An institution that raises criticism. The fourth and final volume of the French Academy dictionary was published last week. And he raises objections from linguists and other language professionals, in France but also elsewhere in the French-speaking world.
This volume contains the words from R to Z, it comes out thirteen years after the third part. To put things in perspective, the previous edition, the eighth, was completed in 1935, while the first was published in 1694. Writing and updating this work, which is supposed to serve as a reference, is one of the major missions of the French Academy, an institution founded in 1634 by Cardinal Richelieu in order to standardize the language.
A work that is now meaningless, according to the “Collective of dismayed linguists”, a group of professionals who criticize Academicians for writing a dictionary supposed to be authoritative, without having the slightest training in this field. They published a position paper on this subject in the French press.
A rhythm that prevents reflecting the language
A linguist, Mathieu Avanzi is a professor at the University of Neuchâtel and directs the Center for Dialectology and the Study of Regional French. He confirms that “from a lexicographical point of view, this new dictionary is completely incomplete”, and that the extreme slowness of the publication of this dictionary, unlike any other, prevents it from effectively reflecting the living language, whereas that -it is currently experiencing extraordinary expansion. That said, he admits that the Academy represents “a certain standard, a certain institution”, which must be respected.
“There is a scientific concern,” adds Mathieu Avanzi, criticizing the Academy’s dictionary for selecting the words retained in an opaque manner. But he emphasizes that behind the Academicians themselves, there is a team of linguists who support them. This institution, despite the weight of history, could still benefit from evolving, for example by opening it to “a college of French speakers”.
No Swiss have been part of the French Academy since 1899 and the death of the Genevan Victor Cherbuliez. Taking into account the French language of the regions, as it is practiced far from Paris, is not the strong point of the Academy’s dictionary, which “tries to integrate the French-speaking dimension”, according to Mathieu Avanzi, but which in fact has only adopted a few dozen Swiss words in its online version.
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