Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[DGuller]

If you want to go "hey, wait a second, doesn't the OED have a similar role in English", I'd be very interested in hearing that perspective.  I have no dog in this hunt - I'm not arguing for any particular point.  But no, you go off on me having "a crude set of vague ideas about "the French"" and attack me for saying something that, still, doesn't seem at all incorrect.

I know - though I used your post to go on, my points were not addressed to you, but to Raz, who (still) doesn't know what he is talking about. I am sorry if I came across as though I was spouting off at you.

Okay, if I don't know why don't you tell me.  What was the purpose of the French government forming of the French Acadamy, and giving it a budget, staff and palace?

Sinecure.

[Oexmelin]

"The French Government", being Richelieu as master of royal patronage, wanted a retinue of writers to exalt the glory of Louis XIII, a collection of nom de plume for his own propagandist writings, and a group of sponsored writers who would establish French as much as a language of arts and eloquence as was Latin. What one could ascribe to an effort of standardization, its 1694 Dictionary, was governed by the principle of "uses" rather than prescription; its diffusion, marred by an extremely slow publication process, was much lower than Furetière's own Universal Dictionary of 1684, revised by the Jesuits, and adopted by them in their teachings.

As an Academy, the Académie française probably contributed much less to standardization of the French language - a complex process spanning centuries and involving, in France as in England, the language of chancelleries and the law - than the Royal Academy of Sciences in England contributed to the standardization of the language of science.

[Razgovory]

Why the scare quotes around "French Government"?

[Oexmelin]

Because you use it in a ahistorical manner, to convey meanings more properly attached to later, 19th or 20th century government practices, to the sort of royal government that oversaw the foundation of the Académie. By the same token, one could say that the British government sponsored Shakespeare.

[Razgovory]

Because you use it in a ahistorical manner, to convey meanings more properly attached to later, 19th or 20th century government practices, to the sort of royal government that oversaw the foundation of the Académie. By the same token, one could say that the British government sponsored Shakespeare.

I suppose I could.  In fact, I have no problem with saying that governments sponsers artists, inventors, scientists and builders.  You have a point but a very narrow one, that government was different in the 17th century.  This is true, but it still means that that the Acadamy had both a mission to regulate the French language and state funding in the person of the monarch and was continued long after the death of King Louis XIII by successive French states.  As far as I know, Noah Webster had no similar advantage.  I know of no similar institution in the United States.

[Admiral Yi]

Ucks, what is the significance of that letter written on Universite de Paris letterhead?

[Oexmelin]

Ucks, what is the significance of that letter written on Universite de Paris letterhead?

It's the month. It was an old way of dating - 16 IV 55 : April 16th, 1955.

[CountDeMoney]

[Razgovory]

 

[Capetan Mihali]

Ucks, what is the significance of that letter written on Universite de Paris letterhead?

And it shows someone (presumably the professor mentioned above) proposing to someone else (presumably IBM) the word "ordinateur" as the French word for "computer" (seemingly on the grounds of a corresponding theological use, from what I can glean from the handwriting and my knowledge of French) back in 1955.  Disproving the idea that the word "computer" was widely used in France until the Academie clamped down on it, which I think was the story you initially said you remembered hearing..

[Admiral Yi]

And it shows someone (presumably the professor mentioned above) proposing to someone else (presumably IBM) the word "ordinateur" as the French word for "computer" (seemingly on the grounds of a corresponding theological use, from what I can glean from the handwriting and my knowledge of French) back in 1955.  Disproving the idea that the word "computer" was widely used in France until the Academie clamped down on it, which I think was the story you initially said you remembered hearing..

OK, that's what I thought, but I don't see how it disproves that "computer" was used widely in France.

[Capetan Mihali]

And it shows someone (presumably the professor mentioned above) proposing to someone else (presumably IBM) the word "ordinateur" as the French word for "computer" (seemingly on the grounds of a corresponding theological use, from what I can glean from the handwriting and my knowledge of French) back in 1955.  Disproving the idea that the word "computer" was widely used in France until the Academie clamped down on it, which I think was the story you initially said you remembered hearing..

OK, that's what I thought, but I don't see how it disproves that "computer" was used widely in France.

Well it certainly suggests "ordinateur" was in use (from a non-Academie source) a solid 30 years before the age of the personal computer.  But if you have documentary evidence that "computer" was making headway in France during this whole time, only to be cut down in its prime by the Academie, by all means share it.

[Admiral Yi]

Well it certainly suggests "ordinateur" was in use (from a non-Academie source) a solid 30 years before the age of the personal computer.  But if you have documentary evidence that "computer" was making headway in France during this whole time, only to be cut down in its prime by the Academie, by all means share it.

As I said before, it's something I read a very long time ago.

[Capetan Mihali]

Courriel vs. e-mail is the French tech terminology controversy I'm more familiar with.

[Razgovory]

Well it certainly suggests "ordinateur" was in use (from a non-Academie source) a solid 30 years before the age of the personal computer.  But if you have documentary evidence that "computer" was making headway in France during this whole time, only to be cut down in its prime by the Academie, by all means share it.

Well I imagine the French had a word for a computer before the 1980's.  The Americans did: computer.  The US were using Hollerith machines to do the census by the 1890's.

I took a look at the Wikipedia entry for French Orthography  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography

This line is in there

The third (1740) and fourth (1762) editions of the Académie dictionary were very progressive ones, changing the spelling of about half the words altogether.

It's not cited, but if true would indicate that the French Academy did, in fact, do some significant regulating.