Thank you for your honest and well argumented response. Just to be clear, my intention defending the Academie was not to go full nationalism and pretend that thanks to this god-like institution our language is the best in the world and as bearer of this language we, the french people, really are superior to everyone else. This is far from true. However I felt like this article was an unjust attack to an institution considered as quite harmless here in France. To be fair, I think a lot of people agree that it is an institution from another time, and a very few people think that it's the most useful. However I think people still have a tender liking for it and what it represents. And that is part of the french identity. As paradoxical as it may seem, being a frenchman is dreaming of being the next Marat or Jean Jaures while being a sucker for the symbols of authority. What this article calls pomp we call it "panache", and most people like this folklore. However I don't personally think that this make the french language any better that the english language or any other language. We just like our language because, as many things in France, it is charged with our history.