Louis Meigret

Louis Meigret (* around 1500 in Lyon ; † after 1558) was a French grammarian and translator during the Renaissance and, as part of the standardization of the French language, endeavored to reform the orthography .

Life

Little is known about Louis Meigret's life. In contrast to contemporaries such as Pelletier, Robert Estienne , Henri Estienne , or Fauchet, who in addition to linguistic research also became known through other activities (Pelletier was a poet and mathematician, Robert Estienne Drucker, Henri Estienne philologist of the Greek language and Fouchet was a historian), leaves To add to Meigret nothing more than a relatively unexplored existence as grammarian and translator. Not only is his person largely unknown, but also his works, as they are written in a spelling that has never been accepted by the public.

Because of this, the description of his life is mainly limited to the appearances of his works.

Louis Meigret was born in Lyon around 1500 . He came from a wealthy family and had four brothers whose activities overshadowed Louis from an early age: Lambert (* around 1475) was a valet and advisor to the King, Jean (* around 1478) made a career as one of the most famous lawyers of his time , Aimé (* around 1480) was a doctor of theology and Laurent (* 1485) was also the king's valet.

From the beginning of his professional career in 1531, Meigret worked as a grammarian and translator and tried to reform the graphics of the French language. However, its trace is lost in 1532: Louis was accused of having behaved contrary to religious traditions together with his brother Laurent. Whether this allegation was well founded or not remains unclear. What is certain is that after two years in prison, Laurent was banished from the Kingdom for five years and went into exile in Geneva , never to return to France. It was quiet now about his brother Louis. It is not known whether he also went into exile or stayed in his homeland. Only with the publication of his works from 1540 does Meigret reappear.

His subsequent work can be divided into three stages: the proposal of a reformed system of orthography ( Traité touchant le commun usage , published 1545), the practice of this system with the first work in reformed orthography (translation by Lukians Menteur , published 1548) and the Publication of his grammar ( Trętté de la grammęre françoęze in 1550), also completely in Reformed orthography. His spelling triggered massive disputes and a number of polemical writings followed. According to his grammar, Meigret only wrote works in the field of linguistics to defend his orthography.

The appearance of the work Histoire by Polybios in 1558, which contains a foreword by Louis Meigret, is his last sign of life.

The language - his profession

Activity as a translator

In 1531 Meigret translated books 7 and 8 of the Historia Naturalis by Gaius Plinius Secundus , which, however, remained unpublished for the time being, as the orthography in which they were written was far from traditional. The printers called them illegible and consequently unsaleable. His translation was not printed until 1543. It contained an important preface concerning the orthography.

Between 1540 and 1558 he published translations by eleven authors, including four Greek ( Aristotle , Isocrates , Polybius and Lucian of Samosata), five Latin (Gaius Pliny Secundus, Columella , Cicero , Sallust and Porcius Latro), one Italian ( Roberto Valturio ) and a German ( Albrecht Dürer ).

Meigret's success as a translator was not withheld: most of his works were reprinted one or more times.

He mainly worked on Latin texts. A Latin version was used to translate Dürer and De re militari by Valturio was written in Latin. He also initially made the translations of the Greek texts. During his work, however, he learned the Greek language and used the Greek text as a template for the translation of Lucian in 1548 at the latest.

The content of his translations spanned a wide range of subject areas, including literature, history, philosophy, theology, geography, zoology and anthropology.

Meigret's ideas of orthography

initial situation

In the 16th century, the Renaissance, a colorful picture of the vocabulary for literary language emerged: words from other languages, older languages, neologisms , words from different social classes and words from different regions were used. There are also two dialects ( Langues d'oc and Langues d'oïl ), the contradictions of which are much greater at the time than in French today.

The regional and individual variations are particularly important, especially concerning the vowels: nasal vowels develop , the sound and length of the vowels, gradations of the different e and the different diphthongs are reduced. In addition, a diacritical system is created with accents, apostrophes, the cedilla and the trema . This development raises discussions about orthography: do you say amonester or admonester, sutil or subtle, calonnier or calomnier etc.

There is also a growing discrepancy between spoken and written French. The situation of imbalance and the juxtaposition of two different language systems lead to the fixation and normalization of orthography.

Positions

The aim of the standardization was to raise French to the level of Latin through lexical enrichment and codification . There were two main directions for this: Tory , Estienne and Ronsard advocated the fixation of the language on the basis of ancient models, that is, variants closer to Latin had priority.

Meigret was of a completely different opinion: as one of the few who consciously tried to distance himself from the Latin model, he was interested in a radical reform of the orthography.

Meigret's graphics

He tried in vain to standardize the graphics on the basis of pronunciation. Meigret was ready to sacrifice the already achieved graphic identity of the word stems. In the foreword to his Trętté 1550 he writes:

«(...) je m'efforçe de deçharjer notr 'ecritture dę' lęttres superflúes, ę la ręndre lizable suiuant l'uzaje de la prolaçíon (je m'efforce de décharger notre écriture des lettres superflues et la rendre lisable suiuant l'usage la prolation). »

"(...) I strive to relieve our spelling of superfluous letters and to make them legible, tailored to use."

This statement not only clarifies his point of view, but is also exemplary for his graph:

• the omission of numerous unspoken letters is indicated by the complete absence (ę = e t ) or an apostrophe (notr ' = notr e )
• [s] is written as / ç / and / s / (effor ç e = effor c e)
• [Ʒ] is written as / j / (deçhar j er = déchar g er)
• [ɛ] is written as / ę / and represents an open e (d ę '= d e s), the distinction between open and closed e is made by accents
• [y] is written as / ú / (superfl ú es = superfl u es)
• [u] has the sound values ​​[y], [ ɥ ], [ v ] (s ui u ant = s ui v ant)

etc.

Reasons for failure

Meigret's concept never caught on. There are several reasons for this: On the one hand, each reformer proposed his own system, in which the opponents could point out contradictions. Furthermore, Meigret's graphical suggestions were inconsistent and contradicting themselves, which is particularly clear in the example of the above / u / with three different sound values. The most important reason, however, is the lack of a uniform and generally binding pronunciation standard before the standardization of French, which is an essential prerequisite for reforming the orthography on the basis of pronunciation. Ultimately, the attempt at codification failed completely in the 16th century and there was still no uniform pronunciation.

Current topicality

If you look at the orthography of today's French language, it becomes clear that the traditional spelling has largely prevailed and has been preserved. The discrepancy between spoken and written French is still present. Since Louis Meigret's attempt to reform the spelling, similar suggestions have repeatedly been made to adapt the spelling of the pronunciation. And even today there are projects and movements that advocate a phonological spelling.

Ortograf.net can be cited as an example of this . The organization's internet portal presents a near-pronunciation spelling of French, which undoubtedly represents a break with tradition. In contrast to Graphie Meigret, however, it does not use a new alphabet, but only uses existing letters. However, parallels can be found, for example, in the fact that non-spoken letters are omitted or the sound [Ʒ] is written as / j /.

With only six standard rules, Ortograf.net promises quick learning within 15 minutes. The dissemination should take place by the mere practice of this notation, i.e. by the speaker himself.

To what extent one uses this reformed spelling is up to each speaker.

Meigret's grammar

Efforts to standardize the language in the 16th and 17th centuries gave rise to French grammar and lexicography .

The grammar entitled Le trętté de la grammęre françoęze by Louis Meigret was the first grammar in the French language. In eleven books and almost 300 pages, Meigret devoted himself, among other things, to the word classes, the number and division of which he adopted based on the Latin model (noun, verb, participle, pronoun, preposition, adverb, interjection and conjunction). He added the article, which did not exist in Latin and whose classification caused difficulties for most grammarians of his time, but did not count it as a separate word class. Meigret opened up his own perspective on many points (such as regarding transitivity ) and broke away from the Latin model.

But the name Louis Meigret was always associated with an attempt at phonological spelling, so that the works by Robert Estienne and Pierre de la Ramée that followed its grammar were more likely to hold their own.

Le trętté de la grammęre françoęze was the third stage of the bottom line in his linguistic work and Meigret turned back to translation.

Current meigret research

At the University of Nice , on April 5 and 6, 2018, Cendrine Pagani-Naudet and Véronique Montagne organized an international colloquium entitled Actualités de Louis Meigret, humaniste et linguiste , the files of which will be published by Editions Garnier . Cendrine Pagani-Naudet is currently building an Internet knowledge base on Meigret which already provides extensive information and in particular enables access to the primary and secondary texts.

Works

• Traité touchant le commun usage de l'escriture francoise (1552, 2nd edition 1554) (available from Gallica gallica.bnf.fr )
• Le trętté de la grammęre françoęze (1550) (available from Gallica gallica.bnf.fr )
• Defęnses de Louís Meigręt touçhant son orthographíe françoęze contre lęs çęnsures ę calomnies de Glaumalis du Vezelet ę de sęs adherans (1550) (available from Gallica gallica.bnf.fr )
• La reponse de Louís Meigręt a l'Apolijíe de Jáqes Pelletier (1550)
• Reponse de Louís Meigręt a la dezesperée repliqe de Glaomalis de Vezelęt, transformé ęn Guillaome dęs Aotels (1551) (available from Gallica gallica.bnf.fr )

literature

Primary literature

• FJ Hausmann: Louis Meigret. Le Traité de la Grammaire française (1550). Le Menteur de Lucien- Aux Lecteurs (1548). Tübingen 1980.

Secondary literature

• H. Berschin, J. Felixberger and H. Goebl: French language history. Munich 1978.
• N. Catach: L'Orthographe. 3rd edition, Paris 1988.
• FJ Hausmann: Louis Meigret. Humaniste et Linguiste. Tübingen 1980.
• M. Huchon: Le Français de la Renaissance. 1st edition, Paris 1988.
• I. Kolboom: French manual. Language - literature - culture - society; for studies, teaching, practice. 2nd revised and expanded edition, Berlin 2008.

Web links

• Knowledge base about Louis Meigret , French
• Project to simplify orthography
• The history of the French language
• Information about French phonetics
• Online portal of the French National Library
• Digital library of the French National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ FJ Hausmann: Louis Meigret. Humaniste et Linguiste. Tübingen 1980, pp. 210-211.
2. ^ ^{A b} F. J. Hausmann: Louis Meigret. Le Traité de la Grammaire française (1550). Le Menteur de Lucien - Aux Lecteurs (1548). Tübingen 1980, pp. IX-XIII.
3. ^ Jacques Pelletier du Mans, member of the Pléiade .
4. ^ Claude Fauchet, French writer and historian of the 16th century.
5. ^ FJ Hausmann: Louis Meigret. Humaniste et Linguiste. Tübingen 1980, p. VII.
6. ↑ ibid., Pp. 4–5.
7. ^ FJ Hausmann: Louis Meigret. Humaniste et Linguiste. Tübingen 1980, p. 210.
8. ^ Roman rhetorician during the reign of Augustus .
9. ^ FJ Hausmann: Louis Meigret. Humaniste et Linguiste. Tübingen 1980, pp. 17-18.
10. ↑ N. Catach: L'Orthographe. Paris 1988, pp. 24-25.
11. ^ H. Berschin, J. Felixberger, H. Goebl: French language history. Munich 1978, p. 234.
12. ^ FJ Hausmann: Louis Meigret. Le Traité de la Grammaire française (1550). Le Menteur de Lucien- Aux Lecteurs (1548). Tübingen 1980, pp. XVIII-XIX.
13. ^ M. Huchon: Le Français de la Renaissance. Paris 1988, pp. 32-34.
14. ↑ https://j2p.fr/meigret.j2p.fr/