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France bans English phrases!
Posted by Lucy under Cactus Languages Abroad
Sacrebleu! France has launched its annual drive this week to stop hundreds of English words from invading the native tongue. Terms such as “email”, “supermodel” and “low-cost airline” should be banned from the language, according to French culture ministy chiefs.
And it doesn’t stop there. French linguists at The Academie Francaise - the body that monitors and protects their language - have come up Gallic equivalents to more than 500 words for the website, being run by the culture ministry’s “General Commission for Terminology”.
Even terms such as “detachable motor caravan” and “shadow-boxing” are included in the 65 pages of words which are facing the ban. Who knew that they were causing such linguistic consternation?
It certainly does raise interesting questions about how languages can be adapted for the modern world without being diluted. The French quite rightly want to protect their native tongue from the infiltration of foreign words - how effective they’ll be is unclear.
It does make for some excellent linguistic arguments though - an entire page is devoted to the word “podcasting”. The new term will be “diffusion pour baladeur”. And “Wi-Fi” is also out which is a real shame - I always liked the French pronunciation of ”wee-fee”!
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news like this appears every year! While it’s understandable that The Academie Francaise wants to try to protect French culture, rules banning words are really futile. Language is an organic entity that grows and changes as required. Who owns language? I would say the people who speak it, which includes the whole of France. Who are these people to dictate how French people communicate with each other.
Any language is a conastantly evolving dynamic organism which exists primarily as a means of commmuncation - hence the modern language teacher’s focus on communicative learning.
If French people use expressions such as supermodel and podcasting they are already part of the French language and there is nothing Academie Francaise can do about it.