Quote:
Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
Good to know. I got the impression (from somewhere, not from you) that the French were really big on preserving the French language (of course, trying to "preserve" a language is like trying to preserve a human being ... you end up with something that is dead and dry).
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well... the Académie is big on preserving the language, yes ; but that is not so much from the invention of words (there is an incredibly rich and varied tradition of inventive argot languages in french and litterary mozzling of the finest kind) as it is from the "contamination" of french by english words. on the one hand, this is silly, because languages are always borrowing from other languages and it enriches them ; on the other hand, it can be a bit comprehensible, because it's true that sometimes out of laziness or because it's "hype" people will begin to use an english word for something which already has a perfectly good (sometimes better) name in french (we had a discussion about this phenomenon too before... see the despised "
bullet points"). they tried to keep us from saying "weekend" (fin de semaine), "hotdog" (chien chaud), "email" (courriel), "spam" (pourriel). it didn't work out for them. they never tried to prevent anyone from saying "trucmuche" or "chouraver" (both of them are made up words which have become commonplace, the second one from the "javanese" slang language which consisted of adding the syllable "av" in the middle of the word ; the real word is "chourer". you scoff perhaps but it can be effective enough to confuse the cops).
but my point is, there is a long and rich tradition of linguistic invention in french. we take pride in it.