
The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked - Jun8
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/03/world/europe/academie-francaise-france-deadlock.html
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gerard2
As a french guy, I sense some kind of disdain for the Académie Française that
I don't really get. The evolution of the french language is not dictated by
the Académie, but rather by its use by the french people, and the role of the
Académie is merely to decide what should or shouldn't be set in stone in the
dictionary. And in fact the usage of the french language is quite diverse,
even in France. You can have regional variation in words even in metropolitan
France, but if you take into account oversea territories like french
polynesia, Guyana or Mayotte it gets even more complicated. So yes, convenient
english words that are widely used by french people on a day-to-day basis are
not added right away in the dictionary and in fact the Académie is actively
trying to find french equivalent for them that are coherent with the etymology
of the french language, but it doesn't prevent french people from using them.
So I get that the immortals don't represent the french society and the never
have. But they do not really have any kind of political impact on the country,
the are just the bookkeepers of the français.

~~~
macdice
I think English speakers just find it a bit strange because our own language
is such a mess. In fact we don't even agree on how to spell basic words (maybe
due to a deliberate political act by Noah Webster? not sure), and there is
zero chance of international standardisation at this point, so we can't even
imagine an official body that does this. Perhaps that's why some people seem
to interpret it as "authoritarian". But in fact many other languages DO have a
body like this, and I think it makes perfect sense. I'm not sure if any others
have fancy swords and 17th century suits though...

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the6threplicant
But the Dutch have it as well and no one goes on and on about it.

~~~
bunderbunder
Many native English speakers have a certain obsession with France and the
French language that doesn't happen with other counties and their languages.
It's really strange. For example, in the US, speaking French is considered a
particular accomplishment and a sign of good breeding, much more so than with
any other second language.

I'm not sure what it's about. Maybe a holdover from French being the language
of the English aristocracy during the middle ages?

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richardhod
I think there are many reasons, including yours definitely true at least in
the cultural unconscious in England. Other possibly more important reasons for
Americans - whose white populations come from a wider cultural European base -
includes the pre-eminence of French culture in the C17-C18th and through the
C19th. Furniture, arts, music, food, wines and all sorts of things were
particularly refined there, from before and especially during the courts of
King Louis at Versailles through tothe golden decade in the late 19th century
in Paris. Everybody who had aspirations to be cultured would speak French: it
was the lingua franca after all! It was the language of diplomacy.
Aristocratic Russians spoke French rather than Russian. I suspect in the
Germanic states that was also this looking towards a rich and prosperous
France as well, to the extent of invading it once they gaind some sort of
cohesion and became a Prussian / German state in the late C19th. And remember
that more white Americans come from Germanic stock than English stock, which
is very readily observable in surnames and physiognomy.

I am not a historian and I'm quite happy to be corrected, but I'm suggesting
these as factors.

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xwolfi
It’s very anglo-american to take this so seriously. For us it’s a club of old
dudes who like to bask in past glories and write one of many dictionaries,
that nobody reads anyway.

Everyone understands french evolves with usage and must take some influence
abroad, and nobody ever refused a word because a 90yo grandpa was slow to add
it to their unpublished dictionary...

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Jun8
The Académie earlier this month "voted by an overwhelming majority to approve
a report compiled by three of its five female members that recommended ending
its centuries-old official ban on feminizing the names of professions and
trades."

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mc32
It’s interesting they’re taking the German route rather than the English route
which is to erode most feminine gendered trade words: waitress, stewardess,
actress, governess, baxter, etc. likewise the male equivalent have become
neutral so actor, governor, baker, waiter, etc don’t only apply to men.

~~~
zapzupnz
I wonder if the Académie is insisting on following correct etymology. A lot of
people are saying 'docteure' as a feminised form of 'docteur'; yet, if you go
back to the Latin 'doctor', derived from 'doceo' ("I teach"), and change
masculine agent noun suffix '-or' for the feminine agent noun suffix '-trix',
then the derived French form should be 'doctresse' (edit: apparently a word
'doctoresse' exists); yet, it's far more likely for the public to simply add
an 'e' to the end of 'docteur', which would surely offend the sensibilities of
the Académie.

On the one hand, the Académie could make a recommendation on such titles (and
it may have done, I don't know) and those would be carried into the French
public school curriculum, but the Office québécois de la langue française
(OQLF) in Quebec often has its own, separate ideas about how the French
language should evolve, and there could be two feminised terms for the same
thing, differing based on the region.

Not to mention the other Francophone regions and nations whose curricula
aren't tied to the French or Québécois ones.

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freddie_mercury
This isn't snark, I'm honestly trying to understand: Why is what Latin did
relevant for French in the 21st century? Didn't they branch like 1,500 years
ago?

When the French created a new word for, I dunno, "computer" or whatever, they
didn't go back to Latin roots to figure out what it should be...or did they?

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comex
I don’t know French, but according to Wiktionary the main French word for
“computer” is “ordinateur”, which is:

> From Latin ordinator (“one who orders”), from ōrdinō (“to order, to
> organize”).

> In its application to computing, it was coined by the professor of philology
> Jacques Perret in a letter dated 16 April 1955, in response to a request
> from IBM France, who believed the word calculateur was too restrictive in
> light of the possibilities of these machines (this is a very rare example of
> the creation of a neologism authenticated by dated letter).

The older, presumably preexisting definition is “one who performs an
ordination ceremony”, which is entirely unrelated, so I’d expect that Perret
did look back to Latin when coining it as a word for “computer”.

Edit: I’m wrong, it’s a bit more complicated than that. According to this
source, the word was coined from a differently-spelled rare word, ordonnateur:

[https://blogs.transparent.com/french/the-origin-of-
lordinate...](https://blogs.transparent.com/french/the-origin-of-lordinateur-
computers-in-french/)

~~~
robocat
Spanish (in Spain) is El ordenador - I'm guessing mimicking the French?

Lovely comment on some of the different words for computer in a variety of
languages:

[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:computer](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Talk:computer)

~~~
gonzus
To complicate things even further, although "ordenador" may be the official
word in Spanish for "computer", it is merrily ignored in many countries, which
simply will use the atrocious neologism "computador". I know, I do. :-)

~~~
harperlee
But doesn’t this directly follow the latin computare?

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qalmakka
I never got the hang of this kind of myopic, senseless traditionalism. If
Latin didn't let himself be bastardised with the influences of Frankish and
Gaulish there wouldn't be any French.

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realusername
Most European countries have a similar language board, English is more an
exception than anything else.

And there's not much Gaulish influence in French, here is the full (and small)
list of words originating from Gaulish:
[https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Mots_en_fran%C...](https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Mots_en_fran%C3%A7ais_issus_d%E2%80%99un_mot_en_gaulois)

~~~
gpvos
I don't think any of those have so much pomp and circumstance about their
functioning and composition, though.

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gerard2
Stop hating on our classy habit vert. French people like having a history, as
complex, bloody and sometime shameful it is. We are an old country and we have
traditions. The english people have their royal family, the US have their
rusty nuclear warheads and we have the institutions de la république.

~~~
Ericson2314
They all have rusty nukes shhhh.

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xondono
relevant to the discussion:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qT8ZYewYEY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qT8ZYewYEY)

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supergirl
pathetic article. what's with this tone of superiority? I'm not even french
and I had to stop reading it.

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enahs-sf
Reading the title, I thought to myself, there’s a dining philosophers joke to
be made, but I can’t seem to Sartre it out...

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grumpydba
> Actually, it is mostly old white men.

So racism is OK?

~~~
29ssyg
France is a white country, so I don't know what's so surprising about having
only white people there. The nytimes is trying to apply American standards to
everything.

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grumpydba
I find American identity politics to be nefarious. And people in France are
trying very hard to import them here.

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hirundo
This is an authoritarian project. It attempts to impose authority in an area
that operates fine or better without it, by people with no particular claim to
authority in the matter beyond membership in their own club. How is France
improved by having an official government dictionary? For the authoritarian it
seems that the proper role of the state to reduce any form of uncertainty in
life, and positive uncertainty is oxymoronic.

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gerard2
Not it really isn't. I think every european country has a similar institution.
At least, italians (Accademia della Crusca) and germans (Deutsche Akademie für
Sprache und Dichtung) do. I think, that's because european countries are
fusions of smaller regions and kingdoms which had their own language each, and
at some point in time it was necessary to have a unique language for the
economic development of the country. But for the authoritarian aspect, you do
not have any kind of punishment for not following the prescription of the
Académie, you can speak french in whatever way you like as long as the people
in front of you understand you. I don't get where you get your strong feelings
against the Académie from.

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pintxo
The relevant entity for German is [1]. Apparently created after or during the
struggle for an official reform of the language in the 90 and early 2000.

[1]
[https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_für_deutsche_Rechtschrei...](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_für_deutsche_Rechtschreibung)

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4ad
I laugh at this useless institution, but then I realize that many "real"
institutions are probably just as useless and anachronistic as this particular
one.

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bernardv
Truly a very French bunch of elitist old farts, l’academie.

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magicmouse
The Latin language was destroyed by pompous academicians who refused to allow
the language to grow organically. The Academie Francaise has set in motion the
destruction of the importance of the french language, because if you don't
allow flexibility in your language, eventually people abandon it. Dante's
Inferno was i believe one of the first novels done in the vernacular Italian.
They can claim they are protecting it, but it will be washed away like a
sandcastle because they don't see the forces at work from their little chairs.

They won't even let words in like "Computer". or CPU. Sorry, but when was the
last time anyone cared about computer research in the french language? They
are crippling themselves by not adopting some english. The Japanese managed to
adopt Elevator (e-re-be-ta), because didn't have the concept before Mr. Otis,
so acknowledging inventions external to your country is part of not living on
an island.

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seszett
> _They won 't even let words in like "Computer". or CPU_

What do you mean? French has a perfectly acceptable word for computer
("ordinateur") and CPU is called CPU in French. Or _processeur_. Elevator is
_ascenceur_ , and I don't see a problem with that?

