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

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#171

Post by jkepler » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #133

anonu wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears wasteful. Being deadlocked, spending multiples of $100k on ceremonies. The group should be promoting the language and getting people excited about it's use. Instead, French speakers feel guilty when they say 'email' instead of 'courriel' because an ineffectual body refused to admit an Englishism into the language. This holds the language back. Languages are fluid, living breathing things and that aspect sh…

> French speakers feel guilty when they say 'email' instead of 'courriel' "Courriel" is the word proposed by the Québec institution (OQLF). It is used in France as well, but not as much as "email", which nobody feels guilty about. Courriel is also a newly coined word, and an elegant one as well, so it fits right into your "languages are fluid, living breathing things" remark.

My experience here in France has been folks simply use "mail" when speaking of emails, rather than "email" or "courriel". I've run across "courriel" a handful of times in four years, and almost never heard French friends use the word "email". Personally, I like "courriel" as a word, but given that "mail" is the most used word in my francophone circles for email, I tend to say "mail" like my friends and colleagues do.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#172

Post by greatpatton » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 2:13 PM 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…

Always amazed when people with absolutely no knowledge of a subject tend to come out with a final statement. (2 minutes to use google translate and to read the elevator page of Wkipedia just show how clueless you are...).

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#173

Post by mikeash » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

plopz wrote: post #154

benj111 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In fact we don't even agree on how to spell basic words" Yes the US seemed to go with Webster, while the rest of the anglosphere went with Johnson. Not quite as simple as that, as there were a few different waves of reform. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_re...

And there are fun ones like the etymology of aluminum which went through spellings like a ping pong.

Just yesterday, I ran into trouble while searching for noise cancelling headphones because the site where I was searching had it spelled “canceling” for some of the products and the search wasn’t fuzzy enough to show both.

See also: “Inflammable means flammable? What a country!”

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#174

Post by jkepler » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

pilsetnieks wrote: post #141

ElBarto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should feel very guilty of confusing "numerique" and "digital" all the time. In French, 'numerique' generally means 'digital' and 'digital' only means related to fingers (e.g. fingerprint is 'empreinte digitale').

In English "digital" also means related to fingers (because your hand has 5 digits.)

Yes, in contrast to "manual" (related to the hand), but in regular usage most people think of digital as a reference to non-analog technologies, not a reference to their fingers.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#175

Post by xwolfi » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #52

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…

I think it might have something to do with their role of "protecting France from “brainless Globish” and the “deadly snobbery of Anglo-American,” as a member spat out in a speech last month"

Yeah it bothers a lot of french that “globish” is english-based. I bet you my arm that if the world tried to communicate poorly in french, we would bask in the glory of our beautiful international language :D

My fellow countrymen who think globish is a dumbed down version of english have a point, but that it gave rise to millions able to read english litterature somewhat they cannot deny.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#176

Post by Retra » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

akdor1154 wrote: post #92

jcelerier wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning. Huh I never noticed this peculiarity of English before. "I am an Italian/Australian/Canadian" - fine. "I am an English/French/Swedish" - hell no. Traditionally you'd say Frenchman, nowadays you'd avoid the gender and use "I am French" directly as an adjective. Anyone know why -an words can be used as a noun and -sh words can't?

"As a french person" would be the typical genderless replacement, not restructuring the sentence entirely.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#177

Post by Retra » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #152

fifnir wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what rubs MY nose? When people misuse language and then treat any correction as something snobby. Typical argument from someone who just wrote "could of", or mixed you're with your: "Oh but language is to communicate, and you understood what I'm saying so it worked so stop being snobby about it" gah, makes my blood boil

You haven’t explained what’s actually wrong with their argument. Language is a human cultural phenomenon, it’s not math or programming. Who are you to say whether it’s right or wrong? There is a certain variety of English that a certain social class of people have decided is “standard”, but why does that make it objectively correct?

Rulez of texn: Say prolly, cuz it kina save much time lol. Ifn you needa be more clear, mebes add xtra letter to and fro.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#178

Post by jkepler » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

p0nce wrote: post #128

mykowebhn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The effort of the Academy to create new words top-down (partly) inspired us to make a parodic website: https://bitoduc.fr/ I think french rappers (which are amazing imho) create more words successfully because they have a mechanics for popularizing the new words. They can have a word adopted with one song. My problem with the Academy is rather simple, if an entire profession use "deadlock" successfully, why complicat…

I glanced at your list, and thought this one in particular was brilliant: SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) SAVON (Simple Accès Vers Objets Nuageux)

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#179

Post by mywittyname » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

baud147258 wrote: post #151

mywittyname wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when I'm cooking, I use French terms to describe what I want. It just makes sense this way because the terms are just more specific than if they were translated, i.e., brunoise, mirepoix, chiffonade, etc.

You and I don't have the same level of cooking, I guess; I've never used any of those terms.

Well, I did work in a professional kitchen for about four years.

But cooking shows, YouTube videos, and basic cookbooks in America use those terms. I found definitions for mirepoix and chiffonade in Better Homes & Gardening cookbook, which is as white-bread American as it comes (along with many, many other French words).

My point was that the culture that produces an innovation ends up defining the terminology because it's easier to use the single term the innovators came up with in their language rather than using long, translated definition for the term. "Bug" instead of "issue when trying to perform a specific action" is not unlike "saute" instead of "fry at high heat stirring or shaking the pan vigorously." I'm not going to say, "jump the onions up."

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#180

Post by chosenbreed37 » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #173

plopz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there are fun ones like the etymology of aluminum which went through spellings like a ping pong.

Just yesterday, I ran into trouble while searching for noise cancelling headphones because the site where I was searching had it spelled “canceling” for some of the products and the search wasn’t fuzzy enough to show both. See also: “Inflammable means flammable? What a country!”

> Just yesterday, I ran into trouble while searching for noise cancelling headphones because the site where I was searching had it spelled “canceling” for some of the products and the search wasn’t fuzzy enough to show both.

'Canceling'? That looks like a spelling mistake :-)