What a fallacious argument. I don't think that English is anymore degenerate or illogical than French.

French still has rules thanks to its Académie. English hasn't any. It's just now a pile of misspelled and misconstrued idioms, and yet, with globalisation, the worst is to come: tons of more idioms and new misspellings will be poured into it and these new usages will become part of it...

Who listens to the Académie? Only stuck up old idiots. Real French continues to change, just like English does, regardless of the Académie. (See, for example, the replacement of "ne" with "pas".)

>Who listens to the Académie? Only stuck up old idiots.

You're wrong. And you're a young idiot.
The French administration listens to the Académie, of which it is official counsel. The the administration translates Académie's proposals into decrees for French schools, and these decrees are binding. So does the Justice system. Then all contracts that don't use official French are void. So companies write their contracts in official French.
Then, in the end, the "old idiots" impose their most wise views on 68 million French people.

>Real French continues to change, just like English does, regardless of the Académie

You're wrong. "Real french" tried to impose "Walkman" when I was a kid, and the Académie coined "baladeur" and every fool like you laughed a lot. 35 years later, we have this : http://www.amazon.fr/Memup-M24-...703970&sr=8-14

And that is where you're a fool and understand nothing of how French works and you should shut up...

And "ne" is not replace with "pas", you're a complete ignorant of this language!

Wow, I didn't expect sacredceltic to degenerate into insults *that* quickly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jespersen%27s_cycle

I suggest you read up more on this, by the way.

>Wow, I didn't expect sacredceltic to degenerate into insults *that* quickly.

and what do you call "stuck up old idiots."?

Do you have a brain?

You're not doing anything to dispel the impression of being "stuck up". You're probably old, and probably an idiot, too.

>I suggest you read up more on this, by the way.

your reference speaks of "Old French" which was pre-Académie, you fool!

The Académie was founded in 1635 when French was well beyond this.

Besides, this article is a gross simplification, since "ne" and "ne pas" are still in competition in modern French and there are numerous examples of such sentences in Tatoeba (I wrote many sentences with « ne » and without « pas » myself.)

Of course French evolves. And of course it has evolved, since it didn't exist 1000 years ago.
That is not the issue.
The issue lies on the way it evolves NOW.
English evolves by USAGE, so if the majority doesn't know that an "alternative" has only 2 possibilities, because they are uneducated, they use it to say "3 alternatives" and that becomes the norm, which is acceptable in English. Not in French.
In French, the uneducated majority doesn't rule.
That simple.

@sc Yes, French has the Academy, but in reality it doesn't make that much of a difference. The Académie can't stop linguistic evolution. For example, French regional speech or casual speech often strays very far from proper French.

>Yes, French has the Academy, but in reality it doesn't make that much of a difference. The Académie can't stop linguistic evolution. For example, French regional speech or casual speech often strays very far from proper French.

You're wrong.
"french regional speech" tends to disappear, on the contrary, because France has had a unifying national education system, for over 5 generations, that mixed teachers from every region in every other (and also abroad and from abroad). And national television ended up unifying the language within France and abroad.
I note that in other French-speaking countries, this is also the case. For instance, I perfectly understand most Congolese and they speak the same French as I do, mostly because educational tools used in Africa come from France, probably. And the Académie Française also welcomes authors from Africa, as well as all other French-speaking countries, so the "stuck-up old idiots" are also African, Canadian, Belgian, Polynesian...
Having an Académie doesn't mean that new words do not pop-up. They do. And most of them are created by our greatest authors, who mostly end up at the Académie. And sometimes the Académie adopts a word coming from elsewhere, if it is useful, logical, pronouncable.
But, unlike in English, words that contradict pronounciation rules or defy logic don't make it into French, and nobody complains except you.

I'm not saying there are no varieties. But on the whole, they tend to disappear. In France, all regional languages (which are most of the time not variations of French but actual different languages such as Occitan or Breton) tend to disappear. Television and radio killed them. They'll die along with the generation just above mine who are the last true speakers of them.
And when teenagers use new forms of French (such as verlan) to tout the police or their parents, they end up speaking normal French as soon as they get a job and/or have children.
French dies hard.

And calling people either "old idiots" or "young idiots" doesn't add anything to the discussion.

No language is perfectly logical. French also has pronunciations quirks. French spelling or orthographe is by no means easy to learn. Some effort has been made, for example in the 1990 reform to make it easier, but it's not as easy as Spanish or Japanese that have much fewer spelling difficulties.

And the Académie sanctioned grammar is not more logical. It just reflects a certain use of grammar that is sanctioned by the Académie.

>And calling people either "old idiots" or "young idiots" doesn't add anything to the discussion.

I agree...but I always retort to insults (read my profile)

>No language is perfectly logical. French also has pronunciations quirks. French spelling or orthographe is by no means easy to learn. Some effort has been made, for example in the 1990 reform to make it easier, but it's not as easy as Spanish or Japanese that have much fewer spelling difficulties.

100% agreed. But did I say otherwise? Please remind me where that was?

This sentence, which is the topic, has nothing to do with French. It's about systems that degenerate because they're based on usage.
The fact that Fench has quirks, which is undeniable, is 100% irrelevant to that subject. You're just wading in ugly nationalistic tit-for-tat.

>And the Académie sanctioned grammar is not more logical.

Yes it is. Because these people have brains and style, unlike would-be linguists brats.

French versus English. A nice couple has met here. :)

> French versus English. A nice couple has met here. :)
No. It's more "people who know what they're talking about" versus "an old idiot who thinks languages can be controlled".

>"an old idiot who thinks languages can be controlled".

Who KNOWS that they ARE...

>people who know what they're talking about"

= TEENAGERS WHO JUST WANT TO SHOW OFF HOW IGNORANT THEY ARE.

Tell me, then, why does it make a difference if there's no formal academy for English? Don't all the grammar books have an influence on English? They certainly have as much influence on language as the Académie -- not much.

While you're telling me about that, tell me why collquial French has started replacing "ne" with "pas" or nothing, and tell me why colloquial French has replaced "on" with "nous". Why hasn't your magical Académie stopped them?

And last I checked, most of the Académie's members weren't linguists in any way.

>your reference speaks of "Old French" which was pre-Académie, you fool!
Additionally, I suggest you read that article again. It talks about Modern French.

>Tell me, then, why does it make a difference if there's no formal academy for English? Don't all the grammar books have an influence on English?

No. Usage rules!

>They certainly have as much influence on language as the Académie -- not much.

No, they have none. They just mirror usage. The Acédémie has ALL, because it is their OFFICIAL JOB.

>While you're telling me about that, tell me why collquial French has started replacing "ne" with "pas" or nothing, and tell me why colloquial French has replaced "on" with "nous". Why hasn't your magical Académie stopped them?

Because they thought it was fine.

>And last I checked, most of the Académie's members weren't linguists in any way.

Some of them are, but most are writers.

By the way, you can pose as a "linguist" as you do, although you're unable to speak a single language properly, not speaking of a second...

>Additionally, I suggest you read that article again. It talks about Modern French.

Well, it is irrelevant, because these usages are not more modern than the others, they're just in competition at present, and their usage is based on style.

Yes, usage rules -- as it does in French. But, just like you, English has several idiots who think they can dictate language, and often make up rules just like you and your precious Académie. They're similarly worthless bastards who shit all over English, as the Académie shits over French, but they exist.

>Yes, usage rules -- as it does in French.

No, it doesn't in French.

>But, just like you, English has several idiots who think they can dictate language, and often make up rules just like you and your precious Académie.

Thanks for you, English has also idiotic teenagers such as tyou who pretend to be linguists although tghey can't even write their own language properly and never learned to speak a second language...

>They're similarly worthless bastards who shit all over English

I realised that, yes...

Right, to sum up, sacredceltic is a whiny French guy who hates that it lost out to English, and hates how young people speak. Move on, nothing special to see here.

>Move on, nothing special to see here.

So why are YOU whining? Because you're incapable of translating sentences? Just go play the teenager illiterate linguist elsewhere...