French Grrrrrrrrrrrammmar!

OK, sure it's been months since my last entry. My excuses? Don't need 'em, but raising them gives me a chance to vaunt the arrival of an exquisite new family member, the lovely, chatty, and absolutely perfect Nora. And preparation for a gin rummy fest in Paris with my sister. I haven't played in so long that I had to read up on all the rules to be the worthy opponent one should be if participating in a gin rummy fest. Goes without saying. And a zillion (I counted them) ongoing projects essential to daily life, that keep my mind too occupied for anything creative.

As for the title of this entry: no, the "r" on my keyboard doesn't stick, although given the humidity of the climate around here, I'm expecting keys to start sticking any day now.

The title's tongue-in-cheek angst comes from a recent experience that started out as a calm evening reading Fred Vargas, a French author of very intelligent detective novels. She's been translated into English, so check her out in either language. My partner and I read together most evenings (in French) and a couple of nights ago, we came across a passage in which the very common word gens was treated several times as feminine. We looked at each other, both wondering the same thing: Mais attends là, gens est bien masculin, non? = “Hey, wait a minute, isn’t gens masculine?” Side note: our lives are really less boring than that makes it sound.

We could have, should have let it drop, in the interest of continuing what was a very good story, but instead, our reading came to a screeching halt and out came the dictionary. Neither of us could conjure up a viable explanation for this gender switch on our own, although both of us had some faint recollection of a strange grammar rule governing gens. As far as we could remember, gens was masculine: Les gens du nord, ils ont un accent plus pointu que les gens du sud.

Jean-Paul was as perplexed as I. Neither of us had ever noticed gens in the feminine. We’d surely come across it, but it hadn’t registered with us. Lately these little oddities of the French language spring out to grab us by the throat, ever since we discovered an interesting, not-so-little book by Jacqueline de Romilly, of The Académie française. It traces the evolution of the French language. Yup, winter nights are long here in this village... Some of Romilly’s chapters are very recherchés, but others are truly stimulating – short reads, too, at just two pages each, since they originally appeared as articles in a fairly ordinary French magazine whose readers aren’t particularly interested in intellectual mumbo-jumbo. You can probably find a copy of the book on Amazon, but be forewarned that it’s in French. Here’s the info: Dans le jardin des mots, published in 2007 by De Fallois Editions, prefaced by philosopher and journalist André Giovanni. The preface is great, by the way.

Retournons à nos moutons, “let’s return to our sheep” = let’s get back to the point: the bi-gendered gens. The explanation we found is reason enough to drop to your knees in gratitude for our neutered English. Apparently even the French, including some celebrated authors, make mistakes when it comes to gens.

That gens is both a masculine and feminine noun is not hard to swallow. There are other everyday nouns that take both genders. Change the gender, change the meaning: la manche = the sleeve; le manche = the handle / la poêle = the frying pan; le poêle = the stove / le livre = the book; la livre = the pound. The list goes on, but it’s not especially long and is really just a matter of vocabulary. The story’s more complicated for gens.

Here are the Rules:
Gens is masculine, unless preceded by a plural adjective. In that case it’s feminine, as is the adjective modifying it. Remember that list of BAGS adjectives from French class? The ones used to describe, in general, Beauty, Age, Goodness (or lack of it), and Size: beau, belle, joli, jeune, vieux, vieille, bon, mauvais, grand, petit, etc. Those types of adjectives are generally placed before the noun they modify, whereas most others follow. Example: C’est un vieux monsieur. But: C’est un monsieur respectable.

According to the Rules, when one of those adjectives precedes gens, gens and the preceding adjective take the feminine form: Ce sont de vieilles gens. = “They’re old folks,” using the feminine form of the adjective vieux. But, ce sont des gens français, with “français” in the masculine. If we continue to talk about these old folks, using a pronoun, we need to use elles: Mes voisins sont de vieilles gens, elles sont françaises. Note bene: “voisins” is masculine, “vielles gens” is feminine, “elles” and “françaises” are feminine. Grrrrrrrrrr…

You may want to pour yourself a glass of wine before continuing down the not-so-logical road of this French grammar rule.

Next scenario to consider: gens preceded by two adjectives, the second of which ends – in the masculine and the feminine – in a mute “e.” Re-read that a couple of times. What we’re talking about here are BAGS adjectives like brave, whose masculine and feminine forms both end in a mute “e,” that is, BAGS adjectives whose masculine and feminine forms are identical.

In this seemingly, but only seemingly complicated and limited case, you use the masculine form for the first adjective. Who cares about the gender of the second adjective since you can’t tell if it’s masculine or feminine anyway – the forms are identical. JP and I felt victorious just for having grasped the scenario; understanding the Rule and its application was icing on the cake. Here are two examples to help clarify: Ce sont de vrais braves gens, les étudiants de français ! / Ces prétendus honnêtes gens nous ont trompés. You see, brave and honnête are absolutely the same, whether they be masculine or feminine. The adjectival form that matters is that of the first adjective in the pair modifying gens. And as you see, in these two examples anyway, there’s no difference there either when it comes to pronunciation. The only difference between the masculine and feminine forms of vrais-vraies and prétendus-prétendues lies in their spelling. With BAGS adjectives like “petit-petite,” you hear a difference, so if you make a mistake, everyone in the room knows it -- a (perhaps) gross exaggeration, but let's note anyway that those who bring the error to your attention are not worth talking to. Chances are, you’ll quite naturally use the masculine (correct) form of the first adjective anyway. Here’s why: trying saying, ces petiT(es) braves gens. It doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue. Now try, ces peti(ts) braves gens. It’s easier to articulate and therefore what you would naturally tend towards saying. I'm not a linguist, but that makes sense to me.

That said, on to the next gens Rule: when gens is qualified by the adjective tout, to designate specific people, you use the masculine plural form tous: tous ces gens, tous les gens sensés. On the other hand – there’s almost always an “on the other hand” in French grammar – you use the feminine plural form toutes IF gens and toutes are separated by an adjective whose masculine form differs from the feminine form by the absence of a mute “e” (e.g. bon-bonne): J’aimerais remercier toutes les bonnes gens qui nous ont aidés. Notice that the past participle agrees with gens… in the masculine plural, despite the feminine form of bon. Chorus: Grrrrrrrrrr…

Perhaps you’re beginning to see, though, that the whole thing comes down to a question of pronunciation, that is, to making it easier to pronounce gens in combination with certain adjectives. English does the same kind of irritating stuff, but we don’t notice it because we’re so used to it.

Last gens Rule, finally: what happens if we’re using the adjective jeune? Bring it on, you'll respond, mellowed by that glass of wine I suggested. Ah, but this is an easy one, a hard and fast, easy to grasp rule: use the masculine. Youppie! Example: de joyeux jeunes gens.

Fortunately for non-native speakers of French, the native speakers, who rely more on their ear than on their Bécherelles to guide them, don’t manage to perfection all these rules. Conclusion: non-native speakers are allowed some leeway. Those readers who have spent some time living in France will recognize this seemingly logical conclusion as wishful thinking. And why is that anyway?

One last word, in the form of a quotation I found on a French chat site for writers, a smile-provoking observation left by a professional, native-French translator trying to digest the rules concerning gens: “Cela m'amène à conclure que le mot gens, étant un mot difficile à faire précéder, les règles ont pour but de le faire précéder autant que possible par un adjectif finissant par le son "e". Si ce n'est pas possible au masculin, alors on met l'adjectif au féminin... Sans être une féministe obsédée, je trouve que ça aurait été beaucoup plus simple de décider que le mot gens est féminin! Ah la la ! quels gens!” [“This leads me to conclude that the word gens is a difficult word to modify by an adjective preceding it; the rules’ purpose is to impose, as far as it possible, an adjective ending in a mute “e.” If that’s not possible in the masculine, then you use the feminine form. Not to be obsessive feminist, but it would have been much easier to just make gens feminine! …”].

France is all about aesthetics, baby.