Le français en Tunisie

By Habiba Naffati and Ambroise Queffélec (Le français en Afrique, 18). Nice, Institut de linguistique française — CNRS, 2004. 453 pp. €15.00. Following hard on the heels of Le français en Algérie (see FS, lvii (2003), 574–75) Le français en Tunisie adopts a similar format: brief introductory chapters occupy roughly a quarter of the book's space, most of the remainder consisting of an ‘Inventaire lexical’ which lists alphabetically the items deemed relevant. The bibliography contains some 260 titles, including linguistic and cultural studies, novels and journalism, all relating to the Maghreb. The early chapters deal with multilingualism in Tunisia, the ‘politique de francisation’, the current position of French in the area, and questions of identity and status within a number of contexts (education, professional activity, social and family life). Unlike Algeria, ‘la Tunisie n'a jamais été pour la France une colonie de peuplement, et la puissance coloniale n'a pas mené une politique intensive d'envoi de ressortissants’ (p. 17). While the French language continues to play an important role in Tunisia, its use orally is becoming less common (and more imperfect) in favour of a mixture of Arabic and French. Even in professional circles, the signs are that the use of French in oral communication is on the decline. Indeed, in international affairs English is increasingly establishing itself as the main foreign language. In personal relationships, however, it is suggested that young Tunisian women are grateful for the relative expressivity of French in matters of the heart: whereas classical Arabic constricts amorous sentiment in abstractions and dialectal Arabic tends to trivialize it, the subtleties of French are seen as emancipating, ‘ce qui explique leur grand intérêt et leur plus grande aptitude en français. Elles ont en effet plus à gagner au changement et à la modernité’ (p. 70). As for the lexical material proper, the Inventaire consists of 841 entries (orthographic variants apart), 85% of which are nouns. Each entry is defined and copiously illustrated by extracts from written sources identified in the bibliography. Regrettably, oral usage is largely ignored as being ‘instable et difficile à décrire’ (p. 85). The majority of the entries are loan-words from Arabic and refer to indigenous phenomena such as local dress (burnous, babouche, hijab), musical instruments (oud, rabab, zokra) and regional dishes (chorba, h'ssou, madfouna). As in Le français en Algérie, anomalies emerge. Tunisian au fait corresponds to metropolitan en fait; gargot(t)e is not pejorative in Tunisia; café chantant is altered to cafichanta; beznesser, defined as ‘faire des affaires de façon douteuse’, is from English business. Other English imports include because (=because of, as in ‘pâturages pas très abondants because sécheresse’) and free-shop (=duty-free). They are particularly frequent in football jargon: at-home (=home game), half (premier/second half), heading (=header), goal-difference (given as masculine), keeper, referee, scorer (=to score). One wonders about the legitimacy of admitting such anglicisms, in a work entitled Le français en Tunisie. But then most of the book is concerned with loan-words of one kind or another

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