> Members of the French Academy, the 17th-century institution that publishes an official dictionary of the French language, have been working on the same edition for the past 40 years.
This is nonsense. The French Academy is adding new words to the dictionary every year.
The whole article is weak to say the least. Of course, the French spoken abroad is changed by the local influences. This is the sam case as with any language that crosses countries boundaries. There are major differences within France as well.
In everyday discussions, I do not see any special influence from Africa on our language. The influence of instant messaging is orders of magnitude larger and I have to decipher phrases such as "vzy cr". Or monstrosities such as "sa va koi" which are shaping our language deep down because it is how many young people express themselves.
French is complicated and mostly masochist (we are the champions of how to write something easy most difficultly, and crank weirdness of pronunciation to 100). It is not helping that we are rigid in how the language evolves (and sometimes straight ridiculous). But the changes to French French come from inside France, the ones from Mali French - from within Mali etc.
French here, living abroad for more than 10 years.
> sa va koi
Phonetically, it's easy. "ça va quoi"
> vzy cr
vas-y... you lost me here. crève?
That kind of reminds me of a joke some rapper (I think) made about, I wanna say 20 years ago, when young people from the banlieue were starting to cut words. I don't remember it exactly, but it went from "arrête ça" (stop it) being verlan'ized to "teuarass" and when they'd go to cut to "te", he would say "arrête ça tout de suite" (stop it now).
> we are the champions of how to write something easy most difficultly
I guess you're thinking about things like "qu'est-ce que"?
This said, I am all for a simplification of French, esperanto-style, to make it easier for everyone (native and non-native users of French)
> > vzy cr
> vas-y... you lost me here. crève?
It was "vas-y carré", which in English means "go ahead, all good". I do not blame you for not knowing, I had to check twice.
> I guess you're thinking about things like "qu'est-ce que"?
qu'est-ce que c'est ça, eaux to say "o", the -amment and -emment you never know when to use, the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif that is the national joke, Louis that nobody outside of France can pronounce correctly, sometimes one r, sometimes two, sometimes one l, sometimes two.
All of this is well documented of course: the core of our grammar/vocabulary/conjugaison rules is maybe 50 pages, and then you have two or three tomes of exceptions.
Then we have writers such as Proust who are hated by children at school because they have to dissect his 15-line sentences to say which part does what.
Most of this information is completely useless - when my children started school, I had to dig back into books to recall what was what.
> This said, I am all for a simplification of French
Interestingly, they tried 15 or 20 years ago, and that went nowhere. The only thing I remember about it is they wanted to simplify oignon, but I don't even remember if they suggested removing the i or spelling it like in English.
> It was "vas-y carré"
I guess I'm too old to know this, even non abbreviated.
> sometimes one r, sometimes two, sometimes one l, sometimes two.
Same with m, etc. And many more. The "fun" part of living abroad and barely speaking or writing French is that now there are plenty of times where I can't find words or how to spell them. It's compounded by the fact that English spelling of similar words is sometimes different (e.g. address vs adresse), or worse, some words spelt the same way have different meanings (which trips French natives often, but now I sometimes have the opposite problem, ironically)
> Interestingly, they tried 15 or 20 years ago, and that went nowhere
I guess you are talking about the 1990 reform. I would not say that it went nowhere, most of the changes are now in the school curriculum.
This is far from the radical simplification I have in mind, though :)
> I guess I'm too old to know this, even non abbreviated.
It helps to have a teenager at home and a need to communicate with them through WhatsApp
> The "fun" part of living abroad and barely speaking or writing French is that now there are plenty of times where I can't find words or how to spell them
I left France for about 25 years and when I got back, I realized I lost my French accent. Today people are trying to pinpoint the place I am from, sometimes it is Belgium, sometimes Switzerland. I am from the western suburbs of Paris...
Do not worry: I sometimes have problems spelling words even though I was always very good in grammar and vocabulary, and the words I struggle with are sometimes obvious. Google helps to fix that (I type what I think is the word and it asks me "do you mean ...").
> This is nonsense. The French Academy is adding new words to the dictionary every year.
It's not nonsense. They are still working on the same edition, just progressively adding words. There is some debate today, though, because they're mostly working A to Z, so words close to the start of the alphabet have definitions that were written down long ago. The definition for "femme", for example, is controversial. You can read up on this here: https://www.academie-francaise.fr/le-dictionnaire/la-9e-edit...
It's okay not to know something, but maybe inform yourself before calling what other people write "nonsense".
Aaand... you are right. I stand corrected. I follow some of the new words added but they were all either in Larousse or Robert - not the dictionary of the Académie Française. Sorry for that.
In my defense, the "nonsense" feeling was mostly after reading the whole article on how local variants of a language heavily impact the source one.
This is nonsense. The French Academy is adding new words to the dictionary every year.
The whole article is weak to say the least. Of course, the French spoken abroad is changed by the local influences. This is the sam case as with any language that crosses countries boundaries. There are major differences within France as well.
In everyday discussions, I do not see any special influence from Africa on our language. The influence of instant messaging is orders of magnitude larger and I have to decipher phrases such as "vzy cr". Or monstrosities such as "sa va koi" which are shaping our language deep down because it is how many young people express themselves.
French is complicated and mostly masochist (we are the champions of how to write something easy most difficultly, and crank weirdness of pronunciation to 100). It is not helping that we are rigid in how the language evolves (and sometimes straight ridiculous). But the changes to French French come from inside France, the ones from Mali French - from within Mali etc.