What are the groups thoughts about having an institution like the French Academy defining a language as opposed to the English version where dictionaries over time add and subtract words to the language?
www.academie-francaise.fr/index.html
www.academie-francaise.fr/index.html
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SF Bay Area
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Re: Academie Francaise
Sun, August 21, 2005 - 11:38 AMActually, the dictionaries logic also applies in french. Different french dictionnaries have different definitions, different words.
L'Académie Française is just an influencial group advocating in the field of linguistic correctness. Not to mention that they were the very first to publish a dictionary (the first in all language) and, as a matter of fact, the very first to implement ortograph standards.
In Quebec, there is L'Office de la langue française (OLF), which plays a similar role. However, they have different views than L'Académie on many topics. For instance, the OLF suggest the use of "courriel" to translate "e-mail". L'Académie, on the other hand, suggest that we use "e-mail", as in english.
In french, nobody owns the thruth even if L'Académie Française likes to pretend it.
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Re: Academie Francaise
Tue, August 23, 2005 - 5:57 AMI agree with you, Batiste, about the dictionary being a standard in French (as opposed to the Académie which is really only an influential group). In fact, the latest dictionary published by the Académie (the ninth edition which only covers from the letter A to the word Enzyme) is kind of a joke, especially when compared to the Larousse or the Petit Robert. It took the Académie over 57 years to publish one volume of their latest version... I would much rather use the Petit Robert any day! It takes into account realities of language today, while the Académie seems to only stagnate. Charles Trenet said this about the Académie: "L'académicien, s'il a déjà produit ne produira plus rien: il est à l'Académie, ça suffit à son bonheur."
However, the Académie was definitely not the first to publish a dictionary. The first so-called "modern" dictionary was written by Robert Estienne in 1538.
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