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France's Académie française battles to protect language from English with a new interactive web service

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Werner Maurer
Werner Maurer  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 05:04
Spanish to English
+ ...
defend and enrich - NOT! Oct 13, 2011

The Academie may be endeavoring to defend and enrich the language, but in fact it is shielding it from enrichment and hindering its growth and development. English owes its richness and scope precisely to the fact, at least in part, that there is no "Academie anglaise". Suppose there had been a 13th-century watchdog determined to throw all French words out of the the green and pleasant language? Chaucer might never have written a word worth reading, and Tyndale's Bible would have been an exercis... See more
The Academie may be endeavoring to defend and enrich the language, but in fact it is shielding it from enrichment and hindering its growth and development. English owes its richness and scope precisely to the fact, at least in part, that there is no "Academie anglaise". Suppose there had been a 13th-century watchdog determined to throw all French words out of the the green and pleasant language? Chaucer might never have written a word worth reading, and Tyndale's Bible would have been an exercise in repetitiveness. And hyper is not English at all, and has been around two or three times as long as the French language. Thank God the Academie is not representative of France's general population, whose French is far more interesting and alive than that of the stodgy artists and writers of the Academie - another irony, since we tend to think of artists and writers as anything but stodgy. ▲ Collapse
 
Neil Coffey
Neil Coffey  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:04
French to English
+ ...
Irony of ironies Oct 13, 2011

Right, "impact", a word scandalously smacking of Anglo-saxon roots...
 
Neil Coffey
Neil Coffey  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:04
French to English
+ ...
On the other hand... Oct 13, 2011

"hyper" apparently only dates back to the 13th century, so it seems they're just in time.
 
Daniel García
Daniel García
English to Spanish
+ ...
Impacter does not mean "impact" Oct 13, 2011

Neil Coffey wrote:

Right, "impact", a word scandalously smacking of Anglo-saxon roots...


I think you misunderstood this point, Neil.

The Academy does not compalin about "impact" because it's an English word. It says that "impacter" is not the correct translation of "impact".

"The second was the “franglais” verb “impacter” (to impact), which it urges purists to replace with “affecter”, the proper French equivalent."


Daniel
 
Ty Kendall
Ty Kendall  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:04
Hebrew to English
These jokers were on Stephen Fry's Planet Word last week..... Oct 13, 2011

Neil (especially), I don't know if you caught it but Stephen Fry interviewed one of the rather humourless members of that great institution on his new language programme last week. (Marc Fumaroli)

Within five seconds it was pretty obvious that the guy was seriously out of touch with 99.99% of the French population and out of touch with reality itself.

"Anglo-Saxon attacks"....these people are stuck in the Hundred Years' War.

Mind you, what do you expect from suc... See more
Neil (especially), I don't know if you caught it but Stephen Fry interviewed one of the rather humourless members of that great institution on his new language programme last week. (Marc Fumaroli)

Within five seconds it was pretty obvious that the guy was seriously out of touch with 99.99% of the French population and out of touch with reality itself.

"Anglo-Saxon attacks"....these people are stuck in the Hundred Years' War.

Mind you, what do you expect from such a pompous institution that the members are called "immortals". They suffer the deluded belief that language is immortal....and his views on French minority languages and dialects was chilling. ▲ Collapse
 


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France's Académie française battles to protect language from English with a new interactive web service







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