>But deciding what the prestige dialect is is inherently classist and racist

It's only deemed so by a classist and racist prejudice (that judges other cultures by its own values and metrics to boot).

There's nothing "high class" about caring for language. People of all classes can and do root for the French language and Académie's role with it (and vice versa).

The idea that "poor people couldn't possibly agree with high standards of language" -- as if poor implies some kind of inferior intellect, or less concern with such things as use of language, arts, etc, is classist itself.

>It's one thing to say "Your dialect is wrong because some amorphous entity says it is" and quite another to say "Your dialect is wrong because this specific group of old people says it is".

They don't want "amorphous entities" in them here parts. They believe in people, scholars and artists with proven track record that are deemed worthy to be guards of the language and art (which also tends to make them "old", which in matters of experience is prudent. They don't want people eager to bring the "next hot thing" and "fad du jour" in, but people that have seen things, and are blasé about empty novelties).

Also, France has historically been a predominantly "white" nation, as were the people who shaped the language in the first place, so by representation it makes sense most of Académie to be white (it includes people of Chinese, Haitian, etc ethnical origins too). Despite that, France has a much better track record for how it treats its blacks, to have the finger pointed at them by Americans.

Well nobody is saying that any language is wrong or not. It's just that the french language is kind of an international standard and some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world. But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french.

> Well nobody is saying that any language is wrong or not

The Academie have done something quite similar. Infamously, they argued against protection of regional French languages.

And I agree that they’re not arbitrary but only because they have always been dead set against imported words. They have a conservatism that has become more and more anachronistic.

I can’t say I have an issue with them, because they’re entirely ignorable, but there’s a risk that they’re seen as pathetic and that that view reflects poorly on France.

Yes I agree with you that it's quite a conservative institution, and yes if I remember well it was basically created to promote the use of french over the regional dialects. But I didn't want foreign readers (especially americans and our friends across La Manche since they have no such institution) to think that the Academie was weighing on the french everyday life.

> some people must decide how this standard should adapt with the evolution of the world

Actually, no. Neither English, Spanish nor German have a dedicated powerful centralized institution that makes those decisions for the language, and I guess Chinese doesn't either?

> But the decision they make are not arbitrary decisions based on their personal feelings, they are guided by the etymology of french.

French differs strongly from other languages in how current developments are integrated, think ordinateur, portable and not having a word for uploading stuff. They might be guided by some principle, but it leads French being an artificial and very strange language that's hard to learn and differs more than necessary, from English especially.

Ahah, what the hell are you talking about. Here is a very hidden list, found on an obscure website, that you might want to look into : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators

This list doesn't say what scope those regulators have.

I only know the situation for German and there the "Council for German Orthography" only regulates orthography not language and word usage, so take this list with a grain of salt.

Also, they don't carry swords and wear $50k robes. Quite the difference.

Germans are not allowed to play around with sharp objects anymore

> Neither English, Spanish nor German have a dedicated powerful centralized institution that makes those decisions for the language, and I guess Chinese doesn't either?

Among this list, only English doesn't have an institution.

All three other languages (Spanish, German and Chinese) have multiple institutions, basically one per country that speaks the language, just like French.

The German 'Duden' is comparable in its role to Webster/Johnson. A private dictionary publisher who somehow managed to be regarded as the standard for a language.

That's the Larousse for French, or the competing Robert. Or the Littré if you're a writer with pedant and traditionalist tendencies.

The Académie is not the main reference for orthography (and its dictionary is incomplete) or for the general rules of the French language, its goal is to steer the language towards consistency, and recognize whatever new usage emerges.

orthographe = spelling. No offense intended. Just trying to help.

Indeed, the Académie actually defines orthography while the dictionaries are only references for spelling.

German does not have such an institution - I am German and that's just a fact.

Spanish might have such an institution, but it evidently does not work - Mexican Spanish != Spanish Spanish != .... Note that I did not say it does not exist, I said there is no "powerful centralized" instance deciding this. I stand to this judgement, also for Spanish.

The extent of the actual influence wielded by the academie francaise seems to me pretty unique.

I think you are overestimating the actual influence of the Académie then, because it has little. The new words they propose are seldom adopted, and are eventually dropped as they only formalize actual usage. They're not creating a parallel language. The education system is also governed by a different language institution.

And just like Spanish, French is governed by different entities in different countries. The French and Québec councils are the most influent ones - and France French and Québec French are also the most divergent versions.

The French language is only "powerfully centralized" within each French-speaking country. And even then, only among a few countries.

I would say it is actually less centralized than the German language, which has a single institution that oversees orthography in ALL the German-speaking world. The French language has nothing like that.

There is the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung[1] which oversees German orthography. The German orthography reform of 1996 was overseen by it's predecessor organization, the Internationale Arbeitskreis für Rechtschreibreform. An international orthography reform like that would be pretty much unthinkable for the English language.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_f%C3%BCr_deutsche_Rechtsch...

At this point you are attributing the French academy superhuman powers, the Académie Française have of course exactly the same influence as the RAE: they make the definitive dictionary and then despair a bit about all the shit words they will have to include in the next version.

> Spanish might have such an institution, but it evidently does not work - Mexican Spanish != Spanish Spanish

I believe French has this problem as well. I don't speak the language but I don't think the Quebecois and "mainland" French agree on the language or care for each others' variants.

Mexican Spanish is a dialect in the same way Spanish Spanish or West-Andalucian Spanish... However, all Spanish dialects are Spanish.

Spanish has the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, which is exactly like the French Académie. Many latin-American countries have an equivalent, and they coordinate with the Spanish one.

Minor correction: the name of the institution doesn’t include the word “language”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy

German actually has the Rat der Deutschen Sprache which is exactly this and makes exactly these decisions. As do many other languages.

The latest change they made was introducing the capital ẞ.

No, it doesn't if you mean with "exactly these decisions" that it also decides what words are considered officially part of the language.

You also got the name wrong. It's "Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung" (Council for German Orthography) and that is exactly what they do.

They standardize on the orthography. Nothing more.

The idea is to sit back and make choices that make sense when there is a conflict or that are more aligned with the rest if the language, and avoid messes like "biweekly".

Or "inflammable".

Or "Aural" and "Oral"

Or Ox > Oxen, Fox > Foxes

None of those are accidents, or maybe all of those are accidents, like it is mostly common in languages

Define accident. None of them seem particularly well thought out, or planned.

Who needs to plan a language? I love the mess that is English, there's so much history encoded in it - like how our words for common farm animals are Anglo-Saxon but the words for their meat are French, which is a snapshot of England being invaded by a French speaking Norman aristocracy who ate what the Anglo-Saxon peasants raised.

I love the different dialects that are developing of it. I particularly love my country's variant, enriched with Maori. "Kia ora bro" as a greeting captures our spirit nicely.

I love the fact that English "pursues other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary". It's a glorious organic mess. Much like humanity.

Of course, I'm glad I'm not having to learn it as a second language.

I agree with the sentiment. It's a mess, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, though there are draw backs.

"Of course, I'm glad I'm not having to learn it as a second language."

As I said, I agree with the sentiment :)

> None of them seem particularly well thought out, or planned.

The question is: is anything planned?

People don't even use the correct possessive version of 'it' on the internet.

Ox became Oxen because the plural 'en' was the productive plural construction at the time, and it made more sense than writing 'Oxes'.

For the other words there might have been a historical reason (or just no reason at all) for it.

French is kind of planned, that's why we're having this conversation.

"Formal French" is planned, but the language goes on without it.

For example, the AF is oblivious to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verlan (unless a word there ends hitting common usage)

> Some verlan words, such as meuf, have become so commonplace that they have been included in the Petit Larousse[3] and a doubly "verlanised" version was deemed necessary, so the singly verlanised meuf became feumeu; similarly, the verlan word beur, derived from arabe, has become accepted into popular culture such that it has been re-verlanised to yield rebeu

The Académie is much more au fait with modern French than you think it is.

This communication, from 2001, on the future of the French language for example http://www.academie-francaise.fr/lavenir-de-la-langue-franca... talks at length about verlan. Just to translate a small excerpt:

A language that stays still is a dying language. Ours is enriching in proportions never seen before. What the 21th century will bring us is verlan. It would be useless to fight it, as oral language has always preceded written language.

I think the Académie is much more competent than many people here think it is.

Ahah yes, verlan is quite common for certain words for certain people. But nobody thinks it is legit french. It's like using terms like "doggo", "boi" or "nite" in english.

English speakers themselves are quite capable of sorting this kind of thing out for themselves without waiting for the deliberations of the appointed whose decisions they'll probably ignore anyway - as do the French, one gathers. Life and English are both messy but we muddle through.

> Life and English are both messy but we muddle through.

As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning.

> As a french, it is not muddling that I want but reasoning.

Huh I never noticed this peculiarity of English before. "I am an Italian/Australian/Canadian" - fine. "I am an English/French/Swedish" - hell no. Traditionally you'd say Frenchman, nowadays you'd avoid the gender and use "I am French" directly as an adjective.

Anyone know why -an words can be used as a noun and -sh words can't?

-an words are initially nouns that have come to be used as adjectives, while -ish words are only adjectives.

The English language readily makes adjectives from nouns, but not the other way round. Nominalized adjectives are used for collective groups at most (which is why you can say "the French") but rarely become regular nouns.

"As a french person" would be the typical genderless replacement, not restructuring the sentence entirely.

muddling through, I have managed to deduce that by 'As a french,' you mean that you are French, am I correct?

If you see biweekly somewhere, it is impossible to know what it means without more explanations, even context isn't enough. This has been like this for years and nobody's even tried to fix it.

What is the point of having such confusion?

Also, why having dictionaries at all? And who decides which one is right?

Why not have a body made up of experts who make that decisions once and for all when natural evolution leads to bad results?

> Also, why having dictionaries at all?

Exactly the opposite of why you think we have them, apparently. In English-speaking countries, dictionaries document existing usage, they don’t try to influence it. No modern dictionary has any opinion on what usage is “correct”, and you can find a lot of extremely non-standard things in the most prestigious dictionaries.

I don't know if the Academie is racist, but one of the most famous immortals is Leopold Sedar Senghor, a Senegalese poet and politician, elected in 1983. Only 20 years after the end of the segregation in the US.

You know what rubs MY nose? When people misuse language and then treat any correction as something snobby.

Typical argument from someone who just wrote "could of", or mixed you're with your: "Oh but language is to communicate, and you understood what I'm saying so it worked so stop being snobby about it"

gah, makes my blood boil

You haven’t explained what’s actually wrong with their argument.

Language is a human cultural phenomenon, it’s not math or programming. Who are you to say whether it’s right or wrong?

There is a certain variety of English that a certain social class of people have decided is “standard”, but why does that make it objectively correct?

Rulez of texn: Say prolly, cuz it kina save much time lol. Ifn you needa be more clear, mebes add xtra letter to and fro.

It's so self evident that I don't know where to begin...

Language has rules (They were taught to us in school). They might change over time but they still exist.

I'm sure that many "could of"s have been made official over the eons in all languages, (thanks to general ignorance/incompetence/refusal to learn) but that doesn't mean we should respect "couldofers" (see? I made up a word, I'm not that rigid) as if they're the next Shakespeare...

Iz their know point at witch "human caltoural fenonemon" stops and blatant misuse starts? Would you not draw the line somewhere?

I draw it at "you're/your/couldof" etc and it infuriates me because, not only these people offload a significant part of the work of communication to me, but they have the nerve to consider themselves somehow superior.

> Language has rules (They were taught to us in school). They might change over time but they still exist.

Those rules are discovered, not handed down from authorities, and the rules you were taught in school are largely not the real rules English speakers abide by. The real rules are learned the way every native language is learned: Through imitation and conversation with other native speakers, the caretakers and the peers.

> Iz their know point at witch "human caltoural fenonemon" stops and blatant misuse starts? Would you not draw the line somewhere?

First, we're talking about language, not orthography. If you want to see some bizarre orthography, read Chaucer. Or Shakespeare. Or Lewis and Clark, who managed to spell "mosquito" multiple ways on the same page, in full view of each other.

Second, native speakers do make mistakes, but if a "mistake" is persistent enough to bother you, well, it probably isn't a mistake, but a dialectical feature, and saying a dialect is wrong or inferior is contrary to the science of linguistics. You wouldn't claim to have a new rule for electrons and then rant about how the electrons refuse to follow it because they're uncultured and uneducated.

And saying a dialect is "wrong" is very often a proxy for saying some people are too poor or the wrong color to "speak right" in the mind of the complainer. Witness the idiocy spewed about African-American Vernacular English, commonly called "Ebonics" by the people who try to mark it as uneducated.

Yes, you were taught a set of language rules in school. By what objective standard are those rules correct? "Because I learned them in school" isn't a good answer.

I also learned in school that it's necessary to raise one's hand before speaking, to ask an authority figure's permission before using the bathroom, and to write math proofs in a two-column format. The point is that plenty of things you learn in school are just social conventions that are useful in certain situations, not reflections of any objective reality.

I'm not arguing against the existence of a language standard -- I'm arguing against its validity.

As for your intentional misspellings, that is a strawman -- nobody actually writes or talks like that, so you're actually deviating from the cultural phenomenon, there. If people did actually commonly write "iz" for "is", and "know" for "no" (and the rest of your examples), then that sentence would take no effort to understand, and yes, I'd be fine with it.

The standard for correct rules: when two people communicate they emerge at the end with a shared mental model of the subject.

People make up languages all the time. You can write your own rules to make the above grammar be instructions on getting to my village. You could write a different set of rules that make it an order to make my roast duck for dinner. (you can have fun coming up with even more bizarre things that it could mean under some rule system)

> The standard for correct rules: when two people communicate they emerge at the end with a shared mental model of the subject.

By this standard, using "their", "there", and "they're" or "your" and "you're" completely randomly is fine -- it's almost impossible for it to cause misunderstanding.

In fact this is false. Even though in verbal speech they are the same, in written they are different. I have known people who didn't understand something written because the wrong word was written, once someone read it out loud they understood it.

Of course there is no reason the above people couldn't get used to one spelling if they changed the rules. We just need to have universal agreement to change the rules. (I have no clue how you would do that)