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France has a mechanism to try to stop this: the Académie Française [1] that publishes the official French dictionary. Rather than simply recording language as i
by sweezyjeezy 2y ago
France has a mechanism to try to stop this: the Académie Française [1] that publishes the official French dictionary. Rather than simply recording language as its used, they do actively try to steer it. They're most well known for trying to suppress anglicisms, e.g. in the early 2000s they pushed 'courriel' instead of 'email'. That one did not work out - email is much more common, and finally entered the dictionary in 2009 (to this day labelled 'anglicism' and discouraged over 'mél').
FWIW the German equivalent is much less prescriptive, it only weighs in on grammar / punctuation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_Fran%C3%A7aise
- BitwiseFool 2y agoMy absolute favorite example of this is the suppression of "podcast" in favor of the far more romantic "audio à la demande".
- lcouturi 2y ago'Courriel' was coined by French Canadian translator André Clas, not by the Académie Française. The Office québécois de la langue française successfully promoted its usage in Quebec in the 90s and the Académie Française unsuccessfully tried to do the same in France. 'Courriel' is still commonly used by French Canadians, but indeed it was never widely adopted by France. As a French Canadian, I usually use 'courriel", though the anglicism 'e-mail' is also quite commonly used. Can't say I've ever seen anyone use 'mél', tho.
- sweezyjeezy 2y agoYes I don't think they invent words, that really would be bad.