No other major language is argued about quite like French. Who owns it, who may change it, whether it is in danger, whether autrice is a word, whether le week-end is a defeat — these are live public controversies with laws attached, and at C2 you are expected to be able to hold a position in them, in French, without embarrassment.
This lesson is the map of that terrain. It is also the practical lesson in which you decide what norm you write, and why.
Founded in 1635, forty members (les Immortels), elected for life. Its mission is to produce the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française and to rule on good usage.
| Can | Cannot |
|---|---|
| Publish a dictionary and issue opinions | Compel anyone to follow them |
| Carry enormous symbolic authority | Overrule a law or a ministry |
| Endorse or reject a spelling reform | Stop a word entering usage |
| Shape what teachers and editors believe is correct | Move faster than the language — its ninth edition took 89 years |
What actually decides French usage, in order of practical weight: usage itself, then commercial dictionaries (Le Robert, Larousse), then the state's commissions de terminologie whose coinages become mandatory in official texts, then the Académie, then the style guides of the press. That ordering is worth stating, because learners routinely overestimate the Académie's power and underestimate Le Robert's.
| French | Pronunciation | What it requires |
|---|---|---|
| la loi Toubon | lah lwah too-BOHN | French in advertising, labelling, public services and workplaces in France |
| une mention obligatoire | ün mahn-syohn o-blee-gah-TWAHR | the compulsory French version of a slogan or notice |
| un contrat de travail | uhn kohn-trah duh trah-VAHY | must be in French for work performed in France |
| les quotas de chanson francophone | lay kwo-tah duh shahn-sohn frahn-ko-FON | radio airplay minimum for French-language songs |
Note what the law does not do: it does not regulate private speech, it does not ban English words from conversation, and it does not apply outside France. It regulates the state, commerce and employment — which is why English advertising slogans in France always carry an asterisk and a French translation in small print.
The most active current debate, and one where French and Québec have taken visibly different paths. Three distinct things are often bundled under one label, and a C2 speaker should keep them apart.
| Device | Example | Acceptance |
|---|---|---|
| Feminised job titles | une autrice, une professeure, une chercheuse, une maire | standard in Québec since the 1980s; now widespread in France |
| Doublets | les étudiants et les étudiantes | broadly accepted, including officially |
| Point médian | les étudiant·e·s | contested; banned in French schools and official texts |
| Epicene rewording | le corps enseignant, la population étudiante | uncontroversial and often the best solution |
| Proximity agreement | les hommes et les femmes sont belles | a historical rule, revived as a proposal |
Feminised titles are safe and increasingly expected: write une autrice, une professeure, une écrivaine. Doublets are safe in most contexts. The point médian is a political statement and is prohibited in French official and school texts — know that before you use it in an exam or a job application. Epicene rewording achieves the same inclusion with none of the friction, which is why professional editors reach for it first.
France's terminology commissions coin French alternatives, publish them in the Journal officiel, and make them mandatory in official texts. The record is instructive: the successes are the ones that filled a genuine gap, the failures are the ones that fought a word people already liked.
| Official coinage | For | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| un ordinateur | computer | total success — no rival |
| un logiciel | software | total success |
| le numérique | digital | success |
| un courriel | success in Québec, partial in France | |
| un baladeur | walkman | success, then obsolete |
| un mot-dièse | hashtag | failure |
| la mercatique | marketing | failure |
| un jeu vidéo d’ambiance | casual game | failure |
And the counter-fact worth carrying into any franglais argument: English borrowed massively from French for six centuries (government, justice, beauty, peace, roughly a third of the English lexicon), and French absorbed Frankish, Arabic and Italian without ceasing to be French (lesson 14). Borrowing is how languages work; the interesting question is not whether but which and why.
| French | Pronunciation | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| la Charte de la langue française | lah shart duh lah lahng frahn-SEZ | the Bill 101 charter (1977) |
| l’OQLF | lo-kü-el-EF | Office québécois de la langue française |
| la francisation des entreprises | lah frahn-see-zah-syohn day zahn-truh-PREEZ | requiring French as the workplace language |
| l’affichage commercial | lah-fee-shahzh ko-mair-SYAHL | commercial signage rules |
| le clavardage | luh klah-var-DAHZH | online chat — an OQLF coinage |
| un pourriel | uhn poo-RYEL | spam — an OQLF coinage |
| la baladodiffusion | lah bah-lah-do-dee-fü-ZYOHN | podcasting — an OQLF coinage |
Québec's situation is structurally different from France's: French there is a minority language on an English-speaking continent, so language policy is a question of survival rather than of prestige. That explains both the interventionism and the coinage productivity — courriel, clavardage, pourriel and baladodiffusion were all Québécois first, and France adopted some of them afterwards.
The question that closes the loop opened in lessons 11 and 12. With most speakers outside France, the claim that Paris sets the norm is increasingly hard to sustain, and the institutions reflect that.
| French | Pronunciation | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| l’OIF | lo-ee-EF | Organisation internationale de la Francophonie — 88 member states |
| le Dictionnaire des francophones | luh deek-syo-nair day frahn-ko-FON | a pan-francophone dictionary launched in 2021 |
| une norme endogène | ün norm ahn-do-ZHEN | a locally developed standard |
| le rayonnement culturel | luh ray-on-mahn kül-tü-REL | cultural influence |
| l’insécurité linguistique | lan-say-kü-ree-tay lan-gwees-TEEK | believing one's own variety is defective |
| le droit à la langue | luh drwah ah lah LAHNG | language rights |
The positions you should be able to state fairly, because you will meet all three:
Read the Académie's own déclaration on écriture inclusive, then the response from a Québécois or Belgian linguist. Both are online, both are written in beautiful soutenu French, and the disagreement is instructive in itself — it is a perfect specimen of the argumentation you practised in lesson 4 and the rhetoric of lesson 19, deployed on a subject the writers genuinely care about.
You now have to decide, and a C2 speaker should be able to defend the choice.
France's language politics run through the state: the Académie, the terminology commissions, the loi Toubon, and a constitution whose Article 2 says la langue de la République est le français — which is also why France has never ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and why the status of Breton, Occitan, Corsican and Alsatian remains contested. The écriture inclusive debate has reached the level of ministerial circulars banning the point médian in schools.
Québec's policy is protective rather than prestige-driven, and it is politically central in a way France's is not: Bill 101 and its successors regulate signage, schooling and workplace language, and every revision is a major political event. Québec also moved earlier on feminisation and on coining alternatives to anglicisms. Outside Québec, francophone minorities fight a different battle — for schools, services and broadcasting — and le droit à la langue there means access rather than purity.
Write oui or non.
Write réussi or échoué.
1. The Académie française's rulings are:
2. The loi Toubon regulates:
3. Why does Québec coin French alternatives more aggressively than France?