111–120 of 203 posts
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This list doesn't say what scope those regulators have. I only know the situation for German and there the "Council for German Orthography" only regulates orthography not language and word usage, so take this list with a grain of salt.
Also, they don't carry swords and wear $50k robes. Quite the difference.
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Well maybe. Maybe someone with a stronger literary background than me could make the argument that providing traductions of english words is just a plus to ensure the completion of the french language and not really an important part of the language evolution. But I just wanted to explain that french people do not feel like the way they speak and write is dictated by the academie.And surely their appreciation of the…
> traductions Lucky you, we do not have an academie anglaise...
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…
Being a non-native who moved to live in an English speaking country and then a Spanish speaking one (and reading in all 3 languages) I have to say I never stumbled onto Appeal to Authority (of regulatory bodies and or dogmatic dictionaries) in Anglosphere as I have when debating in Spanish and Portuguese (and I guess from this post, French)... Maybe this says more about the people I hang around with rather than cultural specificities of Romance people, but I can certainly feel the power wielded by these Regulatory bodies.
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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...
I don't think any of those have so much pomp and circumstance about their functioning and composition, though.
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…
In France seems they have no authority to change anything. They cannot order to a school teachers to teach new grammar, or to writers to stop using some letters or words.
> Actually, it is mostly old white men. So racism is OK?
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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…
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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> 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.
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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?
I think one of the reasons is elegance. As in coding, you try to minimise special cases, so whenever you need to introduce a new word you go back to the roots of the language and try to derive it from what's already there. In this way the chosen word is more integrated in the language (has more connections with other existing words), its pronunciation is more predictable, and its derivation follows the same rules as…
"yet, it's far more likely for the public to simply add an 'e' to the end of 'docteur"
It isn't "elegant" if the public is "far more likely" to do it a different way.