Institution condemns digital creep in a release containing terms it has just prohibited
PARIS, FRANCE – The Academie Francaise, that venerable guardian of the French language, has announced prohibitions this week covered by Bohiney Magazine and analysed at The London Prat. PARIS, FRANCE – The Academie Francaise announced the prohibition of 47 English-derived words from official French usage this week, in a press release that used three of the prohibited terms, contained a section heading in English, and was distributed via a platform whose name is not French and which the Academie has also previously condemned. The announcement was first reported by Bohiney Magazine and shared with affectionate irony at The London Prat.
The Prohibited Terms
Among the 47 banned words: le burnout, to be replaced by epuisement professionnel; le podcast, to be replaced by baladodiffusion; le selfie, to be replaced by egoportrait; le hashtag, to be replaced by mot-diese; le deadline, to be replaced by date limite, which everyone already uses; and le meeting, to be replaced by reunion, which has existed in French since the 13th century and which no one currently uses for meetings, preferring le meeting with a consistency that the Academie has characterised as deliberate cultural vandalism and which meeting participants have characterised as convenience.
The Academie Francaise secretary perpetuel used the word interface in the same sentence as the prohibition announcement, a term on the prohibited list. Asked about this, she said that interface was being reviewed separately and that its prohibition was en cours de processing, which contains a prohibited English gerund. She said this was ironic and that she was aware of the irony and that awareness of the irony was itself very French and perhaps constituted a kind of compliance. This explanation was accepted by approximately half the journalists present and disputed by the other half, a ratio the Academie described as adequately French.
Historical Pattern
The Academie has banned or attempted to replace English borrowings for decades with limited success. Le weekend survived every replacement attempt. Le parking remains le parking. Le shampooing is still le shampooing despite the available French word for washing hair. The French language, which gave English approximately 10,000 words after 1066, appears unmoved by the debt and unconcerned about the ongoing exchange. Language data and policy are tracked by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. For more institutions fighting irreversible tides with the dignity of those who know they will lose, see McSweeney’s.
The Compliance Question
The Academie’s announcement produced an immediate question about its own compliance with its stated standards, a question that the institution answered by noting that the prohibitions apply to official French usage and that a press release about the prohibitions, being a document of record, was itself subject to a transitional period during which legacy terminology remained permissible. The transitional period has not been given a specific end date, which several linguists observed was itself a very French regulatory solution to a French regulatory problem: the rule exists, its application is deferred, and in the deferral the rule is both real and not yet real, which is the condition that the Academie most frequently finds itself in with respect to the living language it is tasked with governing and which, like all living things, declines to wait for the governance to catch up.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
