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.”
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.”
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.
L’académie française deez nuts
Gottem
Gottem
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.
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Chill dude…
Fair enough.
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.
This tracks
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.
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