WI: Academie Francaise permanently abolished

The Academie Francaise, or the French Academy, is widely considered to have been responsible for the French language having changed extremely little over the past four centuries, and has been extremely successful in regards to keeping French "pure". Yet, interestingly enough, the revolutionary government abolished the Academie in 1793, though Napoleon later reinstituted it in 1801. What if this repeal had stuck, and the Academie was permanently destroyed?
 
Well, we might still spell the name of the language as françois instead of français, since it was the Académie's 1835 dictionary revision that adopted that change. But not too much else would be different. The "power" of the Académie is greatly overestimated by foreigners. It hasn't even done its official job - to publish a standard dictionary for the French language - since the 1930s. Every now and then it suggests some French replacement for a newly borrowed English term, though most of the time this is unsuccessful, and in fact, those new French terms that have arisen are often being coined by other sources.

At the time of its foundation, the Académie had some importance in that it established a coherent set of guidelines for spelling. By the time of the Revolution it had largely completed this job (aside from the -ois/-ais anomaly). The 1835 revision aside, it really hasn't done too much of significance since. Nowadays the Académie is basically a Hall of Fame for famous francophone writers. There is great honor in becoming an "immortel". Most don't bother actually attending meetings, though.

The Office québécois de la langue française is less well-known globally, but actually far more assertive in regulating the language (though many of its recommendations don't make it outside of Canada).
 
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@funnyhat Yea, doesn't most of what they do is combat things like anglicismes and such?

They do a little of that, but the OQLF in Québec goes much further.

Once in a while the Académie proposes minor spelling reforms. In 1990 they proposed a few changes, which mostly involved dropping the circumflex accent in places where it doesn't affect pronunciation or distinguish homonyms. This was basically ignored until last year, when the French Ministry of Education decided to adopt it in its textbooks for elementary students, though not for older ones - and it insisted at the same time that both the old and new spellings would be acceptable. Go figure...
 
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They do a little of that, but the OQLF in Québec goes much further.

Once in a while the Académie proposes minor spelling reforms. In 1990 they proposed a few changes, which mostly involved dropping the circumflex accent in places where it doesn't affect pronunciation or distinguish homonyms. This was basically ignored until last year, when the French Ministry of Education decided to adopt it in its textbooks for elementary students, though not for older ones - and it insisted at the same time that both the old and new spellings would be acceptable. Go figure...

Yea I knew about the recent changes, like oignon et ognon, relatively small things and of course the circumflex. I know right, I remember, it says this is the new spelling but the old way is also correct,,,, what is that suppose to mean?
 
They do a little of that, but the OQLF in Québec goes much further.

Once in a while the Académie proposes minor spelling reforms. In 1990 they proposed a few changes, which mostly involved dropping the circumflex accent in places where it doesn't affect pronunciation or distinguish homonyms. This was basically ignored until last year, when the French Ministry of Education decided to adopt it in its textbooks for elementary students, though not for older ones - and it insisted at the same time that both the old and new spellings would be acceptable. Go figure...

Yeah, the circumflex has little use in many words.

Anyways, what would you say is the cause of French being a very static language in relation to others?
 
Yeah, the circumflex has little use in many words.

Anyways, what would you say is the cause of French being a very static language in relation to others?

I don't know that this is really the case, outside of spelling, where it is certainly true. French had silent letters at the end of words even in the late Middle Ages. The Académie, very early in its existence, decided to stick with etymological spelling and even threw in some more silent letters just to prove how "Latin" the language really was. You might be able to change things if you have the Académie never founded in the first place. But by the time of the Revolution you're not going to see that change - French is too entrenched as the diplomatic lingua at that point for anyone to want to really tinker around with its spelling. Likewise, English today is too entrenched to do much about its crazy spelling. There's too much inertia.

(I also think it would be tricky to actually make French be phonetically spelled. Parler, parlez, and parlé are pronounced the same, and some speakers pronounce parlai and parlais this way as well. But each of these forms has a separate function, indicated by the spelling. If you spelled them all the same, it'd be confusing to read.)

As far as overall language use goes, older francophones complain about the way young people speak just like anyone else:p.
 
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