Such is the small talk at the Dictée des Amériques, the francophone world’s premier international spelling championship. Every spring, contestants come to Quebec City to prove their mastery of the Gallic idiom at what’s been called the Olympics of the French language. But although it’s been compared to the National Spelling Bee, the American contest depicted in the award-winning documentary Spellbound, the Dictée des Amériques is a very different kind of event. It’s based on an old-fashioned French spelling drill, the dictée, in which students transcribe a short French text — typically a short story or essay — read aloud by their teacher. The challenge resides not merely in getting the words right but also in understanding their context, which often tells transcribers what ending a word should have or how a particular verb is conjugated. “It isn’t just about memory, but about the meaning of words and sentences,” says Noëlle Guilloton, linguistic adviser to the Dictée. “We’re not dealing with trained monkeys who know how a word is spelled, but whether it has an h or a silent e on the end.”
This year the Dictée, now in its thirteenth edition, has drawn 109 contestants from twenty-three nations. Many are from French-speaking countries; others are simply francophiles, holding out in isolated pockets in such disparate places as Addis Ababa, Santiago, and Phoenix. They cling to the language of Molière in a world where English is increasingly the lingua franca of all that is modern, hip, and transnational?—?popular culture, the Internet, business, professional life. One contestant is Sherif Zaki, a young doctor from Cairo whose medical practice is entirely in English. “French is not a language that I use on a daily basis,” he says. “[For me] it’s a language of culture — reading French books, seeing French movies, reading about French history.” Another competitor says simply, “French is the language of pleasure.”
The next morning, a yellow school bus drops off contestants at Quebec’s National Assembly building. It is here, in the ceremonial Red Room of the provincial legislature, that the Dictée will take place. People are wandering around the lobby, waiting for the contest to begin. Many are competing for the first time; others are veterans who return year after year. Some are amateurs, others professionals — translators, writers, editors, proofreaders. One, Francine Mercier, is a retired teacher and librarian from Belgium and a member of a spelling club called Le cercle d’or (The Circle of Gold). Her training regimen consists of reading the entire Petit Larousse illustrated dictionary — all 1,855 pages of it. She’s currently at the letter m. “It goes back to my childhood,” she says. “I’ve always loved French. I like reading. I like looking up words I don’t know.”
Leigh Foster, a college student from Connecticut, is part of a Dictée dynasty of sorts; her father, mother, and brother have all competed in previous years. Her friends are mystified by her interest in French spelling. “Most of my friends ask why I’m going up to Canada for the weekend,” she says. “And I’m, like, ‘Oh, there’s a dictée.’ ‘Oh great, what’s a dictée?’ I keep having to explain: ‘Well, some guy reads a paragraph out loud and you try to write it down without making any mistakes.’ And they just look at me like I’m insane.” Leigh’s father, Mark, is competing again this year. The family’s home is littered with giant sets of French dictionaries, won in previous Dictées.
“I suppose most people don’t see it this way, but it’s like driving a Porsche,” says Mark, who is a French teacher by profession. “When you’ve got a two-volume Larousse set, it means you’re somebody. And in our house we have three or four of them, so it’s pretty cool.”
Mark and I end up sitting next to each other — we’re both in the non-competitive category. We take our places in the balcony while the official contestants are seated below on the ground floor. Some are wearing T-shirts and jeans; others are in suits and ties. Everyone is given a colour-coded exam booklet, a commemorative pen, and a piece of foam board to write on. “Even if it’s Saturday, use your Sunday writing,” Sylvio Morin, the organizer of the event, tells the contestants. “It’s no fun when we have to use a microscope or consult a hieroglyphics expert to read your handwriting.” The event is being taped for international broadcast on the French tv5 network, so there are cables everywhere. The contestants are told to cross their legs so they won’t be hunched over too much — “so we can see your wonderful faces.”
The dictée wasn’t always considered fodder for prime-time TV. Although long a staple of traditional French education, it fell out of favour during the 1960s because its rigid emphasis on rule-based grammar was at odds with the free-spirited mood of the times. “In the dictée, there’s this notion of order — practically of dictatorship — where you impose a text, you impose a way of writing,” says Guilloton. “In the sixties and seventies, it was all about openness, free association, and freedom of expression, and this was the priority in teaching methods.”
But two decades later, Bernard Pivot, the host of a literary talk show in France, was looking for a word game he could use to encourage his audience to read more books. He hit upon the dictée. The first instalment of his televised dictations hit the airwaves in 1985 and, to his surprise, drew large audiences. “There is nothing less telegenic than a dictée,” says Pivot. “Nevertheless, it had a huge impact.”
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