The French language "is not set in amber", says Marie le Conte:
There are now 300 million French speakers globally, across 106 countries and territories. Of these, 235 million speak it every day; of those, 59% live in Africa. It is both a very rigid language and a fundamentally elastic one.
When so many people across the world technically use the same words, they are bound to twist and change them as they see fit. If a Québécois went to Cameroon tomorrow, they would probably struggle to find their feet, at least for the first few days.
It is a diversity that should be celebrated, but it isn’t clear that French elites see it that way. Organs such as the Académie française often do their best to make sure that little changes, and that only the most classical of French is seen as correct...
The Cité Internationale de la Langue Française has just opened its doors... the new museum’s director, Paul Rondin, told Radio France International that “we are witnessing a real deterioration in the language. We’ve let ourselves be devoured by a globish that isn’t English […] The language has been transformed into an accumulation of signs, leaving little room for complexity and diversity, accelerated by digital technology where it’s not even quite Globish but pieces of Globish or of what used to be French.”
He isn’t entirely wrong, of course. There are things we lose by attempting to create languages that are spoken and understood by hundreds of millions of people, including many who did not grow up with them. There are nuances and a certain subtlety that must be sacrificed, and it is no small price to pay.
Still, there is joy to be found in bridging gaps between different countries and populations, and in bringing people closer by making sure they understand one another. Languages only die when they are not spoken; letting them evolve means giving them another lease of life.
This is why it is encouraging to see that at least some of the museum’s resources seem to welcome change. As one of their online exhibitions points out, “each speaker adapts the ‘language of Molière’ as he or she sees fit, according to his or her identity, heritage, needs and environment… This diversity is a guarantee of vitality!”
Perhaps most importantly, it treats French expressions from France as similar to phrases from, say, Gabon, Louisiana or New Brunswick. The director’s take may be old-fashioned, but the museum is forward-looking.
The French language is not set in amber - The New European
No language is set in amber:
Languages are constantly in flux. Changes in lexical meaning alter with each generation, even within the same culture or social group, and languages evolve as new words are developed in line with technology or are borrowed from other languages.How Languages Change over Time - Creative Word
Every language has a history, and, as in the rest of human culture, changes are constantly taking place in the course of the learned transmission of a language from one generation to another. This is just part of the difference between human culture and animal behaviour. Languages change in all their aspects, in their pronunciation, word forms, syntax, and word meanings (semantic change). These changes are mostly very gradual in their operation, becoming noticeable only cumulatively over the course of several generations. But, in some areas of vocabulary, particular words closely related to rapid cultural change are subject to equally rapid and therefore noticeable changes within a generation or even within a decade. In the 20th century the vocabulary of science and technology was an outstanding example. The same is also true of those parts of vocabulary that are involved in fashionable slangs and jargons, whose raison d’être in promoting group, particularly age-group, solidarity depends on their being always fresh and distinctive. Old slangs date, as any novel or film more than 10 years old is apt to show.Language - Evolution, Acquisition, Structure | Britannica
Language is always changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users. This isn't a bad thing; if English hadn't changed since, say, 1950, we wouldn't have words to refer to modems, fax machines, or cable TV. As long as the needs of language users continue to change, so will the language. The change is so slow that from year to year we hardly notice it, except to grumble every so often about the ‘poor English’ being used by the younger generation! However, reading Shakespeare's writings from the sixteenth century can be difficult. If you go back a couple more centuries, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are very tough sledding, and if you went back another 500 years to try to read Beowulf, it would be like reading a different language.Is English Changing? | Linguistic Society of America
There are many reasons why languages change, and I'll cover a few of them, but also: We don't entirely know why all changes happen! Sometimes changes are really well-documented over centuries—I'll share a few English examples—but other changes, especially pronunciation changes, are less well understood. It's easy to reflect on changes that have already happened, but basically impossible to predict what will change in the future.Why Do Languages Change Over Time and Can Change Be Avoided?
What a linguistic looking at the long-term picture might perceive as changes can look to people living through them simply as errors. If you were writing an essay, you wouldn’t start sentences with prepositions, refer to authors whose books you’re referencing by their first names, use “gonna” or “ain’t” or describe an academic’s theory as “awesome”. But these things might all be normal for essay writers in a generation or two. The essays you write today would seem similarly error-laden if you had to submit them fifty years ago, when “fantastic” primarily meant implausible or otherworldly, “hello” was still used as an expression of surprise as well as a greeting, and middle-class children were discouraged by their parents from using an expression as slangy as “hi”.5 Things That Cause Languages to Change - Oxford Royale
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