Je ne crois un mot

 The French Language, with its Académie Française, may sometimes seem like the antithesis of English. Where non-standard English revels in new word construction and meaning change, and the diversity of its speakers has forced its simplification, French seems regulated and perfected, and above all, unchanging. Eternal. But it's simply untrue, and this is my favorite example of how French has changed in the most capricious manner. 

If you've studied any French, you know that a negative is constructed with a ne in front of the verb and a pas after. And you might have learned this so long ago, like I did,  that you never really thought about that curious little pas. I mean, the ne makes sense. It's like adding no in front of Spanish verbs or even not in front of English ones. But what's with that pas? In fact, hundreds of years ago, a French negative was constructed in the same way as Spanish or English: the negative preceding and nothing after the verb. So what happened? 

Language change happened. You might not have recognized it from the ballet term pas de deux, but that pas is the same word. It means step. At some point, the French, when talking about not walking any further, added the little affectation on the end of the phrase. Je ne marche pas. "I did not walk a step." Similarly, they might say "I didn't drink a drop" or "I didn't eat a crumb." Over the years, those little affectations fell out of vogue and drifted out of common parlance. All except Je ne marche pas. That one stayed. And even more curiously, the ending pas started showing up after all negative verbs, not just marcher. How utterly bizarre to start saying "I didn't drink a step," but that's exactly what's being said to this day. I imagine it was those damn kids that started it, and the grown-ups were probably pissed. It likely bothered them as much as uptalk bothers us now.

Now here's where the darling Académie probably lost their collective minds. For the last couple hundred years, the French haven't been bothering to say the ne in negative phrases. Oh, they still write it. And if you ask them, they may even swear they say it. But listen for 5 minutes, and the truth will out. They're skipping right past the ne, going directly to the verb, not collecting $200, and finishing off with the pas. Yes, you have it right. They no longer say the word that actually signifies negativity, and they instead throw in the word "step" for no linguistic reason. So there you have it: Perfect French, as well-regulated and eternal as it seems, suffers from the same senseless, illogical language change all languages does. I don't know about you, but I find that a comfort in cold times.