Arnaud Hoedt and Jérôme Piro will take a unique look at French spelling at FIAF online performance
Who: Arnaud Hoedt and Jérôme Piro
What: Live performance and Q&A from Belgium (in French)
Where: French Institute Alliance Française
When: Wednesday, April 22, free with advance RSVP, 5:00
Why: In 1771, Voltaire wrote, “The spelling in French books is ridiculous for the most part. Convention alone allows this incongruity to persist.” Two former Belgian teachers, Arnaud Hoedt — a self-described “linguist dilettante, philographer, pedagogue, true-false comedian, and academician eater” — and Jérôme Piro have taken that quote as inspiration for their two-person presentation La Convivialité: La Faute de l’Orthographe (roughly, Friendliness: The Spelling Error), an abridged version of which they will perform on April 22 at 5:00 via FIAF’s Facebook page and Zoom, followed by a Q&A. You need to register in advance here to receive the Zoom password and be able to ask questions. You can get a preview of their dissection of the French language by watching their May 2019 TEDx Talk and this preview, both of which are in French without English translation, as will be the FIAF program. And you thought American English spelling had problems.