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Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

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Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#51

Post by leephillips »

jraph wrote: post #49
stan_rogers wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Follower" had the same connotation in English before its use in relation to social media.

I believe you, and I can't explain why it did work for English speakers and not for the French ones. Maybe I'm wrong in my hypothesis by the way, that's just how I feel it. Follower does not bear this pejorative meaning for French people. Maybe Twitter did push for this word in English and it worked? And then people who translated Twitter's interface in French and decided to leave follower "untranslated" actually sea…

Although it can have that connotation in English, it has to be activated by context: “Jim is not a leader, he’s a follower”. But in phrases like “a follower of the Chicago school of economics” it’s neutral. Maybe in French the negative connotation is more tightly bound to the word.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#52

Post by leephillips »

Jtsummers wrote: post #50
leephillips wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My two Spanish teachers, who live in two different Latin American countries, use the RAE as a fallback authority in cases where it’s not clear what usage is preferred. So it is kind of a weak authority. And, believe it or not, the concept of correctness in language exists in Latin America, regardless of what the “locals” speak, and it matters to a lot of people, who love their language and treat it with respect.

My Spanish teachers from Argentina did the same. When coming across words and phrases that they were unfamiliar with (hey, they don't have the dictionary memorized either) they almost always sent me something later (or brought it up in the next session) citing RAE or a source that itself cited RAE.

Also, the best online dictionary for Spanish is the excellent one at the RAE site (although it only works once you know enough Spanish to read the definitions!).

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#53

Post by jraph »

leephillips wrote: post #51
jraph wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you, and I can't explain why it did work for English speakers and not for the French ones. Maybe I'm wrong in my hypothesis by the way, that's just how I feel it. Follower does not bear this pejorative meaning for French people. Maybe Twitter did push for this word in English and it worked? And then people who translated Twitter's interface in French and decided to leave follower "untranslated" actually sea…

Although it can have that connotation in English, it has to be activated by context: “Jim is not a leader, he’s a follower”. But in phrases like “a follower of the Chicago school of economics” it’s neutral. Maybe in French the negative connotation is more tightly bound to the word.

Interesting. No, indeed, we can't use suiveur neutrally like this in French as far as I know.

We'd probably say un étudiant or une étudiante (a student) in this specific case. Or un membre (a member).

But we actually can follow a lesson (suivre un cours) without it being pejorative, so while the noun is probably always pejorative, the verb is generally not if not activated by context, as you say.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#54

Post by jraph »

Jtsummers wrote: post #48
vagrantJin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Covid is therefore either feminine or masculine". Wifi has both genders in France and nobody died because of this. Im not a native English speaker so I need to clarify my confusion. I take it WIFI is a noun. How is gender prescribed to a noun?

English doesn't have a notion of gendered nouns. In a lot of other European languages, however, they have them. I don't know French so can't draw any examples from it, but in Italian "tavolo" (table) is masculine while "sedia" (chair) is feminine. The reason for that is, at this point in time, by definition of the language. However, when creating novel words or bringing in loanwords the choice is largely arbitrary. G…

Exactly.

And so while "tavolo" in Italian is masculine, our table is feminine. And while our planète is feminine, Spanish's planeta ends with an A and is masculine.

English generally doesn't have genders on common words, except for cases like vehicles that can be found used as feminine (ship, car, …) [1], but that's fairly anecdotal.

[1] https://www.antidote.info/en/blog/reports/metaphorical-gende...

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#55

Post by AnimalMuppet »

leephillips wrote: post #46
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt that (many) Americans in any Latin American country recognize any "authority" on the language, other than what the locals speak.

My two Spanish teachers, who live in two different Latin American countries, use the RAE as a fallback authority in cases where it’s not clear what usage is preferred. So it is kind of a weak authority. And, believe it or not, the concept of correctness in language exists in Latin America, regardless of what the “locals” speak, and it matters to a lot of people, who love their language and treat it with respect.

Sure, the Spanish teachers do. The Americans? I still doubt it.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#56

Post by leephillips »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #55
leephillips wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My two Spanish teachers, who live in two different Latin American countries, use the RAE as a fallback authority in cases where it’s not clear what usage is preferred. So it is kind of a weak authority. And, believe it or not, the concept of correctness in language exists in Latin America, regardless of what the “locals” speak, and it matters to a lot of people, who love their language and treat it with respect.

Sure, the Spanish teachers do. The Americans? I still doubt it.

Well, but the baker and the policeman in Paris are not preoccupied with conforming their speech to the dictates of the French Academy, either. But it is still recognized as a kind of authority for many purposes, although, I’m sure, often begrudgingly.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#57

Post by [deleted] »

stan_rogers wrote: post #43
jraph wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"suiveur", in French, is connoted pejoratively and means "someone without initiative". So I guess most people would find it uncomfortable to use this term in this context. But there's a word that works great for this in French and that everybody who needs it already understands well: follower. It's borrowed from English, like so many other words. It's only fair, a big part of the English vocabulary directly comes fro…

"Follower" had the same connotation in English before its use in relation to social media.

[deleted]

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#58

Post by andrewzah »

Really, it's for the better. Languages change naturally over time and institutions like for French or Korean have little bearing on that. It's better to have style -guides- than to try and enforce usages of a language that differ from how it's actually used in real life.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#59

Post by smnrchrds »

pavlov wrote: post #38
bsder wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language is more regular? I guess maybe Korean (Hangul is phonetic, no?). All the romance languages are weird. You can't even go from pronunciation to characters in Chinese or Japanese due to Kanji. Most of the Cyrillic languages are just as bad.

Spanish, Italian and German spellings are a lot more regular than English. You can almost always pronounce a word correctly even if you’ve only seen it written. English stumbles even with basic vowels. (After speaking this language for 30 years, I’m still unsure whether “pear” rhymes with “bear” or “fear”! This kind of thing doesn’t happen in any of the other four languages I know.) Even French beats English in this…

My favourite example: "banana" has three a's, no two of which are pronounced the same.

Re: Why isn’t there an English Academy? Blame the plague

#60

Post by fanf2 »

js2 wrote: post #42
pavlov wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish, Italian and German spellings are a lot more regular than English. You can almost always pronounce a word correctly even if you’ve only seen it written. English stumbles even with basic vowels. (After speaking this language for 30 years, I’m still unsure whether “pear” rhymes with “bear” or “fear”! This kind of thing doesn’t happen in any of the other four languages I know.) Even French beats English in this…

Pear (along with pair and pare) rhymes with bear (and bare). Peer rhymes with fear (and beer). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfz3kFNVopk (Gallagher and English language; the pronunciation part starts at 1:50.) So and do don't even rhyme, nor do sew and dew! WTF? Then there's the words the U.K. and the U.S. don't agree on like route (in the U.K. it rhymes with root, in the U.S. usually, but not always, with out). I…

In my version of English, a router that passes packets rhymes with root, and a router that carves wood rhymes with out.
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