Editing Académie Française (section)

==Role as authority on the French language==
[[File:DictionaryFrenchAcademy1835.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Title page of the 6th edition of the Académie's [[dictionary]] (1835)]]
The Académie is France's official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language.

===Dictionary===
The Académie publishes a dictionary of the French language, known as the {{lang|fr|[[Dictionnaire de l'Académie française]]}}.
A special commission composed of several (but not all) of the members of the Académie compiles the work.<ref name=aH/>

The Académie has published fourteen editions of the dictionary, of which three were preliminary, nine were complete, and two were supplements for specialised words.<ref>[http://www.classiques-garnier.com/numerique-en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64%3Adictionaries-of-the-french-academy-17th-20th-c&catid=33%3Acatalogue-bases-dicenc&Itemid=30 Classiques Garnier numérique] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140725082101/http://www.classiques-garnier.com/numerique-en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64:dictionaries-of-the-french-academy-17th-20th-c&catid=33:catalogue-bases-dicenc&Itemid=30 |date=2014-07-25 }}, ''Corpus of Dictionaries of the French Academy (from the 17th to the 20th Century)'', Retrieved 2011-03-17</ref>
These are:

* Preliminary editions:
** {{lang|fr|Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} (from ''A'' to ''Aversion''), pre-edition, [[Frankfurt am Main]], 1687
** {{lang|fr|Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} (from ''A'' to ''Confiture''), pre-edition, Frankfurt am Main, 1687
** {{lang|fr|Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} (from ''A'' to ''Neuf''), pre-edition, Paris, 1687
* Complete editions:
** {{lang|fr|Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française dedié au Roy}} ("1st edition"), Paris, 1694
** {{lang|fr|Nouveau Dictionnaire de l'Académie française dedié au Roy}} ("2nd edition"), Paris, 1718
** {{lang|fr|Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} ("3rd edition"), Paris, 1740
** {{lang|fr|Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} ("4th edition"), Paris, 1762
** {{lang|fr|Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} ("5th edition"), Paris, 1798
** {{lang|fr|Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} ("6th edition"), Paris, 1835
** {{lang|fr|Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} ("7th edition"), Paris, 1879
** {{lang|fr|Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} ("8th edition"), Paris, 1932–1935
** {{lang|fr|Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}} ("9th edition"), Paris, 1992-2024
* Supplementary editions for the sciences, arts, and technology:
** Corneille, Thomas, {{lang|fr|Le Dictionnaire des Arts et des Sciences}}, Paris, 1694
** Barré, Louis, {{lang|fr|Complément du Dictionnaire de l'Académie française}}, Paris, 1842

The ninth edition was completed in 2024 with the publication of its fourth volume (''R'' to ''Zzz''); the first volume (''A'' to ''Enzyme'') was published in 1992.<ref name=aH/>
In 1778, the Académie attempted to compile a "historical dictionary" of the French language; this idea was later abandoned, the work never progressing past the letter&nbsp;''A''.

===Anglicisms===

As the use of [[English language|English]] terms by media increased over the years, the Académie has tried to prevent the [[anglicism|Anglicization]] of the French language. For example, the Académie has recommended the avoidance of [[loanword]]s from modern English (such as ''walkman'', ''computer'',  ''software'' and ''e-mail''), in favour of neologisms, i.e. newly coined French words derived from existing ones (''{{Wikt-lang|fr|baladeur}}'', ''{{Wikt-lang|fr|ordinateur}}'', ''{{Wikt-lang|fr|logiciel}}'', and ''{{Wikt-lang|fr|courriel}}'' respectively).

The Académie has also noted that anglicisms have been present in the French language since the 1700s, and has criticized the view that anglicisms present an "invasion" on the French language. It distinguishes anglicisms into three categories: some that are useful to the French language and introduced vocabulary which did not have a French equivalent at the time (the Académie cites the word "''confortable''" as an example, from the English "comfortable"); others that are detrimental and only establish more confusion as the original meaning of the word is distorted in translation; and others still that are useless or avoidable, a category of anglicisms used by "snobs" who use words from an English provenance to demarcate themselves from society and appear "in vogue". For the last category of anglicisms, the Académie writes that those words are typically short-lived in French parlance.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://academie-francaise.fr/questions-de-langue#12_strong-em-anglicismes-et-autres-emprunts-em-strong|title=Questions de langue {{!}} Académie française|website=academie-francaise.fr|access-date=2019-04-22}}</ref> The {{Lang|fr|Académie Française|italic=no}} has informed government officials to stop using English gaming terms like "e-sports", it should be "jeu video de competition". Likewise "streamer" should be "joueur-animateur en direct".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61647192 |title=French officials told to abandon gaming Anglicisms |website=BBC.com |date=1 June 2022|access-date=2019-06-02}}</ref>

===Alleged conservatism===

The Académie, despite working on the modernization of the [[French orthography]], has sometimes been criticized by many linguists for allegedly behaving in an overly conservative manner. For instance, in 1997, [[Lionel Jospin]]'s government began using the feminine noun "''la ministre''" to refer to a female minister, following the official practice of [[Canada]], [[Belgium]] and [[Switzerland]] and a frequent, though until then unofficial, practice in France. The Académie insisted, in accordance with French grammar rules on the traditional use of the masculine noun, on the use of "''le ministre''" for a minister of either gender. In 2017, 77 linguists retaliated with an opinion column to denounce the "incompetence and anachronism of the Académie".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.revue-ballast.fr/lacademie-tienne-langue|title = BALLAST • Que l'Académie tienne sa langue, pas la nôtre|date = 28 November 2017}}</ref>{{primary source inline|date=August 2024|reason=A non-primary source would be helpful to show that this opinion column is notable.}} Use of either form remains highly controversial.