness.

Posted by sdh | May 17, 2007 3:25 PM

On Franglais: I find the failure of the anti-Anglicism campaign in France to be rather striking, because the French have a very strong sense that their language is a precious and inviolable thing. Still, I think it's a fairly pathetic and desperate movement against the inevitable changing of the language, that no one can really control or even slow down.

On "est-ce que je suis une party girl?", though, I'd like to throw in this -- by maintaining the English "party girl," the French manage to make the "party girl" something that is distanced from the French themselves. I think it's pretty clear that being a party girl is something that you don't want to be -- even in this magazine, it's the subject of, presumably, a quiz that'll tell if you're a good girl or a bad girl. Kind of the equivalent of "am I a slut? 10 easy questions to evaluate your slut quotient!" Keeping the English here, rather than using a French term for party girl, lets them keep the illusion that a "party girl" is necessarily non-French.

I'd be interested to see if there are many other Anglicisms that function in this way. I'm in Paris now, so I'll keep my ears a little more open than they have been. I've been here since January, but clearly I am not the most observant person in the world.

Posted by a | May 17, 2007 3:45 PM

Great, funny post, Matt. Having lived in France for a year, I can attest to their fraught relationship with the English language. The Academie Francaise is the institutional body that attempts to preserve the sanctity of the French language, but it's a battle of attrition. It's hard to staunch the American-dominated pop-culture juggernaut with its nefarious Anglicizing tendencies. And a teen magazine isn't going to listen to the Academie Francaise, anyway.

Wow, Adam, are you seriously comparing the economic living standards of Mexico and France? You are truly clueless. It depends on the criteria employed, but I would say the French have either an equal or higher standard of living than Americans. The Germans definitely have a higher standard of living, from my observation.

mq said:"consumer prices are higher due to the VAT." I'm not so sure about this. I would say it's more of a wash. And when I was there (five years back), grocery store food was noticeably cheaper than here (and higher quality). Although maybe that's changed.

Posted by Warren | May 17, 2007 4:07 PM

The shocking reality of the lives of Parisian party girls was revealed 27 years ago in this movie.

Posted by novakant | May 17, 2007 4:55 PM

Matt wrote:

Intriguingly, based on the magazine France appears to be the prosperous modern society in which consumer goods are widely available and teens are interested in fashion, dating, and celebrities I've visited in the past rather than the poverty-stricken, strife-ridden hellhole I keep reading about in the newspapers. ...

This is so tendentious. The NYT and Washington Post stories I read hardly called France a hellhole. They just noted that it is economically stagnant and has been a long time.

By quality-of-life measures, France was tied for first in the world or near it in the early 1970s. Now it's not in the top 20. The French decline is real, and it's disappointing Matt would pretend it's a phony trope.

Posted by Chris | May 17, 2007 7:15 PM

Chris,

I'd like to know what quality-of-life measures you're looking at. I seriously doubt it's an objective source. And you might want to think about leaving the United States at least once in your life. I think you'll find that the rest of the Western world is actually doing pretty well. American pundits love to dis Europe, especially France, but I've found they generally have little experience or knowledge of what they're talking about. Or they'll spout statistics that are inherently skewed toward a certain neo-liberal vision of economic success that doesn't accurately gauge the overall health and wealth of a country.

Posted by Warren | May 17, 2007 8:35 PM

I tried to check train schedule on the website of Deutsche Bahn, and while I do not know German, I could figure out that accidentally I did hit a page with youth specials. Apparently, special trains can transport young people to their favorite vacation spots, and two expressions were used "jugend-train" and "party zug".

[Perhaps it would be a spiffy idea to popularize public transportation in USA: decrease drinking age to 18, exclusively on board of Amtrak trains, and allow kegs in trains to Florida. And call them "party zugen" or "biergarten am wheels".]

In Poland English enters the language too, which is funny when a word is well absorbed, so a company needs a "byznesplan", managers discuss about "byznesplanie" and analysts complain that a company does not have a good "byznesplanu".

Posted by piotr | May 17, 2007 10:28 PM

Warren: yeah, food is something of an exception, although it depends on the product. I think that's partially because massive ag subsidies sort of counterbalance the taxes. (Also, the food *is* better, ordinary French agriculture is like the fanciest, most gourmet, free-range type stuff you get here). But for other goods: try clothing or books or whatever, they are much more expensive.

Posted by MQ | May 18, 2007 1:32 AM

This probably has something to do with the fact that the mag's design and content are very, very close to a whole range of similar ones in the UK that became popular about 10 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a NatMags property either.

BTW, France isn't "going backwards relative to the US".

Posted by Alex | May 18, 2007 6:06 AM

Denglish (what you get when you cross Deutsch and English) is worse than you think. There are now words that German took from English that mean things completely different from their English meanings. The two most prominent examples are das Handy, a cellphone (mobile, if you're British), and das Mobbing, which is roughly workplace harassment. The latter gave rise to the verb mobben.

On the other hand, this sort of thing has gone on for a long time. The Polish word for vacation is urlob, obviously from German Urlaub. Russian soldiers in Paris gave the world the bistro; on their way home, they took with them the Schlagbaum (crossing bar) from Germany. Later waves eastward yielded the practice of many biznesmeny, the blitzbriefing, for which I wish I could find an authentically Russian pronunciation on the Web. It's a hoot. (English also gave new Russian the killer, and not in the sense of application, either.)

Posted by Doug | May 18, 2007 9:39 AM