#l'academie francaise

[zenosanalytic]

#what can i say it is simply an imperative to dunk on l'academie(via@arrows-for-pens) XD

Can't let British people have air conditioning because first they'd call it something twee like "the climate fixer" and then in 20 years they'll call it "the climb" or "the climmy"

[b-eli-er]

mais est-ce que l'Académie française s'énerve quand les chanteurs "modifient" la langue française pour le rendre plus facile à chanter ? par exemple j'peux pas au lieu de je ne peux pas et choses comme ca oui

[dunhoof]

first of all language exists to communicate ideas and if one is understood there is no wrong pronunciation . second of all our current explanations of pronunciation of newly constructed/uncommon words rely on the assumption that we're all pronouncing the sounds we're comparing them to the same & i propose we as a community all come together to learn the IPA

[shoehorseconstant]

omg girl i'm reading youtube comment discourse about the standardization of the french language and it is JUICY

(link to remember. genevieve and hugo both slay hard)

[hjemne]

On any given day France is only about two steps away from sliding straight back into imperialist nationalism istg

So much goes back to how protective the powers that be are over the French language, and how they constantly construct enemies who are out to destroy their language and colonial heritage.

I've been reading various decrees from my most hated and despised enemy l'Académie française and its absolutely mind-boggling how they wrote about how they could "defend" and "save" French through the standardisation of English. They say standardisation would create a new language (a global English) which is no longer a "language of culture" (and so no longer a threat to their precious french i guess???). And then they IMMEDIATELY turn around and go 'and we must return to the "purity" (yuck) of French, and so l'Académie française needs to dictate and control how French is used.' My guys... how is that not reinforcing the standardisation of language which you think will kill English??? Oh wait I forgot it's because the french language* is the "unique instrument" which can bring world peace and is the most specialest of languages. *the French of France

The future of the French language is in Africa, no matter how much the Académie wants to pretend they can maintain control over it. In the words of Ahmadou Kourouma, 'the French have their language. They have violated many peoples but they would like their language to remain pure. This is not possible.' The Académie's insistence on 'preserving the purity of French' blablabla because its oh so important that it can be used to express (Western) art & science is a deeply conservative and imperialist stance that serves to reinforce France's power over its former colonies. What good does the language serve if it won't allow its speakers to express themselves, their cultures, and their lived realities? African religions cannot be accurately expressed in 'standard/proper' French, and gender queer people (& women tbh) simply cannot exist within the French language when the Académie continues to call gender-inclusive language an "aberration" which puts French in "mortal danger" from other languages which will 'prevail' at French's expense. Which really shows that institutionalising and promoting la Francophonie isn't actually about facilitating inter-group exchange via a shared language; it's about giving France's cultural, political and economic control over former colonies the façade of being something other than neocolonialism.

And I really cannot stress enough how much of France's cultural identity is based around its imagined superiority and exceptionality (which is literally baked into French law!!). Like so much of French political rhetoric is based around this need to fight back against some existential threat posed by The Other. You've got the extreme right Reconquête party (REconquest, jfc) calling mass 'remigration' & has the backing of 7-8% of voters (and the far-right FN party getting another 30%). And then ''''''centrist''''' Macron calls for 'demographic rearming' (not via easing immigration rules, but by pushing for more French babies to be born) and talking about the need to create a 'society of vigilance' against the 'Islamist hydra' and ceding to the far right in order to pass his immigration bill (1/3 of which was deemed unconstitutional or legislative riders, including a section which would've required foreigners to live in France for 10 years (!) before becoming naturalised citizens.

This is a country where every single child is taught to internalise that 'the masculine takes precedence over the feminine' and is 'neutral'. Where a national sporting hero is loudly denounced as a reverse racist for pointing out that there is a cultural belief of white superiority in France, meanwhile 9/10 black people in France say they've faced racial discrimination.

France uses the rhetoric of 'not following republicain values' as a cudgel against those who are inherently excluded from its white, bourgeois, male & catho-laïque* conception of 'universalism'. If you don't - or can't - conform, or dare to speak out against the unyielding assimilationism, it's labelled a sign of communautarisme, which according to the right, is basically the same as being an organised, hostile, separatist faction working to destroy the pure and noble Enlightenment values and heritage of the République. There is no room for multiculturalism. In france, you have the freedom to conform to its narrow definition of universalism. And if you don't follow along, well, clearly you're too uncivilised to know how to use your freedom properly, because there's no way you'd use it to criticise France, a country which is perfect.

The rhetoric being used and the policies being implemented in France are incredibly concerning, as is the massive support for extremely far right political parties. I don't know what's going to happen in French politics in the next few years, and in all honesty, I'm scared to find out. What I do know, is that the process of fully decolonising if a long, long way from being complete, and we need to be ready to think critically about things we feel attached to or assume are politically neutral.

*laïcité = secularism. In theory it's about separation of church and state, but it relegates all 'ostentatious' symbols of religion to 'private' life, so in practice it's used as an excuse to increasingly exclude religious minorities (especially young muslim women) from public spaces. You're not allowed to wear in public schools religious head coverings (e.g. hijab, kippah) or long skirts (only if the school thinks you're wearing it for religious reasons. you can for fashion reasons. France is valiantly protecting young women from ;;;;misogynistic radical islamist extremism;;;; which tells them what to wear, by telling them what to wear, don't you see).

I'm using catho-laïque to mean that, despite the emphasis on laïcité, secularism in France is effectively secular Catholicism. Catholicism underpins French culture and is taken for granted as being the neutral default. 6/11 of their national public holidays are Catholic religious days of observance/celebration, meaning the whole country shuts down for a week each year so the Catholics can observe their religious calendar, and it's never brought up as a potential conflict with secular politics.

The French language itself also has this same Catholic cultural bias too, making it hard, for example, to discuss African religions or cultures in Académie-approved 'proper' French language. Ahmadou Kourouma (from the Ivory Coast) wrote an essay about the difficulties of expressing his reality in written French when there's no word that truly encapsulates his God, religious practices, and the oral culture of his native language malinké. He called for an open, multicultural and equal francophone world, which can only be done by accepting 'africanised' or other non-standard uses of French, but this is firmly rejected by the western arbiters of French who very much do not want to decolonise and decentralise the French language. I wonder why.

I love this quote from Kourouma because it summarises everything so succinctly: 'We cannot be totally free if we do not possess the language which allows us to express ourselves completely.' It should be fairly clear at this point that 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' all take on very specific and restricted meanings in the context of the French state, but I still think it's worth pointing out the hypocracy and neocolonial implications of the French ideals vs how they're used in practice.

I'd definitely recommend his novels, which you can find here in both English and French.

I'd also definitely recommend checking out the icon that is Lilian Thuram who has suffered more than any tumblr user at being accused of pissing on the poor by people who misread the title of his book La pensée blanche and call him an anti-white racist. He also wrote Mes étoiles noires which is also a good read.

Thuram is just such an incredibly interesting guy. He talks a lot about how he wasn't born black, but became black aged 9 when he moved to Paris from Guadeloupe (a French territory in the Carribean), and became aware that other people had assigned him a category based on his skin colour which marked him as lesser. He uses Simone de Beauvoir's framework of how she wasn't born a woman, but became one through socialisation to talk about race which is super interesting. Also, it's why he told the biggest figure in the French far-right, Jean-Marie Le Pen, "personally, I'm not black" when Le Pen was bitching about the French national football team not being white enough. King shit, even if it went over people's heads. He's so cool, go read his interviews. He is fighting an uphill battle, but oh boy is he fighting. (here's his anti-racism foundation's site in French).

You can read an incredible discussion about race, politics and football in this book (p.177-194). When I tell you that a footballer getting a red card for headbutting someone had real implications for the discussion of race & immigration in France, I'm being dead serious.

This is the sort of reaction that Thuram gets btw

"oh wouldn't Africa have been better off if it kept you [i.e. 'you should have stayed in Africa if you hate white people so much'], what a shame..."

He's literally french!! from the caribbean!! oh my fucking god how do you not see this is literally the type of racist thinking that he's talking about ahhhhhhhhgghhhgg

"he was praised in 1998 [after he won the world cup] by all of France, and no one made any reference to the colour of his skin. He's ruining this beautiful memory with his racist ideas."

OH MY GOD THIS IS SO FACTUALLY INACCURATE. i think they said this just to piss me off in particular. What do you mean that no one talked about the 1998 French team's skin colour? That's all they talked about for years. You mean to tell me that the incredibly famous slogan 'black-blanc-beur' [black-white-arab] was not about ethnicities??? And Thuram is only now bringing up the topic of race? Get so fucking forreal. Boohoo your memories of the 98 victory are being ruined by racism? You know who else's were? Thuram's.

And you know how i can be so so certain that it wasn't just leftist academics who were talking about la France black-blanc-beur? You know who cannot stop bringing up the French team's skin colour? Jean-Marie Le Pen [OG far-right racist politician]. You know who else goes on about how the media would not stop telling you about the racial diversity of the team and how everyone in France was talking about the team's skin colour? Eric fuckin Zemmour [current extreme-right political shithead]

(no translation, it's all just racist bullshit. It is funny how close he gets at times tho. 'lots of young, aspiring football players after 1998 felt like they'd experienced social exclusion, and football was an area which they felt they could thrive in and escape the misery of growing up in the banlieu.' YEAH MY DUDE. he's so close to putting the cause & effect together for why marginalised ethnicities from disadvantaged areas are overrepresented in professional football. but no, he has to go on about how these new plays weren't like Zidane (the golden boy of assimilation via football), they sucked because they rejected all authority by eating... halal....hmm....) (Zemmour also takes the time to bitch about how 1998 was also when the anglicism 'coach' entered popular use in France, because he has to really emphasise how the world cup victory was part of the 'suicide' of the French nation in any and all ways possible. It's honestly just pathetic more than anything at this point. He just cycles through the same 4 scapegoats overe and over (I can only assume it's because he's allergic to all forms of diversity) )

Like..... absolutely everyone is in agreement that the ethnic diversity of the 1998 team was a huge talking point. This is the one thing that everyone across the political spectrum can agree on. So WHY would you make it your argument that 'no one made any reference to his skin colour uwu'. The team was THE example of the successes of French integration. And yeah, it sucks to realise things weren't as good as you thought they were, but Thuram has every right to turn around and ask why the acceptance of his 'frenchness' by society was conditional on the team's success. Why whether he (& other non-white players) was 'worthy' of representing France (which he has done in more matches than all but one player ever in French history) was not just a question of football abilities, but also about whether he was 'dignified' enough to be French. And why talking out against inequality and injustice made him less deserving.

There are definitely other , smarter ways of fighting against the stupidity/foolishness of certain spectaters [referencing the fact that Thuram discussed the many many times that spectators made monkey noises at him & others during football matches]."

Ohhhhhhh my god Thuram is literally examining at the systems in society that led people to make such blatantly racist gestures. Does this guy think he should go to racist football fans one by one and tell them nicely to stop?? The description of it as 'bêtise' is also driving me up the wall because its so dismissive of how serious and horrific these overt and public displays of racial hatred are. 'J'ai fait une bêtise' is I did a whoopsie, I did a dumb thing. Also the fact it's qualified with 'certain' spectators. 'Oui okay something bad did happen, but it wasn't that many people, it wasn't that big of a deal, and you should be dealing with it in a different way because talking about structural racism makes me uncomfortable.' Killing you with my death ray. Do more introspection and less historical revisionism.

Also Thuram has literally addressed this

« J'ai l'impression que l'on parle du racisme avec superficialité. Comme si c'était un phénomène individualisé, de personnes "pas gentilles". Non, c'est une idéologie politique qui a une profondeur historique ! »

Anyway.... long long rant over. there was a documentary on netflix about french football and black blanc beur back in 2017 ish and if anyone knows how to track it down i'd love to rewatch it. Also here’s a link to some articles on the topic if you want to read some more.  

[bogusfilth]

none of these words are in le Larousse dictionnaire de français

[bloodenjoyer]

im a con artist and theyre letitng me into l'academie francaise

[fragariavescana]

L'academie Francaise should try going wildly ultra vires some time to see whether anybody can stop them.

Take a stance on the use of the terminal ß in compound words or promulgate an Icelandic word for 'Gooncave'.

[smokingbomber]

I just noticed a thing and I think your tumblr is the right place for this: Mamoru's wedding tux in the artbook is actually the uniform of the members of the Académie Française (and of course it's gorgeous). Now I have this headcanon of Mamoru being somehow accepted in that ridiculously exclusive ancient institution with his acceptance speech written by Nephrite with as many french canadian prophanities as possible (The others somehow manage to purge the worse of them last minute)

you're right, this is absolutely the place for both that observation and idea. i've often squinted at that wedding tux and at least managed to pin it to basically 17th century french formalwear knd of married to the modern formal white-tie dress (which also isn't modern lmao)

but you are correct is is basically EXACTLY THAT except i think his embroidery bling isn't green? it might be but yuck lol

since that institution essentially doesn't get the POINT of language, and im surprised it survived the revolution, and can you believe spoken french numbers holy shit, im not surprised that their uniform is steeped in Pre-Revolution Rich Snob Fashion (which yes is f'ing gorgeous and i want to wear it).

given Neph, and hilariously given the monstersox-inspired headcanon/fanon-subset that neph is absolutely Canadian, EVEN IF Québéc French is almost entirely a Québéc thing, punking l'Académie Française hardcore sounds super plausible, even probable

i KIND OF think, however, that (even if he's selected which is a big somehow) mamoru would be SO TORN because of the contrast between 'ooh omg ridiculous ostensibly-merit-based exclusive distinguished thing yes please this orphan from japan still craves unnecessary public legitimacy' and 'lol vive la révolution fuck you elitist chuckleheads you only want me because i'm popular now'

like he wants to say voregeoisie but knows he's rich uhhhhh

that i think he'd end up getting the uniform AND letting neph write his acceptance speech AND not editing it at all

:D

[blackswaneuroparedux]

L'Académie est plus qu'une institution, c'est une habitude de la France.**

- Alphonse de Lamartine

Members of the Académie française, the intellectual high court of France. It is France's official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language.

The Académie had its origins in an informal literary group deriving from the salons held at the Hôtel de Rambouillet during the late 1620s and early 1630s. The group began meeting at Valentin Conrart’s house, seeking informality.

There were then nine members. Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister of France, made himself protector of the group, and in anticipation of the formal creation of the academy, new members were appointed in 1634. On 22 February 1635, at Richelieu’s urging, King Louis XIII granted letters patent formally establishing the council.

According to the letters patent registered at the Parlement de Paris on 10 July 1637, the Académie française was “to labour with all the care and diligence possible, to give exact rules to our language, to render it capable of treating the arts and sciences”.

The Académie française has remained responsible for the regulation of French grammar, spelling, and literature.

It has no more than 40 seats at any one time, each of which is assigned a separate number. Candidates make their applications for a specific seat, not to the Académie in general: if several seats are vacant, a candidate may apply separately for each. Since a newly elected member is required to eulogise his or her predecessor in the installation ceremony, it is not uncommon that potential candidates refuse to apply for particular seats because they dislike the predecessors.

New members are elected by the Académie itself. (The original members were appointed.) When a seat becomes vacant, a person may apply to the Secretary if she or he wishes to become a candidate. Alternatively, existing members may nominate other candidates. A candidate is elected by a majority of votes from voting members. A quorum is twenty members. If no candidate receives an absolute majority, another election must be performed at a later date. The election is valid only if the protector of the Académie, the President of France, grants his approval.

Members are known as les Immortels (the Immortals) because of the motto, À l'immortalité ("To Immortality"), that is on the official seal of the charter granted by Cardinal Richelieu.

Many notable French writers have not become members of the Académie française. During 1855, the writer Arsène Houssaye devised the expression "forty-first seat" for deserving individuals who were never elected to the Académie, either because their candidacies were rejected, because they were never candidates, or because they died before appropriate vacancies arose. Notable French authors who never became academicians include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Joseph de Maistre, Honoré de Balzac, René Descartes, Denis Diderot, Romain Rolland, Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Molière, Marcel Proust, Jules Verne, Théophile Gautier, and Émile Zola.

**The Academy is more than an institution, it is a habit of France.

[6ebe]

ive been saying LE covid for months nd you can bet im not starting saying LA now pLS

[kayvsworld]

so i was told off for taking allergy meds today (bc i was trying to avoid being told off for having allergies like last time) and that was bad

fortunately: i saw TWO gees and one of the kids im tutoring talked excitedly about robots to me in french for an hour so im on fuckin CLOUD NINE 

[cafeleningrad]

normally: ugh... French Grammar...

now: Oh my god I gotta be perfect in French Grammar so I can become an Immortelle to get my own individual sword!

[rosa-x-centifolia]

wish those french fucks would have fixed their number system too when they did their whole metrication thing

words like ‘eighty’ and ‘seventy’ surely should not have been as hard a sell as a ten day week or replacing all the rulers in paris

[slaygentford]

can confirm about Parisians (esp the men) who deal with tourists regularly, airport staff at CDG would literally shoot you executioner style no hesitation if they could. the parisians are pretty snobby about anglophones speaking french but literally everywhere else french people r rly nice when youre learning :) anyone from normandy is constantly like fuck l'academie francaise rights

ONE TIME AT CDG I left my backpack on the ground beside me BESIDE ME right next to me!!!! And this guy with a BATON came over BARKING at me for leaving it unattended it was terrifying. Then they asked me if I was Arabic after looking at my name and I was like dumbass It’s a Spanish name arent you European? They talked amongst themselves and decided it was because there’s a footballer with my last name. Anyway. I’d love to see other parts of France what a beautiful country I’ve only been to Paris on a few occasions. Granted I’m mostly just interested in the museums hence Paris but I’d LOVE oh I’d love to see the Vercingetorix statue. Ugh

[psqqa]

#you and your dad: my heroes#also i love that this is how you guys bond. man i WISH my family was this nerdy#the way my textbook explains tous is#When the pronoun tout is used in the plural#referring to people or things#the final s is pronounced. Ils sont tous ici. Elle les achète tous. Nous tous!#Whereas if tous is an adjective#the s is not pronounced. Il boit du café tous les jours. Ils vont en France tous les ans. Elle se lève à six heures tous les matins.#but i don’t…really understand what any of that means. isn’t tous kind of an adjective in the first group of examples?#is it referring to the noun? or is it modifying it? it’s modifying a pronoun as far as i can tell#and why are all the tous phrases in the second group of examples units of time?#is that just a coincidence? tous les élèves is not a unit of time so i think it is a coincidence#but it seems weird because the ‘pronounce the s’ part specifies 'referring to people or things’#and all the examples under 'don’t pronounce the s’ aren’t people or (concrete) things#luckily you gave me an example with tous les [people] so that helps a lot thank you#(unit of time isn’t really the correct term but idk what to call it. a morning isn’t really a unit)#(but hopefully you know what i mean)

the rest of my family does not appreciate this form of bonding as much as you do (apparently these discussions tend to come off as extremely tense and argumentative to anyone else present at the time, besides being of extremely limited interest to them), but i always love talking language and my father loves spending time with his daughters, feels guilty about failing to pass on his native language, and is ultimately the person i inherited my interest in languages from, so the two of us always have a good time.

my father is currently still at work, so we’re working off my instincts here, but i think that in terms of the adjective thing, it would functionally be the difference between an english translation of the same sentence using “every”/“all the” vs “all”. “he drinks coffee every day.” “they go to France every year.” “she gets up at six every morning.” vs “yes, they’re all here.”

non-time unit (yeah that’s the best i’ve got for you also) example (sans fatherly input, so, you know, mistakes very possible):

nous avons mangé tous les pamplemousses –> we ate all the grapefruits –> no s

nous les avons mangé tous –> we ate them all –> yes s

(eta: my father has returned and reminded me it would be “nous les avons tous mangés” ://// agreement.....my achilles heel. he didn’t have a satisfactory explanation for why “tous” goes between the verbs, but now that he’s pointed it out, it does sound right)

you know what, i was trying to come up with others, and hit instead on a pattern of sentences where “tous les” could feasibly be substituted (and perhaps should be? another question for my father once he’s back) by “chaque”:

they were stopped at every checkpoint –> ils ont été arrêtés à chaque/tous les point(s) de contrôle

every/all book(s) contain(s) wisdom –> chaque/tous les livre(s) contien(nen)t de la sagesse

don’t eat every mushroom you find –> ne mange pas chaque/tous les champignon(s) que tu trouves

okay, this website is calling the unpronounced s examples “indefinite adjectives” and the pronounced s examples “indefinite pronouns”, which i don’t recall ever coming up in any of my years of french, various other languages, or linguistics, but which are apparently a thing. the french page helpfully also gives examples, including, of course, the iconic “tous pour un, un pour tous”.

if i’m reading this correctly, the website article is telling us that the s would only ever be pronounced when referring to people, but that contradicts your textbook, the french wikipedia page, and i think my own conversations with my father yesterday, so idk what’s going on there. my fuzzy brain could just be misreading it though.

this website says the same as your textbook, tbough: pronoun = pronounce s, adjective = don’t pronounce s.

so i think, basically, that your shortcut is correct and everything else is grammatical nuance/us overthinking it. if it’s followed by “les” don’t pronounce the s, and if it isn’t, do.

okay wait actually. des. okay, i’m grabbing some examples from linguee. looking at them, i’m like 99% sure the s is pronounced in all of them, which holds with everything we’ve said so far:

[…] du fil de contact sous l'action d'un vent latéral sont tous des facteurs qui régissent la compatibilité du réseau ferroviaire transeuropéen.

[…] deviation of the contact wire under the action of a cross-wind all govern the compatibility of the trans-European rail network.

En raison des agissements illégaux de quelques-uns, l'opinion publique est de plus en plus persuadée que les pêcheurs sont tous des criminels potentiels. 

Because of illegal actions by the few, there is a growing public perception that collectively fishermen are all potential criminals. 

Les haricots, tomates et fines herbes sont tous des projets faciles pour le jardinier en herbes. 

Beans, tomatoes and herbs are all easy projects for beginning gardeners.

Vos paroles sages nous vont droit au cœur et nous reconnaissons que la proposition exige de tous des compromis.

We take your wise words to heart and recognize that the proposal requires compromise from all of us.

[...] ressources énergétiques, ce qui signifie que nous profitons tous des économies d'énergie et de leurs bienfaits pour l'environnement.

[...] investment in the conservation of our valuable energy supplies, and this means we all benefit from environmental conservation.

One final, potentially problematic, example:

Ces énoncés prévisionnels comprennent tous des éléments qui ne sont pas des faits historiques.

These forward-looking statements include all matters that are not historical facts.

I suspect this is a bad translation, and should actually be translated as “These forward-looking statements all include matters that are not historical facts”. Following this translation, I would say the s is pronounced.

However, if the given translation is correct, I would say that the s isn’t pronounced. Which would mean that I need to have Words with my father because why “des” not “les”????

(eta: my father agrees on the translation being wrong and the s being pronounced in all these examples. 🎉🎉)

good news! i am currently at my parents' house and one of the ways my father and i bond is me asking him questions about french. re: si, this was taught to me, but i did also double-check it with him, the actual native french speaker, and he confirmed it as well. you're not crazy, it is indeed a thing. re: tous, the s is pronounced when it's standing in for a noun phrase. e.g. tous (silent s) les élèves sont assemblés? oui, ils sont touS (s pronounced) là.

this is very good news indeed!! thank you for asking your dad my french questions and reporting back!

i'm feeling very relieved about si. phew. weight off my shoulders there. maybe they just don't teach americans about it because spanish is more common here and they're worried it might confuse us? "si means yes, but only if you are answering no to a negative question? so does it mean yes or no?? preposterous!" that's my working theory. (i'm mostly joking.)

the tous shortcut i have come up with is: when tous occurs in the construction tous les [plural noun], the s is silent, and otherwise, it's pronounced. which i think is more or less what you're saying? what do we think about that? yes? no? yes and no?