Hacker News Reader

Comment by qingcharles | Hacker News Reader

What years was English the official language of France? (if any)

The French and the English constantly invaded each other, so surely this had to work the other way at some point?

Half[1] of English is French, just like half[2] of Japanese is English/Portuguese. But off the top of my head I can't think of many French words which are derived from English?[3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Frenc...

[2] Not an accurate statistic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eig...

[3] Well, here's all 12 of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_words_of_Englis...

View on HN

> Half[1] of English is French, just like half[2] of Japanese is English/Portuguese.

Setting aside the difficulty of defending these breathtakingly inflated claims, your phrasing indicates the classic fallacy of defining a language just by its vocabulary. That possible were if, this sentence English in sense make would.

Half of English is medieval Latin (French) and half of Japanese is medieval Chinese is a better analogy.

It's true that half of Japanese is English, and half is medieval Chinese. Only the third half is native to Japan.

The Chinese influence works a lot like the Latin influence on English. Japanese is written in Chinese and some extra derivatives (hiragana/katakana are derived from Chinese characters). English is written in Latin characters plus a few extra (j, w, etc). Words you speak to express emotions, words that move you, words that you speak with your children, etc. are mostly native words (English/Japanese) but open a text book or newspaper and you're met with a wall of passionless loan words (Chinese/Latin) tersely describing precise phenomena.

The English is only for very modern stuff. Think computer technology or business buzz words.

I know, I was just trying to crack a joke :) I love that you can walk down a street in Tokyo and read half the signs if you know katakana.

The Anglo-Norman state and the Kingdom of France frequently warred, but the period in which the Anglo-Norman state held substantial parts of France was one in which its élites would not have felt the need to impose English instead of French.

Thanks to the language purity laws and Le Acedemie de Française, English words have been banned in France since ... well ... forever.

It's l'Académie Française, there are no language purity laws, English words are not banned in France, the Académie offers recommendations that the civil service generally follows, and Québec is generally far purer about the French language than France is.

"The Toubon Law (full name: law 94-665 of 4 August 1994 relating to usage of the French language) is a law of the French government mandating the use of the French language in official government publications, in all advertisements, in all workplaces, in commercial contracts, in some other commercial communication contexts, in all government-financed schools, and some other contexts.[1]"

"...the law mandates the use of the French language in all broadcast audiovisual programs, with exceptions for musical works and "original version" films.[2] Broadcast musical works are subject to quota rules under a related law whereby a minimum percentage of the songs on radio and television must be in the French language.[2]"

"...this [law also] means that computer software developed outside France must have its user interface and instruction manuals translated into French to be legally used by companies in France."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law

That’s not a language purity law, doesn’t ban English loanwords in French, and doesn’t give the Académie Française any legal or political power.

What "use the French language" means is open to interpretation by the civil service, and as GGP said, "the Académie offers recommendations that the civil service generally follows".

Sure, the Académie is influential, but this thread is in reply to a comment that claims that English words are banned in French which is demonstrably not true. French civil servants use English loanwords like week-end including in official publications, for example: https://dares.travail-emploi.gouv.fr/publication/quelle-cont...

Here is what they have to say about the laws that govern them: https://www.academie-francaise.fr/linstitution/statuts-et-re...

From where I stand, I'd call those language purity laws. You can read them for yourself, if you can read French. Otherwise, you may have to make use of a translation service.

I can read French. Which thing on that page specifically are you talking about? It all seems to be laws establishing the Académie, governing how it’s run, etc., but I don’t see anything on there about mandating that anyone speaks French in a particular way according to the Académie’s decisions.

The thing about French laws is that they are based on a different system than we have here in the US. It's called the "common law" system. That's why a normal, valid, and fully enforceable contract between two multi-million dollar companies in France could be just a page long. Or maybe just a few pages. The 99.9% that is not written down on that paper is assumed to automatically be applied, and therefore doesn't have to be written down.

And the same is true for creating new laws in France. When you create a law that establishes the existence a certain organization, a whole host of other things are effectively built into that, simply by inheritance from the common law system. And common laws don't need to be written down anywhere, because they're common.

You look at what is written, and you see only what is written. I look at what is written, and I understand something of how much doesn't need to be written because it's common law.

At this point you’re just making up nonsense to avoid admitting that you were wrong from the beginning.

There is no such thing as “language purity laws” in France; that’s a complete myth. The Académie Française is a cultural institution with no legal power whatsoever. Some English loanwords in French are “weekend”, “shampooing”, and “chewing-gum”.

It has worked the other way as well, as you can see in modern France, but mostly through the USA ;)

I believe it’s more like half of the Japanese gairaigo (Chinese excluded) come from English, not half of the entirety of Japanese.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com