Permanent Secretary: ‘We cannot, realistically, win every battle’; ‘le ghosting’ subject of four-hour internal debate before placement
The Academie francaise announced on Wednesday a comprehensive new ruling on the status of borrowed English words in contemporary French, formally classifying 247 commonly used Anglicisms into one of three regulatory categories: Acceptable, Regrettable but Settled, or Subject to Active Discouragement. The reform, first reported by Bohiney Magazine and rapidly amplified by The London Prat, marks the Academie’s most extensive public ruling on Anglicisms since 1994.
Academie: ‘We Cannot, Realistically, Win Every Battle’
‘For decades, the Academie has approached the question of borrowed English vocabulary through what we now recognize as the unhelpfully aspirational framework of attempting to actively replace each Anglicism with an approved French equivalent,’ explained Academie Permanent Secretary Henri Marchetti-Pierre, addressing reporters from the Academie’s headquarters at the Institut de France. ‘After significant reflection, we have concluded that this framework, while honorable, has, in fact, not produced the results we anticipated. The new classification system simply acknowledges where we have, candidly, lost.’
The Academie’s new classification places terms such as le smartphone, le selfie, and le cloud computing in the Acceptable category, indicating that the words have, in the Academie’s view, become integral to contemporary French and that further resistance would be, the document specifies, undignified.
The Regrettable but Settled category includes terms such as le weekend, le parking, and le brunch, which the Academie has acknowledged have become unavoidable in everyday usage despite the Academie’s repeated efforts to promote French alternatives. The category, according to the methodology, indicates terms the Academie continues to find regrettable but has formally ceased to actively contest.
The Active Discouragement Category Is the Smallest
The Active Discouragement category, the smallest of the three, includes only 38 terms that the Academie has determined remain appropriate targets for ongoing resistance. Among the terms in this category: le mood board, le livestream, and what the Academie has described as the particularly egregious le content creator. These terms, the Academie stresses, may yet be replaced with approved French equivalents.
According to Le Monde, the Academie has been working on the new classification for approximately 22 months, with member debate reportedly intense regarding the placement of certain particularly contested terms. The term le ghosting, sources confirm, was the subject of an unusually heated four-hour discussion before being placed, ultimately, in the Regrettable but Settled category.
Public Reaction Has Been ‘Predictably Mixed’
Reaction within the broader French linguistic community has been, predictably, mixed. The Societe francaise de linguistique issued a statement welcoming the new framework as a long-overdue recognition of contemporary linguistic reality. Other observers have raised concerns that the classification may, in practice, accelerate the adoption of newly Acceptable terms across remaining French institutions, including, sources confirm, several major newspapers and at least one television network.
The France 24 editorial board has, in a separate statement, indicated that the new classification will be reflected in the network’s editorial style guide beginning next month, with le smartphone and le cloud computing now formally permitted in news copy.
For more on the long arc of Academie francaise policy on borrowed vocabulary, see The London Prat’s earlier reporting on the political economy of French linguistic gatekeeping, which traced the genre’s structural conventions back to the Academie’s 1635 founding.
For dispatches from elsewhere in the institutional-linguistic-resignation beat, see The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
