Locutus of Borg: We will proceed to Earth, and if you attempt to intervene, we will destroy you.
Captain Riker: Then take your best shot, Locutus, because we are about to intervene.
[cue dramatic music]
Excerpt from Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II”
Many language experts know that English, as the dominant social, cultural and economic language of the Western world, is shaping the usage of other languages, including French in Canada.
One way English shapes other languages is when their speakers hear English so much that they start using its words in place of those from their own language. When francophones in Quebec use un laptop or ask for un lift home, they’re using anglicisms. Anglicisms are English words, phrases, linguistic structures and even ways of thinking imported into the common usage of other languages’ speakers.
Over the years a whole swathe of scholarly and popular publications has focused on the problem of and solutions to anglicisms in Quebec and Canadian French. Some authorities, such as my esteemed former colleague André Racicot, call the response to the English linguistic influence an overreaction. As he points out, all languages borrow from each other.Note 1
Indeed, the reverse is also true. English has borrowed many French words, which are known as Gallicisms. But there has been no outpouring of concern that French words will continue supplanting perfectly good English ones. The lack of linguistic and political hay being made of Gallicisms is no surprise, given the size and cultural strength of English-speaking nations.
About the only place where Gallicisms are considered problematic is in translation, when conversions of French to English read more like the former than the latter.
A fascinating source of apparent Gallicisms is the Debates of the House of Commons:
Mr. Speaker, on the same question of privilege, I have been listening very attentively to the interventions by both members and understand the need to proceed to a ruling as quickly as possible, but I would like to reserve the ability to intervene, in very short order, in the course of the next hour or so.
Another example from the Debates is this facetious remark suggesting that a fellow member of Parliament (MP) is talking too much, with a reference to the procedural bible that governs the proceedings of the House (by naming its authors, Marc Bosc and André Gagnon):Note 2
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe if you look deep into the recesses of Bosc and Gagnon, it says that if a member gets over 10 million interventions, they are cut off.
In these quotes, intervention is being used in place of the word speech or comment and intervene is replacing speak. Note that these are English speakers speaking off the cuff.
These uses of the term are unusual to say the least. The TV series dialogue prefacing this post shows how intervene is usually used: it means to take action to affect, interfere with or prevent events, another’s actions, etc. It would make little sense to replace the word intervene in that dialogue with make a speech or give a statement. (Although it’s true that Captain Picard is known for resolving many situations by speechifying.)
Other common conventional uses of intervene are when a country intervenes in a dispute between other countries (as in the terms military intervention and humanitarian intervention) and when friends intervene to urge a person to seek help for an addiction (they stage an intervention). A synonym would be intercede.
But in French, the situation is quite different. A standard sense of intervenir is “to interrupt” or to “say something,” and an everyday meaning of intervention is “speech.” Another meaning for intervention, in a medical context, is “operation,” as in an intervention chirurgicale. These words also correspond to their English cognates: intervenir can mean “intervene” and intervention can mean “intervention.” As you might guess, French is known for its polysemic vocabulary, as its words often have multiple meanings.
In Canada’s Parliament, both English and French have official status and are spoken daily. That means MPs and senators hear intervenir and intervention used in French regularly to refer to their and their colleagues’ speech.
Translators can easily fall into the faux-amis (opens in new tab) or false-cognates (opens in new tab) trap of using the lookalike of a word, even if its meaning isn’t the same. In a bilingual workplace like Parliament, there’s bound to be some slippage, some anglicisms and, yes, some Gallicisms. Perhaps that’s how intervention became a semantic, and not just visual, equivalent for intervention.
Another clue lies in this quote from the Debates:
Madam Speaker, I hate to intervene, but I believe the member is misleading the House at this point, because there is no agreement among the parties on the motion that he says he is going to propose.
In this case, intervene straddles the border between action and speech. The MP is interrupting another MP’s statement both to take the floor and to try to alter the sequence of events (by preventing the other MP from moving a motion). Given how often MPs rise on points of order or ask and answer questions in the cut and thrust of debate, the line between simply interrupting and outright intervening in proceedings to obtain a procedural benefit is fuzzy. Perhaps it’s only in Parliament, where speech is so often an affirmative action, that such a blurring of meanings is logical or necessary.
So what would MPs and senators normally say? The Translation Bureau’s excellent Word Tailoring (opens in new tab) tool provides various options for translating intervention that are consistent with standard Canadian English usage. Parliamentarians may give an address or speech in the Senate, make a statement in the House, respond to a colleague’s comments or remarks or even simply rise in their place to speak. As usual, English offers a plethora of possibilities.
Even though most English speakers would use another word, parliamentarians of all stripes and tongues continue to use intervention à la française most every day.
Interestingly, this unusual usage of intervene can also be heard in the Mother Parliament, in the United Kingdom. Here’s an excerpt from the House of Commons Hansard, in which one MP is referring to a statement another has just made:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is correct.
Here an MP is referring to his own prior comments:
When I intervened, I should have pointed out that I have a declarable interest registered.
The origins of this atypical usage of intervene may nonetheless be French, as the language of the Crown and diplomacy in even the homeland of English was for centuries French. Visitors to London with a keen linguistic eye or ear may notice how British English occasionally sounds French, with its greater use of nouns and Latinate words.
Despite this parliamentary usage, neither the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (opens in new tab) nor the Oxford English Dictionary (opens in new tab) records this meaning of intervene or intervention.
While an intervention to urge MPs and senators not to use intervention in the Gallic sense would certainly be futile, perhaps it’s time our linguistic authorities took notice of this extraordinary usage of the term in our highest democratic bodies.
What do you think? Are parliamentarians under the influence of the French, or have they merely expanded the frontiers of English?
