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The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

nytimes.com

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Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#41

Post by lucozade »

gerard2 wrote: post #26
msla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. But deciding what the prestige dialect is is inherently classist and racist, and reifying that cl…

Well nobody is saying that any language is wrong or not. It's just that the french language is kind of an international standard and some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world. But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french.

> Well nobody is saying that any language is wrong or not

The Academie have done something quite similar. Infamously, they argued against protection of regional French languages.

And I agree that they’re not arbitrary but only because they have always been dead set against imported words. They have a conservatism that has become more and more anachronistic.

I can’t say I have an issue with them, because they’re entirely ignorable, but there’s a risk that they’re seen as pathetic and that that view reflects poorly on France.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#42

Post by vixen99 »

dorfsmay wrote: post #30
msla wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. But deciding what the prestige dialect is is inherently classist and racist, and reifying that cl…

The idea is to sit back and make choices that make sense when there is a conflict or that are more aligned with the rest if the language, and avoid messes like "biweekly".

English speakers themselves are quite capable of sorting this kind of thing out for themselves without waiting for the deliberations of the appointed whose decisions they'll probably ignore anyway - as do the French, one gathers. Life and English are both messy but we muddle through.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#43

Post by gerard2 »

zapzupnz wrote: post #5
mc32 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Actually, Michel Serres (an immortal/academician) wrote something on this subject one year ago : http://www.academie-francaise.fr/la-bataille-ideologique.

I have tried to translate the relevant paragraph (the 5th) below :

"I will finish with the words ending with “-eur”. Should we say “auteure” or “autrice” or “auteuse”, etc. ? The question doesn’t stand, since the words ending with “-eur” are statistically divided in two partsm, one feminine, and the other masculine: “la douceur” [“the sweetness”] and “le malheur” [“the misfortune”], “l’horreur” [“the horror”] and “l’honneur” [“the honor”]. Thus, “Madame Jacqueline Unetelle, auteur de ce livre” can be said without malice. This simplicity can be seen in the following example: since the growing feminization of the medical profession the “doctoresse” term tend to disappear. “Madame Unetelle, docteur généraliste” si getting more and more common. Which is normal for a word ending by “-eur”. The arbitrary decision to distinguish, amongst those words, the names of the roles from all of the others, shows a subtle hypocrisy, as it allow to impose the imperium which was insufferable before."

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#44

Post by kuschku »

onli wrote: post #37
gerard2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well nobody is saying that any language is wrong or not. It's just that the french language is kind of an international standard and some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world. But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french.

> some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world Actually, no. Neither English, Spanish nor German have a dedicated powerful centralized institution that makes those decisions for the language, and I guess Chinese doesn't either? > But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french. French differs…

German actually has the Rat der Deutschen Sprache which is exactly this and makes exactly these decisions. As do many other languages.

The latest change they made was introducing the capital ẞ.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#45

Post by bisRepetita »

mykowebhn wrote: post #27
gerard2 wrote: post #20

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 regiona…

> The evolution of the french language is not dictated by the Académie, but rather by its use by the french people > the Académie is actively trying to find french equivalent for [convenient English words] that are coherent with the etymology of the french language Don't these two sentences you wrote contradict each other? From what I gather, you ARE saying that the French language IS dictated by the Académie, even t…

???? There is a huge gap between trying to influence the French language, and dictating it (forcing to use it). The Francophones at the end of the day decide what they use, they live as a free society.

I welcome people trying to creatively influence a language, whether they are normal people, cool teenagers, rappers and rock stars, Quebecois guardians of the French language, or people at the Academie Francaise.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#47

Post by gerard2 »

onli wrote: post #37
gerard2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well nobody is saying that any language is wrong or not. It's just that the french language is kind of an international standard and some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world. But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french.

> some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world Actually, no. Neither English, Spanish nor German have a dedicated powerful centralized institution that makes those decisions for the language, and I guess Chinese doesn't either? > But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french. French differs…

Ahah, what the hell are you talking about. Here is a very hidden list, found on an obscure website, that you might want to look into : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#48

Post by raverbashing »

the6threplicant wrote: post #39
macdice wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ah but they're Dutch, not French...

It seems Romance Language academies love to squabble and love their "exclusive club". Though to be honest I haven't heard of a similar push to exclude people in other Academies

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#49

Post by gerard2 »

onli wrote: post #37
gerard2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well nobody is saying that any language is wrong or not. It's just that the french language is kind of an international standard and some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world. But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french.

> some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world Actually, no. Neither English, Spanish nor German have a dedicated powerful centralized institution that makes those decisions for the language, and I guess Chinese doesn't either? > But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french. French differs…

The english language doesn't have such an institution, but what can you say about the unicity of the United Kingdom when half of the country speaks its own variant of the language and is asking for independence ?

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#50

Post by gerard2 »

lucozade wrote: post #41
gerard2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well nobody is saying that any language is wrong or not. It's just that the french language is kind of an international standard and some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world. But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french.

> Well nobody is saying that any language is wrong or not The Academie have done something quite similar. Infamously, they argued against protection of regional French languages. And I agree that they’re not arbitrary but only because they have always been dead set against imported words. They have a conservatism that has become more and more anachronistic. I can’t say I have an issue with them, because they’re entir…

Yes I agree with you that it's quite a conservative institution, and yes if I remember well it was basically created to promote the use of french over the regional dialects. But I didn't want foreign readers (especially americans and our friends across La Manche since they have no such institution) to think that the Academie was weighing on the french everyday life.
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