[Avodah] NishmaBlog: Pardon my French! "Bon Matin" and "Franglais"

[Micha Berger]

Blog entry by RRW (CC-ed):

    Pardon my French! "Bon Matin" and "Franglais"
    http://nishmablog.blogspot.com/2011/02/pardon-my-french-bon-matin-and.html

    It seems no matter from whence my French-speaking friends come -
    be it France, Belgium, Canada or Switzerland - they universally
    correct me when I wish them "Bon Matin!"

    Unlike most French-Speakers who are often curt - one kind Belgian
    fellow gently advised me at a Hotel in the Mountains - "Matin is
    indeed French for Morning, but we do NOT say 'Bon Matin'".

    Well, why not? How does the universe of French Speakers intuitively
    know that this is "Bad French"? AFAICT, they agree that there is
    no specific RULE that prohibits greeting "Bon Matin, yet it's KNOWN
    that this "Franglais-ism" will NOT pass for French. Jamais! "Ils ne
    passeront pas!"

    Yet, we have Halachic "Progressives" who push the Franglais envelope
    daily, they insist that absent any specific rule, it is permitted
    to speak as one wishes in the field of Halachah. Strange - n'est-ce
    pas? - to incorporate foreign idioms into French simply because there
    is no contrary rule. They seem to say that - without a definite rule
    to the contrary, why- "C'est un moreceau de gateau!"

    As my Choveir R Micha Berger has stated [really: paraphrased besheim
    R' Dr Moshe Koppel, Metahalakhah, pg 39 and elsewhere -mb], Halachah
    has its own language - or technical jargon - and we CAN intuitively
    know Franglais from authentic Francais even "sans" a contrary rule.

Here is how I summarized RMK's position here in the past:

There are two ways to learn a language: The native speaker doesn't learn
rules of grammar before using them, he just knows what "sounds right". In
contrast, an immigrant builds his sentences by using formalized rules,
learning such terms as "past imperfect" and memorizing the forms that fit
each category. R' Koppel notes that the rules can never perfectly capture
the full right vs wrong. A poet has to know when one can take license.

He argues that halakhah is similarly best transmitted by creating
"native speakers". It is only due to loss of our progressive loss of the
Sinai culture with each generation that we need to rely on transmitting
codified rules. (RMK notes in a footnote the connection between this
idea and some ideas in R' Dr Haym Soloveitchik's essay "Rupture and
Reconstruction", Tradition, Summer 1994.) Earlier cited cases are the
loss of culture that occurred with Moshe Rabbeinu's death, when 300
halakhos were forgotten, and Osniel ben Kenaz reestablished them --
chazar veyasdum. Similarly the reestablishment of numerous dinim by
Anshei Keneses haGedolah after the return from the Babylonian exile --
shakhechum vechazar veyasdum. Leyaseid, he suggests, is this codification.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes
micha at aishdas.org        exactly the right measure of himself,  and
http://www.aishdas.org   holds a just balance between what he can
Fax: (270) 514-1507      acquire and what he can use." - Peter Latham