Parlez vous francais?
Do you speak French with a bit of an accent?
Do you conjugate well, to say what is meant?
Spare a thought for the peeps who live in this land
With nice food and nice wine always on hand
For new words they are giving these folk palpitations
As France is just one of a handful of nations
Splitting up nouns, or how to call things,
Into masculine, feminine for order it brings.
Le chat and le train they are both very male
But la dame and la poste tell an opposite tale
Informing all readers, if they fail to remember
The things they have mentioned have very clear genders.
So, what is the fuss, I hear you all ask
What is the change which takes them to task?
As language evolves, new nouns they arrive
To build up the word count and us to surprise
But lo! Some of these words have no gender at all
Despite of this lack they still us enthral
With new meanings, new nuance, and especially concepts
Into the bosom of vocab, they swiftly are swept.
We have no control, they arrive now and then,
And as soon as we use them, they join our playpen.
So, what does this matter? It builds up our word-bank
Giving new nouns to add to our think-tank.
But back to ‘ol France and its logical speak
How will they cope as the gender they seek?
For as the transsexuals enter stage left
In the language of France, they are gender bereft.
Le and la will just not do. There use is now made futile
They can’t describe things gender neutral.
So, now’s your chance to help the French
If, from your brain, ideas you can wrench
To help solve this grammatical puzzle
So, into their dictionaries these words they can nuzzle
Maybe they need to combine the two forms
The ‘a’ from la with ‘e’ just adorned?
How to pronounce l’æ would be quite a thing
As would the adjective word ending
[le garçon noir; la fille noire; l’æ transexual noir/e]
But at least it’s a start to help them out
Before l’Académie Français starts to shout
We are the guardians of the tongue
Qualified to our words advance.
At end of day we all must hope
With this challenge they can cope
To keep the language live and patent
Embracing change with meanings blatant.
So, all who read and all who hear
Can be assured of meanings clear
For after all, when said and done,
Language’s meaning is number one.