The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked • Hacker News Board

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#81

Post by ginko » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:17 AM UTC

onli wrote: post #67

seszett wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Among this list, only English doesn't have an institution. All three other languages (Spanish, German and Chinese) have multiple institutions, basically one per country that speaks the language, just like French.

German does not have such an institution - I am German and that's just a fact. Spanish might have such an institution, but it evidently does not work - Mexican Spanish != Spanish Spanish != .... Note that I did not say it does not exist, I said there is no "powerful centralized" instance deciding this. I stand to this judgement, also for Spanish. The extent of the actual influence wielded by the academie francaise se…

There is the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung[1] which oversees German orthography. The German orthography reform of 1996 was overseen by it's predecessor organization, the Internationale Arbeitskreis für Rechtschreibreform. An international orthography reform like that would be pretty much unthinkable for the English language.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_f%C3%BCr_deutsche_Rechtsch...

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#82

Post by magicmouse » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:17 AM UTC

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.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#83

Post by bryanrasmussen » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

jcelerier wrote: post #74

vixen99 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Life and English are both messy but we muddle through. As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning.

muddling through, I have managed to deduce that by 'As a french,' you mean that you are French, am I correct?

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#84

Post by Arnt » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

magicmouse wrote: post #82

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 i…

Who were the pompous academics who destroyed Latin and what did they do, exactly?

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#85

Post by seszett » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #7

zapzupnz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s a good question. Hopefully they choose one or the other and not choose to make up a totally synthetic and nonsense suffix (as when they want to invent new French words so as not to corrupt French with loan words (have they come up with a native word for sushi, by the way?)

French is almost completely impervious to "totally synthetic" suffices or words, almost all new vocabulary is created from Latin (or Greek for the more technical or scientific words) when it's not borrowed from a foreign language. Creating a new suffix from scratch actually sounds like more of an American answer to the "gender problem".

There is also no reason to invent a word to replace "sushi", just as nobody is advocating for a replacement for "fish and chips" or "hamburger".

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#86

Post by raverbashing » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:28 AM UTC

magicmouse wrote: post #82

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 i…

> They won't even let words in like "Computer". or CPU

To be honest that point is moot, they have words for the common terms, and if it's too esoteric it will be either used as-is or adapted.

The standardization has an importance only where the formal version is "needed" (but it's not like no one can use a foreign word if it's needed)

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#87

Post by labster » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

magicmouse wrote: post #82

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 i…

An even better example Japanese example is ググる ("to google") which managed to make it in the closed class of verbs -- and it's even written in two different character sets!

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#88

Post by seszett » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

magicmouse wrote: post #82

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 i…

> 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?

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#89

Post by raverbashing » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:34 AM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #38

dorfsmay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Or "inflammable". Or "Aural" and "Oral" Or Ox > Oxen, Fox > Foxes

None of those are accidents, or maybe all of those are accidents, like it is mostly common in languages

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#90

Post by Insanity » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #65

the6threplicant wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's because we mostly just ignore them.

And I think that the Dutch is at least standardized in the same way for Belgium and the Netherlands. (Het groene boekje, regarding spelling, is definitely shared).