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The French Academy has just put the ninth edition of its dictionary online, published on November 13. An outdated vision of the language and an obsolete working method, denounces the Collective of dismayed linguists.
The French Academy, created in 1635 by Richelieu, has just published the fourth volume of the ninth edition of its Dictionary, ninety years after the previous one, and welcomes it in a press kit which says nothing or of all the dictionaries already available nor of all the dictionaries on which she directly relied to write hers. The Academy's dictionaries site now brings together the nine complete editions and allows you to easily consult their developments (the new words in each edition, the changes in meaning and the numerous changes in spelling up to the seventh edition, that of 1878). This site was created in part from the various volumes of the Dictionary computerized by the Atilf linguistics laboratory (University of Lorraine, CNRS). It is useful for anyone interested in the history of the French language, its vocabulary and its spelling. We unreservedly welcome this IT work of great public utility. But the Academy has nothing to be proud of.
Let's say it straight away: the Academy's current work on this dictionary no longer makes sense, both economically and scientifically. Academicians do not have the technical and scientific skills to create dicts
