Québec has language laws that prevent businesses from using English in their advertising among other things, and some controversial rulings have come from it. One such ruling was the use of “le week-end”. Québec was punishing businesses who used this term instead of “la fin de semaine”. There was an interview done with an official from the language police where the interviewer had a dictionary from France which showed “le week-end” is proper French. The Québec official said “France doesn’t decide what words are French. We do.”
Can we take a sidebar over here, and recognize how VIOLENTLY (possibly literally) English speakers would reject that sort of sometimes-it’s-actually-legally-binding official language board?
Even those Karen type motherfuckers, who will openly yell at people at McDonald’s for speaking some non-English language would FULLY reject any ivory-tower shithead telling THEM exactly how to speak English.
I mean, they would be the FIRST people to to reject that shit, and they would reject it the most forcefully. And they would be entirely correct, for once. The duty of dictionary compilers, linguists, and everyone else in that general field is to RECORD the evolution of languages. It is never their duty to PRESCRIBE usage.
That is, and I’m choosing my words very carefully here, SOME NAZI SHIT. It’s authoritarian nonsense. It’s never okay. For any reason. Whatever reason you think you have, it’s not good enough.
Try to legally enforce rules on how I can speak my own language? Do that right to my face? Some stick-up-the-ass language Gestapo comes at me with that shit, I’m liable to loosen his fucking teeth. Then he could see how ironic it’d be, when he couldn’t pronounce any fricatives correctly. Don’t test me. I will do it. And so will every other English speaker, regardless of race, creed, class, color, nationality, etc.
That’s why no majority-English-speaking nation has any of these fascist-ass language academies. We won’t stand for it.
I tried searching for it before posting but couldn’t find it. It was a radio interview likely sometime in the 80s. It’s hard to find because a search for controversial things the Québec language police have done turns up a lot of results.
Québec has language laws that prevent businesses from using English in their advertising among other things, and some controversial rulings have come from it. One such ruling was the use of “le week-end”. Québec was punishing businesses who used this term instead of “la fin de semaine”. There was an interview done with an official from the language police where the interviewer had a dictionary from France which showed “le week-end” is proper French. The Québec official said “France doesn’t decide what words are French. We do.”
This tracks
TIL the French Language Police is a thing
Il y en a deux ! Une pour la France et une pour le Québec mais la majorité des locuteurs du français sont en Afrique.
L’Académie française disagrees
Prescriptivist jerks. Let’s all dress up in $50,000 robes, call ourselves immortals, and pretend that we can control language.
Can we take a sidebar over here, and recognize how VIOLENTLY (possibly literally) English speakers would reject that sort of sometimes-it’s-actually-legally-binding official language board?
Even those Karen type motherfuckers, who will openly yell at people at McDonald’s for speaking some non-English language would FULLY reject any ivory-tower shithead telling THEM exactly how to speak English.
I mean, they would be the FIRST people to to reject that shit, and they would reject it the most forcefully. And they would be entirely correct, for once. The duty of dictionary compilers, linguists, and everyone else in that general field is to RECORD the evolution of languages. It is never their duty to PRESCRIBE usage.
That is, and I’m choosing my words very carefully here, SOME NAZI SHIT. It’s authoritarian nonsense. It’s never okay. For any reason. Whatever reason you think you have, it’s not good enough.
Try to legally enforce rules on how I can speak my own language? Do that right to my face? Some stick-up-the-ass language Gestapo comes at me with that shit, I’m liable to loosen his fucking teeth. Then he could see how ironic it’d be, when he couldn’t pronounce any fricatives correctly. Don’t test me. I will do it. And so will every other English speaker, regardless of race, creed, class, color, nationality, etc.
That’s why no majority-English-speaking nation has any of these fascist-ass language academies. We won’t stand for it.
Chill dude…
Fair enough.
Oh please. There isn’t a single linguist in the Académie Française.
The Académie Française is to the French language what a group of former weathermen is to climatology.
Honnêtement, tu donnes un peu trop de crédibilité à l’Académie française dans ta comparaison.
L’académie française deez nuts
Gottem
I’m not finding any info on this. Source?
I tried searching for it before posting but couldn’t find it. It was a radio interview likely sometime in the 80s. It’s hard to find because a search for controversial things the Québec language police have done turns up a lot of results.