This is vaguely related, but much more comical.
Academie Solemnly Mans the Barricades Against Impure French---- By CRAIG S. SMITH
The New York Times
May 31, 2005
PARIS, May 30 – They arrive at the domed building on the Seine every
Thursday, a cabal of erudite elderly citizens, half of them in their 80’s,
working like ancient tortoises to maintain the dictionary of the Academie
Francaise as an accurate record of modern French.
But as science and technology push more and more French and non-French words
into common usage, the immortals, as the academicians are called, are
struggling to keep up their Sisyphean task. The academy has been toiling
for 70 years on the dictionary’s ninth edition and has reached only the
letter P.
Maurice Druon, the academy’s honorary perpetual secretary, sets a horn-rimmed
monocle before his eye and peers over a page chosen at random from the
edition’s recently completed Volume II. ‘‘Gruppetto, grutier, gryphee,’’
he reads in the sumptuous sitting room of his majestic apartment here,
listing the words added since the eighth edition. ‘‘Fifteen out of 30
words on the page are new.’’
The eighth edition, published in 1935, has 35,000 words, but the current
edition is already up to 50,000 and will probably reach 70,000 before the
academy reaches the end of the letter Z. The pace is so slow that by the
time the edition is done, the early letters of the lexicon will be largely
out of date.
The academy, founded in 1635 under the sponsorship of Louis XIII’s chief
minister, Cardinal Richelieu, has been quietly engulfed by the slow
collision of tradition and modernity that remains one of the central
dynamics animating Western Europe today. (Eastern and Central Europe’s
Communist interlude left countries there wiped clean of many traditions,
allowing them a relatively fresher start in the post-cold war era.)
Globalization has strained the lexicographers’ careful rituals while the
French language faces an onslaught of new terms coined in foreign tongues.
It is a unique institution, the world’s most powerful state-backed linguistic
authority, whose principal work is the dictionary. The 40-member club was
abolished during the French Revolution as elitist and useless but was
revived by Napoleon who made it one of the five academies in the Institut
de France, which he installed in the former College des Quatre Nations on
the Left Bank of the Seine. The place is so imbued with the must and
rustle of tradition that any attempt at change would set nerves on edge as
surely as dragging a dry tongue over a frosty Popsicle.
The dictionary has stirred passions since its inception: Antoine Furetiere was
expelled from the academy in 1685 for having the audacity to publish his
own lexicon before the academy was finished with its.
While anyone is now free to publish a dictionary in France, the academy’s
evolving opus remains the registry of what is officially French. The
academy is the recognized authority on neologisms, particularly those
coined to replace persistent Anglicisms in the language, like courriel for
e-mail. Its decisions are followed by the government in official
correspondence, and the media are encouraged to do the same.
Each ministry in France has a team of people responsible for rooting out
foreign words and forwarding them to the Ministry of Culture’s General
Commissariat of Terminology and Neology. The commissariat consults with
the academy on French words to use in their place.
The academy is the final arbiter. It has approved French equivalents like
‘‘toile d’araignee mondiale’’ (literally, global spider web) for the World
Wide Web or ‘‘coussin de securite’’ for air bag.
It exerts its influence in other subtle ways. Several times a year it issues
linguistic directives or protests a mangling of the national tongue. It
even receives letters asking it to adjudicate in legal disputes that hang
on the meaning of a word, though it refuses to intervene in such melees.
The government’s Supreme Audiovisual Council publishes a list of
academy-approved words for television anchors and radio announcers to use
instead of their more common English equivalents. All advertising that
carries English words or phrases, must also, by law, include the French
equivalent in a footnote. Even the Nike motto ‘‘Just Do It!’’ was marked
by an asterisk that referred to the French translation, ‘‘Allez-y!,’’ at
the bottom of every ad.
Mr. Druon defends the academy’s tempo largo. ‘‘We need 50 years to know that a
word is really in use and won’t disappear,’’ he said. But even he finds
progress on the dictionary as slow as ripening Camembert in January.
He says that the academy has fallen off its pace in turning out a new edition
roughly every half century, in part recently because of the interruption
of World War II. By the 1980’s, he realized that with the academicians’
sluggish speed and the plethora of fast-appearing new words, the academy
would not complete the dictionary before the end of the 21st century.
To restore credibility to the project, he accelerated the process and started
publishing the academy’s progress in periodic installments that are
eventually grouped into volumes. Two volumes have been published so far,
taking the ninth edition through the word ‘‘mappemonde,’’ or a map of the
earth presented in two side-by-side circles. Of the 11,500 words in the
second volume, 4,000 are new.
‘‘It’s an enormous amount of work,’’ Mr. Druon said beneath a nimbus of white
hair.
The academy does not use freelancers, as many lexicographers do. Its staff of
10 scholars work through the academy’s eighth edition and consult
commercial dictionaries, specialized glossaries and the computerized
Treasury of the French Language database, which is a nearly complete
catalog of the 180,000 French words ever used, including obsolete words.
They prepare words, both old and new, for consideration by the Dictionary
Commission, which consists of 15 academicians who meet at the academy for
three hours every Thursday morning around an oval table behind a
red-stained wooden door. ‘‘A verb such as ‘to bring’ is daunting,’’ sighed
Serge Petillot, the academy’s charge de mission. The verb ‘‘faire,’’ which
in its most common usage means ‘‘to make,’’ occupied the academy for a
year. The last word that the commission finished was ‘‘peindre,’’ which
means ‘‘to paint.’’ ‘‘We work line by line, word by word,’’ said Rene
Remond, a renowned historian and member of the academy’s Dictionary
Commission, sitting in his apartment amid tables piled high with unread
books. ‘‘We’d like to lock up the third volume in five or six years.’’
After a civilized lunch, the commission members join the rest of the
academicians for an hour and a half in the academy’s vaulted meeting room,
a hushed temple of maroon suede upholstery and blue-gray silk walls. Each
of the room’s numbered seats is assigned to a member and carries with it a
history of the famous derrieres that have warmed it in the past. Valery
Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president elected to the academy in
2003, for example, is the 19th immortal to occupy seat No. 16.
A life-size portrait of Cardinal Richelieu dominates the room, and against one
wall is a small carved wooden cabinet that holds a portrait of him in
death. The cupboard is opened for each new member when he joins so that he
may pay his respects to the academy’s erstwhile benefactor.
Few mortals have ever witnessed the academy at work. The privilege is reserved
for monarchs and heads of state, and ‘‘no more than 19’’ have been so
honored in the academy’s nearly 400-year history, Mr. Druon said.
When asked if a journalist might attend one of the working sessions, he threw
his head back and bellowed, ‘‘Never!’’
Photo: Maurice Druon of the Academie, wearing the official uniform embroidered
with green and gold olive leaves. (Photo by SIPA Press)(pg. E4)
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
