New French dictionary reflects rise of African speakers

This picture taken on May 18, 2015 shows the latest edition of the French dictionary "Le Petit Larousse" dictionary, held open at the page to display the word "Bolos" which is one of 150 new words featured in the 2016 edition. The latest edition of the celebrated French dictionary "Le Petit Larousse" featuring some 150 new words, and offering vocabulary to express new gastronomic and environmental issues is to be released on May 28, 2015. (AFP PHOTO / ERIC FEFERBERG)

(AFP) - France has long defended the purity of its language with an official list of permitted words, but the launch of a new online dictionary with state support on Tuesday underlines how attitudes have shifted.

For three centuries, the venerable Academie Francaise in Paris has produced state-sanctioned dictionaries that document and approve new terms or expressions.

The first version dates back to the 17th-century creation of the Academie, while work on its latest tome, the ninth, has been underway since 1986.

The backers of the new dictionary, which include French President Emmanuel Macron, are lightning quick in comparison and hope to reach many more people with an online resource based on the Wikipedia model.

"This dictionary will enable everyone who loves our language, and they are 300 million to speak it today, to appreciate its richness," Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot told a launch ceremony on Tuesday.

Called the "Dictionnaire des Francophones" (The Francophones' Dictionary), it was proposed by Macron in 2018 as a way of bringing together and celebrating the diversity of modern French.

So far, it contains around 600,000 terms and expressions, Bachelot said, but users across the world have been invited to submit suggestions that will be vetted by other users and a team of linguists.

Apart from the works of the Academie Francaise, only one other dictionary has been ordered by the French state: the Tresor de la Langue Francaise (the Treasures of the French State), by President Charles de Gaulle in 1962.

Other commercial French dictionaries, such as the Le Petit Robert and Larousse, are regularly updated.

- World French -

The project reflects how France is home to a minority of modern French-speakers, with the language more commonly used in the fast-growing populations of former colonies in Africa.

In a speech in 2018, Macron broke with tradition by saying that France needed to acknowledge that it did "not carry the destiny of the French language on its own."

"France must take pride in being ultimately a country among others which learns, speaks and writes in French, and it's this decentralisation that we need to re-think," he told an audience at the French Institute, which houses the Academie.

Macron has not given up on the global language battle, however, with the French president keen to increase funding for French language schools globally, and challenging the use of English in the European Union.

Bernard Cerquiglini, who was asked to lead the dictionary project, told the magazine Express that the dictionary aimed to bring together online resources from Africa, Belgium, Quebec and others.

"We're building. We're going to include little by little everything that exists on the internet on the French language," he said, adding that the dictionary could reach one million entries.

Results given to a user will depend on their location, which will be detected by the search engine, meaning that a word like "baton" would show as golf club in Quebec, a cigarette in Senegal, or a penis in Ivory Coast.

"The idea is to create a dictionary of world French, and decentralised," Cerquiglini added.

Louise Mushikiwabo, the head of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), which groups French countries, proposed adding the word "techniquer" during Tuesday's ceremony, which means finding an ingenious solution on a budget in Rwanda.

Cerquiglini replied that it would be added in the afternoon.

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