This near-revolutionary statement marks an official volte-face in a
country where the language is protected by laws upheld and guarded by
academics known as “immortals” at the Académie Française.
The Académie is frequently ridiculed for its attempts to come up with
French alternatives to popular and widely used English terms, including
weekend (fin de semaine), email (courriel) and sub-prime (prix
hypotécaire à risque).
Korean-born Pellerin, who speaks French, German and English, made it
clear she disagreed with the 1994 law defending French from foreign
invaders that insists that any sign or advertisement in the public space
“must be written in French”.
“French is not in danger and my responsibility as minister is not to
put up useless barriers against other languages but to give all our
citizens the means to make it live on,” she said.
“A language is always moving,” she said in launching French Language Week, a series of events across 70 countries in the French-speaking world.
There are an estimated 274 million French speakers on five continents. Language specialists predict the number will reach 700 million in 2050.
“Certain languages, like English today and Italian in the past, have
shown themselves particularly generous in offering French hundreds of
new words,” Pellerin said. However, she conceded some terms simply did
not make sense in French – especially those relating to digital
subjects, such as email and e-commerce. The English e sound is
represented by the letter i in French.
“The word e-commerce, for example, makes no sense in French from a
linguistic point of view because the ‘e’ is not pronounced the same, so
we have to think about this,” the minister said.
The 40-member Académie Française
– founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII’s chief minister –
is tasked with “defining … elaborating … and fixing the use of French”
and is famed for its attempts to see off anglophone invaders.
It is made up of writers, linguists, historians and philosophers, and membership is for life.
“English has always fascinated me because it’s easy to create new
words or join two words and make a new word,” Pellerin told anglophone
journalists after a meeting of the Anglo-American Press Association in
Paris.
She said her favourite word was “serendipity” which she added had been officially assimilated into the French language.