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Brit in Academie Francaise

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LorenzoGuapo
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 Message 1 of 9
04 April 2013 at 8:43pm | IP Logged 
There is been a British citizen who also holds French citizenchip voted as an immmortal to the Academie Francaise, here is the link, and what does everyone think of that?
here
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seldnar
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 Message 2 of 9
05 April 2013 at 4:43am | IP Logged 
I wonder what the headlines said when François Cheng, a Chinese-born French writer, was
elected to the 40 immortels..

Francois Cheng
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Fasulye
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 Message 3 of 9
05 April 2013 at 7:21am | IP Logged 
This is a very interesting article, so the French are open-minded, when foreigners want to protect the French language!

Fasulye
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Ogrim
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 Message 4 of 9
05 April 2013 at 9:34am | IP Logged 
There are no nationality requirements for being one of "les immortels". One of the last to be elected before Michael Edwards was the Lebanese-born writer Amin Maalouf. And French media certainly don't make any fuss about the fact that he is British. My impression is that the French admire "foreigners" who become French citizens and contribute to the arts and to the French language - and in France writers are generally held in high esteem.

By the way, Michael Edwards also speaks Italian and Spanish, and he reads Latin and Greek. Here is an interesting interview with him (in French). I especially like his statement "Le réel est polyglotte" (Reality is polyglot).

(Edit: stupid typo corrected.)

Edited by Ogrim on 05 April 2013 at 10:07am

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Saim
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 Message 5 of 9
08 April 2013 at 7:57pm | IP Logged 
Quote:
"I don't think it's paranoia. I think they're right. English is a threat,"

This is quite rich coming from a representative of an organization that is against the
recognition of minority languages within France
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/17/france). They're projecting their own
insecurities of what they did to Occitan and Basque; in short, a totally baseless
victimhood complex.

Once these language fascists recognize the "regional" languages or "
patios" as the Francocentrists call them, then maybe I'll begin to start to
believe their claim to "defend the French language". In other words, I'll never
believe it, because they'll never do that. They're not real lovers of language, they're
simply French supremacists whose understanding of our planet's rich linguistic
diversity is infected by a disgusting complex of superiority.

Open minded? They accept an English guy who is pro-French but they look down on their
own citizens who happen to care at all about the rest of the rich and beautiful
linguistic patrimony (oh, no I forgot, they're "rural dialects") that is found
within the French Republic. That's not very open-minded now, is it?

The Acadamie française represents the very worst France has to offer. The real
France - plural and diverse - is endlessly better and more interesting than this
ridiculous relic of 18th century nationalism.

Edited by Saim on 08 April 2013 at 7:59pm

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lichtrausch
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 Message 6 of 9
09 April 2013 at 5:44pm | IP Logged 
Saim wrote:

They're not real lovers of language, they're
simply French supremacists whose understanding of our planet's rich linguistic
diversity is infected by a disgusting complex of superiority.

You don't need to love all languages in order to be a language lover/enthusiast. For
example, it's not hard to find people around here who can't stand Vietnamese.
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Saim
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 Message 7 of 9
09 April 2013 at 7:48pm | IP Logged 
lichtrausch wrote:

You don't need to love all languages in order to be a language lover/enthusiast. For
example, it's not hard to find people around here who can't stand Vietnamese.

If they actively promoted the extintion of Vietnamese, then yes I would consider them
language supremacists no matter how many languages they've learned.

Still not convinced? Let's look at some of the things this particular individual has
said.

Quote:
The real problem? Bad English — "the sort of universal lingua-anglica which is
not proper English and which invades French through all sorts of expressions which are
unnecessary," he said.

Wrong. Languages are threatened by the bilingualization of their populations,
not by some individuals learning a foreign language to a low level. English was heavily
influenced by French under 400 years of Norman occupation, but was never under any real
threat of replacement because French remained the language of a small section of the
elite.

Quote:
"take very seriously the beauty of the French language."

How can you take "very seriously" a subjective value judgement, and one that has become
dominant in many societies through propaganda and imperialism?

Quote:
Then he let go with one more, perhaps truly renegade, thought: "The language
really under threat is English."

Oh poor poor English, only the dominant language of the world!

Quote:
Today, he explained, two non-native English speakers will often communicate in a
mangled, hybrid English.

Which is what non-native speakers of languages have done for millenia, and has usually
done nothing to change the dominant language, unless they adopt it as their native
language and then obviously their native dialect will be influenced by a substrate of
the previous language.
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tarvos
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 Message 8 of 9
10 April 2013 at 8:46am | IP Logged 
Whatever the quality of the academy's
political views, the rules they uphold towards
the French language are the ones in question.
Those are not as deserving of criticism as we
make it out to be.

That said I consider their attitude to the
Breton language scandalous.


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