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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

#191

Post by p0nce »

jkepler wrote: post #178
p0nce wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

It's a collective effort!

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#192

Post by paulddraper »

sfRattan wrote: post #14
paulddraper wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though the grammatical gender of words have a lot of oddities too. E.g. German Maedchen (girl) is the neuter gender.

That particular example isn't really an oddity; it's a pattern. The "-chen" used in "Mädchen" is a suffix/diminutive and it nearly always transforms the original word to the neuter gender. The original word modified in this particular case has fallen out of common use AFAIK, so it stands out as unusual if you aren't looking more broadly.

Sure. The point is that in languages with grammatical gender, the grammatical gender doesn't necessarily match the semantic gender anyway. (e.g. -chen)

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#193

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

French guy here.

The problem I think most of us have with the Académie Française is the disconnect between their decisions and the reality of the french language. Not that they are completely against change, but that they are regularly missing the point when they actually make changes.

An example is about CD-ROM. They proposed to rewrite it "cédérom". Basically turning an acronym into a completely made up word. It is ridiculous in many ways. CD-ROM is already a stupid word: both audio CDs and CD-ROMs are read only memory, so why keep that? We already had a word for audio CDs that was in common use: "disque compact", which is perfectly acceptable french, why not build on that? We translated many computer-related words in the past with great success: disquette (floppy disk), mémoire vive (RAM), logiciel (software), etc...

Sometimes, a new french translation appears that really sound good. Courriel is one of them: it sounds good and it is definitely french (from courrier (mail) and éléctronique (electronic)). And guess what... it comes from Quebec, like many other good proposals.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#194

Post by 4ad »

gerard2 wrote: post #114
gpvos wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Ah, yes, the good old whataboutism.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#195

Post by Beldin »

GuB-42 wrote: post #193
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…

French guy here. The problem I think most of us have with the Académie Française is the disconnect between their decisions and the reality of the french language. Not that they are completely against change, but that they are regularly missing the point when they actually make changes. An example is about CD-ROM. They proposed to rewrite it "cédérom". Basically turning an acronym into a completely made up word. It is…

Interesting... when I asked a few years ago, I was told by a French guy that nobody uses courriel in real life and that I'd sound better if I used 'mail' (in french pronunciation).

He was from île de paris; your mileage may vary.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#196

Post by bluGill »

School-Cotton wrote: post #188
fifnir wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so self evident that I don't know where to begin... Language has rules (They were taught to us in school). They might change over time but they still exist. I'm sure that many "could of"s have been made official over the eons in all languages, (thanks to general ignorance/incompetence/refusal to learn) but that doesn't mean we should respect "couldofers" (see? I made up a word, I'm not that rigid) as if they're…

Yes, you were taught a set of language rules in school. By what objective standard are those rules correct? "Because I learned them in school" isn't a good answer. I also learned in school that it's necessary to raise one's hand before speaking, to ask an authority figure's permission before using the bathroom, and to write math proofs in a two-column format. The point is that plenty of things you learn in school are…

The standard for correct rules: when two people communicate they emerge at the end with a shared mental model of the subject.

People make up languages all the time. You can write your own rules to make the above grammar be instructions on getting to my village. You could write a different set of rules that make it an order to make my roast duck for dinner. (you can have fun coming up with even more bizarre things that it could mean under some rule system)

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#197

Post by School-Cotton »

bluGill wrote: post #196
School-Cotton wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you were taught a set of language rules in school. By what objective standard are those rules correct? "Because I learned them in school" isn't a good answer. I also learned in school that it's necessary to raise one's hand before speaking, to ask an authority figure's permission before using the bathroom, and to write math proofs in a two-column format. The point is that plenty of things you learn in school are…

The standard for correct rules: when two people communicate they emerge at the end with a shared mental model of the subject. People make up languages all the time. You can write your own rules to make the above grammar be instructions on getting to my village. You could write a different set of rules that make it an order to make my roast duck for dinner. (you can have fun coming up with even more bizarre things tha…

> The standard for correct rules: when two people communicate they emerge at the end with a shared mental model of the subject.

By this standard, using "their", "there", and "they're" or "your" and "you're" completely randomly is fine -- it's almost impossible for it to cause misunderstanding.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#198

Post by GuB-42 »

Beldin wrote: post #195
GuB-42 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French guy here. The problem I think most of us have with the Académie Française is the disconnect between their decisions and the reality of the french language. Not that they are completely against change, but that they are regularly missing the point when they actually make changes. An example is about CD-ROM. They proposed to rewrite it "cédérom". Basically turning an acronym into a completely made up word. It is…

Interesting... when I asked a few years ago, I was told by a French guy that nobody uses courriel in real life and that I'd sound better if I used 'mail' (in french pronunciation). He was from île de paris; your mileage may vary.

He is right. We all use "mail". And it always means email.

"Courriel", or its complete form "courrier éléctronique" is more common in formal, written conversation.

I think the translation came up too late. An early french proposal was to use the "mél" abbreviation which is terrible and never took off... It is still preferred by the Académie Française, another case of being completely off.

BTW, it is "Île de France", the region where Paris is ;) But the situation is the same for all of continental France. I don't know about the overseas and other French-speaking countries.

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#199

Post by bluGill »

School-Cotton wrote: post #197
bluGill wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard for correct rules: when two people communicate they emerge at the end with a shared mental model of the subject. People make up languages all the time. You can write your own rules to make the above grammar be instructions on getting to my village. You could write a different set of rules that make it an order to make my roast duck for dinner. (you can have fun coming up with even more bizarre things tha…

> The standard for correct rules: when two people communicate they emerge at the end with a shared mental model of the subject. By this standard, using "their", "there", and "they're" or "your" and "you're" completely randomly is fine -- it's almost impossible for it to cause misunderstanding.

In fact this is false. Even though in verbal speech they are the same, in written they are different. I have known people who didn't understand something written because the wrong word was written, once someone read it out loud they understood it.

Of course there is no reason the above people couldn't get used to one spelling if they changed the rules. We just need to have universal agreement to change the rules. (I have no clue how you would do that)

Re: The Guardians of the French Language Are Deadlocked

#200

Post by cbnotfromthere »

Beldin wrote: post #195
GuB-42 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French guy here. The problem I think most of us have with the Académie Française is the disconnect between their decisions and the reality of the french language. Not that they are completely against change, but that they are regularly missing the point when they actually make changes. An example is about CD-ROM. They proposed to rewrite it "cédérom". Basically turning an acronym into a completely made up word. It is…

Interesting... when I asked a few years ago, I was told by a French guy that nobody uses courriel in real life and that I'd sound better if I used 'mail' (in french pronunciation). He was from île de paris; your mileage may vary.

"He was from île de paris"

There is no "île de Paris" in France.

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