Thursday, January 30, 2003

Those Crazy French....Write this down! My French teacher told me on Tuesday about this television game show that appeared last week in France.  It's a show called Les Dicos D'Or, and it is a dictation contest.  That's right.  A dictation contest.  Evidently, three million Frenchmen and women turned on the television to watch contestants of all ages write things down while the host reads a complicated text with tricky words and uncommon spellings.   Whomever makes the fewest errors wins.  According to The Times, some 500,000 people enter the initial heats, and they televise the finals after a series of preliminary elimination competitions.  I'm going to risk some cultural insensitivity here and say that this is stupid.  Why would anyone be interested in watching people take dictation?  Here's the explanation in the Times: The French are also wedded to the dictation for political and cultural reasons. For many, the language lies at the heart of French identity and its defence amounts to a crusade. To them, if you cannot spell, you are almost a traitor. Claude Hagège, a linguist, said: “Spelling is a veritable institution in France and the dictation is a vehicle for this attachment to tradition for many French people. It is in fact truly a national political and social issue.” He said that it was not just the middle classes who were interested in dictations. So, too, were working-class people, and particularly immigrants, because they saw it as a measure of social ascension. “Dictation is seen as a way of discriminating between the poor wretches who are no good at it, and the cultivated middle classes who are,” he said. “That’s why French people of modest origin are among the greatest purchasers of dictionaries. To them, being able to spell means that they have obtained the most elitist aspect of French culture.” Clearly, this is why the French oppose the war in Iraq.  It's disdain for our uncultivated President. We have dumb game shows in the States.  Who can forget Press Your Luck ("No Whammies!  STOP!")?  Or Match Game, which featured Charles Nelson Reilly?  But dictation?  Of course, there is the question of what prize the winners receive.  Cash?  Trips?  Cars?  Nope.  Dictionaries. Sign me up. 2:58:40 PM    Let's hear it. []