It’s what I love about English. France is over there passing laws to keep their language pure, while English speakers are picking up bits of greasy string from the gutter to see if they can fit it in a sentence.
I think it’s important to be aware that there’s the academy on one hand, which is made up of wrinkly old bourgeois men (and some women), and the french people on the other, who are, much like the english, a patchwork of ethnicities and accents that’s ever-evolving. France is a combination of several historical regions with their own language (Breton, Occitan, Provençal, Alsacien, Normand, Catalan, Basque, etc.), and that’s not counting all the languages brought by immigrants from the former colonies, that infuse contemporary french with some of their own words. The academy is completely at odds with reality.
I believe he is confusing France for Quebec. Quebec is very puritanical about the language and has laws preventing the use of other languages before French in advertisements, signage, and many other things. To the point where businesses are
forced to change their logos and emtrance signs in Quebec only and hobby shops got in trouble since the packaging on niche honny items had English packaging before the French.
It’s what I love about English. France is over there passing laws to keep their language pure, while English speakers are picking up bits of greasy string from the gutter to see if they can fit it in a sentence.
I think it’s important to be aware that there’s the academy on one hand, which is made up of wrinkly old bourgeois men (and some women), and the french people on the other, who are, much like the english, a patchwork of ethnicities and accents that’s ever-evolving. France is a combination of several historical regions with their own language (Breton, Occitan, Provençal, Alsacien, Normand, Catalan, Basque, etc.), and that’s not counting all the languages brought by immigrants from the former colonies, that infuse contemporary french with some of their own words. The academy is completely at odds with reality.
I believe he is confusing France for Quebec. Quebec is very puritanical about the language and has laws preventing the use of other languages before French in advertisements, signage, and many other things. To the point where businesses are forced to change their logos and emtrance signs in Quebec only and hobby shops got in trouble since the packaging on niche honny items had English packaging before the French.