The past participle on the front page of "Le Monde", or the battle to simplify French

"The man was accused," or "The man was accused?" " The Marseillaise that I heard being sung," or "The Marseillaise that I heard being sung?" Ah, the delights of the French past participle! These four sentences are correct. While the first two, depending on the context, can be synonyms (the man is accused), the following two have different meanings: in one case, the national anthem was sung, in the other, a native of the Phocaean city sang a little song. Yes indeed: followed by an infinitive, the past participle of verbs of perception (seen, heard, etc.) only agrees if the direct object placed before it performs the action of the verb in the infinitive that follows (sing, here).

Some people advocate simplifying French grammar and spelling. For the Linguistes atterré·e·s collective , authors of Le Français va très bien, merci (Gallimard, 2023), the complexity of our spelling constitutes an unfair selection criterion, reinforcing the advantages of favored sociocultural categories. It would also be a waste of time for the national education system, which devotes eighty hours of each child's schooling to teaching only the past participle, with the well-known result: its agreement remains the bête noire of the French. Including those who are most attached to it: let's admit that sometimes two or three proofreaders at Le Monde scratch their heads together to determine which of the rules governing the participle applies in a given case. Sometimes, we even decide to modify a sentence in order to avoid a fight with Bescherelle. Not to mention that the newspaper's deadline is 10:30, and he doesn't wait.

The terrified Linguists are calling for a simplification of the agreement of the past participle, which would remain invariable when conjugated with "avoir", "the apple that I ate" becoming "the apple that I ate"; "the letter that I wrote" becoming that "that I wrote" - both versions, with and without agreement, remaining admissible.

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