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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

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.

BitwiseFool 5y ago
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-for-podcast-clickbait-and-chick-lit-in-war-on-franglais https://www.euronews.com/2020/05/27/france-invents-new-words...
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Do they have any practical authority? Why don't people tell them to mind their own business?
  - jraph 5y ago
    Because most people are not aware of the issues and actually see members of the Académie as people who have authority on the language. And yes, their ridiculous, expensive dressing does work.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > 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. I can think of worse ideas. It's always shocking to me how people think that there's a difference of some kind between "podcasts" and "audio files that you download from the internet". The name really seems to be doing serious damage to people's understanding of what's happening.
  - causality0 5y ago
    One is a subtype of the other. Would you insist on using "radio broadcast" instead of "morning show"? Aside from that, a podcast is still a podcast regardless of whether you downloaded it, streamed it, or distributed it over media like flash drives and compact discs. That's why it's useful to have a new noun.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    'Audio files that you download from the internet' could be absolutely anything - a song, an opera, a news broadcast, a test signal, a play... tells you nothing. 'Podcast' gives you a general idea of the medium and intent. That's useful. Otherwise we might as well call everything in the universe 'stuff' if you really don't like nouns that may have a slight overlap.
- leephillips 5y ago
  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.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    Why are they fighting it? What’s the problem has to be fought against? What will happen if they don’t fight? Is it just a weird xenophobic thing?
    - leephillips 5y ago
      Linguistic hegemony can be felt as related to cultural and political hegemony. Just as something would be lost if the world only had one language, it’s natural for people to ask why, if our language has a fine word for something already, we have to throw it out and use a foreign word instead. Language is bound up with history and culture. People have affection for these things, and don’t always want to toss them away willy-nilly. There also is the aesthetic dimension. It may be harder for us US people to understand. Ours is a dominant society, and English dominance is only gaining ground. We are not the ones losing our traditions. Preserving something of your heritage is not xenophobia.
      - wwtrv 5y ago
        Not sure if France, whose government eradicated many local languages and dialects in geographical France throughout the 19th & 20th centuries and is not very eager to protect what survives of them now is the best example in this case, though. e.g. in the mid 19th century 4/10 of all people in France spoke Occitan as their native language, how many do now?
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      It's not xenophobic, but it is nationalistic and atavistic. There was a time when French had a chance of establishing itself as a "Lingua Franca" (sic); French is still considered the primary language of international law, I believe. The distaste for loanwords seems to be a sort of harking back to what might have been.
- Jermaine_Jabi 5y ago
  And to complicate things further, the quebec office of the French language prefers podcasts be called balados i believe. At least that has the benefit of being somewhat short and fun to say (but not shorter than podcast and thus will not catch on)
jraph 5y ago
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 wake up a few months later, telling everyone to say "la covid", out of dubious and easily countered justifications. The members of the Académie are not even linguists. They are regular, if conservative, speakers at best. I don't know why I would even trust them on handling the language better than random people on the street. But actually, random people on the street are the ones defining the language. The right approach for covid would have been to say "ok, everybody here says "le covid". Canadians happen to say "la covid". Covid is therefore either feminine or masculine". Wifi has both genders in France and nobody died because of this. English is spoken a bit differently depending on the area of the world and there are rules which are discussed. So what. No academies will change that by the way. French is spoken slightly differently across France, never mind across the world. Just pick your style and your version, and be consistent in your formal writing if you value this kind of things. (And yes, you can split infinitives in English, obviously ;-))
- leephillips 5y ago
  > 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.
  - jraph 5y ago
    > 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-langue-francaise/ 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.
jjgreen 5y ago
I await their verdict on liker (to like on Facebook) with interest.
- jraph 5y ago
  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 https://www.academie-francaise.fr/followers
  - leephillips 5y ago
    In Spanish they use seguidores: literally followers. Why can’t they do something like that in French?
    - jraph 5y ago
      "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.
      - stan_rogers 5y ago
        "Follower" had the same connotation in English before its use in relation to social media.
        jraph 5y ago
        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 sealed the destiny of this word in the French language?

BitwiseFool 5y ago

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-for-podcast-clickbait-and-chick-lit-in-war-on-franglais https://www.euronews.com/2020/05/27/france-invents-new-words...

chrisseaton 5y ago
Do they have any practical authority? Why don't people tell them to mind their own business?
- jraph 5y ago
  Because most people are not aware of the issues and actually see members of the Académie as people who have authority on the language. And yes, their ridiculous, expensive dressing does work.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> 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. I can think of worse ideas. It's always shocking to me how people think that there's a difference of some kind between "podcasts" and "audio files that you download from the internet". The name really seems to be doing serious damage to people's understanding of what's happening.
- causality0 5y ago
  One is a subtype of the other. Would you insist on using "radio broadcast" instead of "morning show"? Aside from that, a podcast is still a podcast regardless of whether you downloaded it, streamed it, or distributed it over media like flash drives and compact discs. That's why it's useful to have a new noun.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  'Audio files that you download from the internet' could be absolutely anything - a song, an opera, a news broadcast, a test signal, a play... tells you nothing. 'Podcast' gives you a general idea of the medium and intent. That's useful. Otherwise we might as well call everything in the universe 'stuff' if you really don't like nouns that may have a slight overlap.
leephillips 5y ago
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.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Why are they fighting it? What’s the problem has to be fought against? What will happen if they don’t fight? Is it just a weird xenophobic thing?
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Linguistic hegemony can be felt as related to cultural and political hegemony. Just as something would be lost if the world only had one language, it’s natural for people to ask why, if our language has a fine word for something already, we have to throw it out and use a foreign word instead. Language is bound up with history and culture. People have affection for these things, and don’t always want to toss them away willy-nilly. There also is the aesthetic dimension. It may be harder for us US people to understand. Ours is a dominant society, and English dominance is only gaining ground. We are not the ones losing our traditions. Preserving something of your heritage is not xenophobia.
    - wwtrv 5y ago
      Not sure if France, whose government eradicated many local languages and dialects in geographical France throughout the 19th & 20th centuries and is not very eager to protect what survives of them now is the best example in this case, though. e.g. in the mid 19th century 4/10 of all people in France spoke Occitan as their native language, how many do now?
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    It's not xenophobic, but it is nationalistic and atavistic. There was a time when French had a chance of establishing itself as a "Lingua Franca" (sic); French is still considered the primary language of international law, I believe. The distaste for loanwords seems to be a sort of harking back to what might have been.
Jermaine_Jabi 5y ago
And to complicate things further, the quebec office of the French language prefers podcasts be called balados i believe. At least that has the benefit of being somewhat short and fun to say (but not shorter than podcast and thus will not catch on)

jraph 5y ago

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 wake up a few months later, telling everyone to say "la covid", out of dubious and easily countered justifications. The members of the Académie are not even linguists. They are regular, if conservative, speakers at best. I don't know why I would even trust them on handling the language better than random people on the street. But actually, random people on the street are the ones defining the language. The right approach for covid would have been to say "ok, everybody here says "le covid". Canadians happen to say "la covid". Covid is therefore either feminine or masculine". Wifi has both genders in France and nobody died because of this. English is spoken a bit differently depending on the area of the world and there are rules which are discussed. So what. No academies will change that by the way. French is spoken slightly differently across France, never mind across the world. Just pick your style and your version, and be consistent in your formal writing if you value this kind of things. (And yes, you can split infinitives in English, obviously ;-))

leephillips 5y ago
> 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.
- jraph 5y ago
  > 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-langue-francaise/ 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.

jjgreen 5y ago

I await their verdict on liker (to like on Facebook) with interest.

jraph 5y ago
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 https://www.academie-francaise.fr/followers
- leephillips 5y ago
  In Spanish they use seguidores: literally followers. Why can’t they do something like that in French?
  - jraph 5y ago
    "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.
    - stan_rogers 5y ago
      "Follower" had the same connotation in English before its use in relation to social media.
      - jraph 5y ago
        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 sealed the destiny of this word in the French language?