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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

#31

Post by leephillips »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #11
psychometry wrote: post #2

Probably a good thing, considering how generally useless and obnoxious the Académie Française is. English speakers around the world have no need for a bunch of snooty, self-appointed busybodies trying to police language.

For other readers who want an example of this, look no further than how the Académie Française wants people to use the term "audio à la demande" instead of Podcast. They don't like loan words in general, and have a particular grudge against English loanwords. https://www.euronews.com/2020/05/27/france-invents-new-words...

I can understand the reason for this. English has established a hegemony over the world, especially in science and technology. They are fighting this, and don’t want their language polluted with an increasing conglomeration of English words that are often unnecessary, as equivalent words exist in French.

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

#32

Post by thaumasiotes »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #18
thaumasiotes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That definition seems difficult to project into the past, when the King of England might not speak English at all.

The joke I tried to make was an allusion to how the Metric System's units like the meter and the kilogram were all based on reference objects before they were truly modernized. So despite the reference objects losing tiny amounts of mass over the years, they were, by definition, what a kilogram should be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Prototype_of_the... Admittedly, I now realize that I in no way made t…

It doesn't come off as a joke because that is in fact how a language standard is usually defined. What made Parisian better than Provençal? What made Castilian better than Catalan?

What didn't make Parisian better than Catalan?

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

#33

Post by jraph »

leephillips wrote: post #30
jraph wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be obviously rejected. It is too English-y. Better use good French-sounding words like "jogging" and "parking". Have you heard how we are supposed to call a follower (on Twitter)? "Acolyte des illustres" This is not a joke, see for yourself this post dated "not a 1st of April": https://www.academie-francaise.fr/followers

In Spanish they use seguidores : literally followers. Why can’t they do something like that in French?

"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 from the French.

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

#34

Post by bsder »

Hokusai wrote: post #28
rarec wrote: post #4

English being a mess may be one of its charm points. Many languages in a trenchcoat, full of flavor and exceptions to its own rules and a headache to learn.

That same exceptions may cause an increased difficulty for dyslexics. The design of a language has effects on the society that speaks it. "So, how then have we ended up with the phenomenon that some people who speak both English and another language can be dyslexic in one, but not the other? The answer, it seems, is hidden in the characteristics of a language and its writing system. “The English writing system is so…

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.

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

#35

Post by jraph »

leephillips wrote: post #29
jraph wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are being downvoted, but your comment is sadly accurate and not exaggerated. The members of the Académie Française prescribe the language out of there asses instead of observing how people actually speak it and documenting the language according to this observation. Last example is the gender of "Covid". Unlike our Canadian friends, everybody in France started saying "le covid". Only for the Académie Française to…

> be consistent in your formal writing But consistent with what? With just yourself (that might be OK). The Académie provides a standard that you can be consistent with.

> But consistent with what? With just yourself (that might be OK).

Yep, that's what I meant. Within a (set of) text(s).

Each newspaper has its set of rules to follow to ensure consistency, so if you need consistency across an organization you can do this. English newspapers do that too.

> The Académie provides a standard that you can be consistent with.

...And that people don't consistently follow, because this standard does not reflect the reality of how the language is spoken or written. Almost by definition. Anyway, we are still waiting for their dictionary, which first edition should have been released maybe a century ago. They have one important task and they can't manage to finish it. Not a big issue though (except for the money thrown out of the window), if you need a dictionary that actually works you have the Robert or Wiktionary.

But we need documentation for the French language and that's why the Observatoire de la langue française exists (http://observatoire.francophonie.org/l-observatoire-de-la-la...).

Anyway, each individual is going to speak the language with their own quirks and particularities. Consistency across everybody is unreachable. But that's fine.

For Covid, the Académie has ironically been a source of inconsistency. Before their intervention, everybody had been saying "le covid". All was well. Now, usage is uncertain here.

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

#36

Post by toiletaccount »

dqv wrote: post #16
neither_color wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But each English speaking country could form its own academy and work together, which is how Spanish speaking countries do it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Academies_of_...

Right. I think people forget that there are many dialects of English.[0] I wouldn’t be surprised if linguists find a new “internet dialect” of English in the future as well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English

IANAL(inguist) but internet speak and memes have been studied for well over a decade by linguists. huge opportunity for publishing, and if they're lucky they might get hired by google. no i do not have an optimistic outlook for the field outside academia.

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

#37

Post by gerdesj »

bsder wrote: post #34
Hokusai wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That same exceptions may cause an increased difficulty for dyslexics. The design of a language has effects on the society that speaks it. "So, how then have we ended up with the phenomenon that some people who speak both English and another language can be dyslexic in one, but not the other? The answer, it seems, is hidden in the characteristics of a language and its writing system. “The English writing system is so…

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.

I gather that Hungarian is nigh on completely regular with respect to symbol to sound. I was told this by a Hungarian, speaking English. Hungarian does seem to have a lot of diacritics which implies to me a deliberate formalism.

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

#38

Post by pavlov »

bsder wrote: post #34
Hokusai wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That same exceptions may cause an increased difficulty for dyslexics. The design of a language has effects on the society that speaks it. "So, how then have we ended up with the phenomenon that some people who speak both English and another language can be dyslexic in one, but not the other? The answer, it seems, is hidden in the characteristics of a language and its writing system. “The English writing system is so…

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 respect, and that is an absurdly low bar considering the accumulated mess that is French orthography.

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

#39

Post by AnimalMuppet »

leephillips wrote: post #26
HenryKissinger wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans, for one, would never recognize the authority of a foreign body over their language.

They already do. The Americans who speak Spanish in Honduras, Colombia, Argentina, etc. recognize the authority of La Real Academia Española (even though their own brands of Spanish differ a bit from the kind spoken in Spain). This is, by the way, not a criticism of your use of “Americans”, which I and all English speakers use the same way.

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

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

#40

Post by vagrantJin »

jraph wrote: post #21
psychometry wrote: post #2

Probably a good thing, considering how generally useless and obnoxious the Académie Française is. English speakers around the world have no need for a bunch of snooty, self-appointed busybodies trying to police language.

You are being downvoted, but your comment is sadly accurate and not exaggerated. The members of the Académie Française prescribe the language out of there asses instead of observing how people actually speak it and documenting the language according to this observation. Last example is the gender of "Covid". Unlike our Canadian friends, everybody in France started saying "le covid". Only for the Académie Française to…

> 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?

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