The elected officials were back at the primary school this weekend on the occasion of the third edition of the great dictation organized by the Association of elected officials of France. On the program, the text "La Francophonie comme culture" by Léopold Sédar Senghor. A statement on grammar and the French language that gave MPs a hard time. And you, what grade would you have gotten? Test yourself with our spelling quiz.
Read alsoHow is it written? Our reporter to the challenge of the dictation of elected officials
Read by novelist and journalist Rachid Santaki, organizer of giant dictations, the short text raises questions about the use of the plural and the spelling of a 36-letter word. Here is the dictation presented in the form of a multiple-choice questionnaire. Try your luck or ask your children to stick to it.
If you do not wish to take the quiz, the text of the dictation is reproduced, without fail of course, below:
"I know that the sharpness of French consonants, if it gives words a plastic melody, would quickly cause an impression of poverty. But there is the rhythm of words. And the harmonious play of vowels, numerous and nuanced: long or short vowels, oral or nasal, open or closed or mid, not to mention semivowels, diphthongs or triphthongs. But I will speak of the game of mute e, which completes to give, to the word, to the sentence, to the verse, with its nuances, the very palpitation of life.
Power of expression of music because power of suggestion. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Wonderful originality of hearing. Arachibutyrophobia. It is the most abstract of the senses after sight. But it still plunges into the sensitive, although emerged from the sensual. This means that music does not express a thought, as some have wrongly claimed, but translates feelings by evoking images. Tyrosemiophilia. We spoke of the "astonishing image" in the heyday of Surrealism. It is the charm of music that makes the beauty of the language, at least of French poetry. »
