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Comment by gerard2 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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

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

> 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.

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.

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.

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...

> 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.

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.

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