The members of the illustrious Académie, the official body tasked with guarding the French language from unwanted influences, are known as the “immortals” in France and their rare pronouncements carry a lot of weight.
On Thursday night the Académie issued a “solemn warning” to the government, AFP reported.
The immortals are not so much furious about English words adopted in French this time, but rather about the rise of “inclusive writing” which randomly mixes masculine and feminine forms of nouns in the same text.
The controversy was ignited by the publisher Hatier who chose to rewrite a school text book using “gender equal” grammatical forms, foreign to French.
While its stated aim is “make women more visible” in texts, the Academie called it the mixing an “aberration”, which “now puts the French language in mortal danger for which our nation will be accountable to future generations”.
Usually French texts have only included the masculine form of nouns for example citoyen (citizen) consommateurs (consumers) or agriculteurs (farmers) but if inclusive writing was used the words word be written as follows to include the feminine and plural forms: citoyen.ne.s, consommateur.rice.s, agriculteur.rice.s
Other examples include “acteur.rice.s (actor/actress), ingénieur.e.s (engineer) and directeur.rice.s (directors).
Inclusive writing encourages avoiding the word man, where possible, and proposes adding “and women” in all cases.
But the Académie Francaise dismissed the politically correct use of language: “The multiplication of the orthographic and syntactic marks that it induces leads to a disunited language, disparate in its expression and creates confusion which borders on illegibility.
“It is unclear what the goal is and how it could overcome practical obstacles of writing, reading – visual or aloud – and pronunciation.”
The new gender usage will confound students of French even more, as it is already a complicated language to learn, they said. Other languages, notably the arch enemy English, will benefit.
“It is already difficult to acquire a language,” without adding all the new forms on the end of words, the guardians pointed out.
“As for the promises of the Francophone world, they will be destroyed if the French language restricts itself by this duplication of complexity,which wlll be to the benefit of other languages that will take advantage to prevail on the planet.”
But feminist groups have backed the use of inclusive writing.
The Académie has in the past continuously battled against the invasion of English words into the French language.
“More than any other institution, the Académie Française is sensitive to developments and innovations in the language… On this occasion, it is less as guardian of the norm than guarantor of the future that it launches this alarm call,” said the statement released by the organisation.
While polls suggest that 75 percent of French native speakers are favour “inclusive writing” only 12 percent actually know what it is and how to use it.
France’s Minister of Education too, has ruled it “too complex” to be used in school textbooks.
Earlier this year the immortals complained over the slogan for the Paris 2024 Olympics bid. The chosen slogan “Made for Sharing” was in English. The Académie said it sounded like a pizza commercial.
The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution, it was restored as a division of the Institut de France in 1803 by Napoleon Bonaparte. It is the oldest of the five académies of the institute.