Do Language Academy Standards help?

[luke]

We're perfectly capable of reaching consensus through use and don't need a structure imposed from self-appointed authorities.

You've reminded me of another poll idea.

Do bodies like the Académie Française, etc, strengthen the language through conservatism and standards, or do they hurt in the long run by making the language less nimble?

It's not just the French, who officialize changes. German has had Spelling Reforms, Spanish has its Academies, etc, etc, etc.

You all are sure to bring many examples from many languages and whether they've tended to make them more dynamic or fossilize old ways of speaking and writing.

"Guarantee" in the poll choices is a strong word, but overall, are Language Academies helping or not?

[Le Baron]

I chose the first option, but don't agree with the 'purity' bit. Anyone who knows France, knows that the language spoken all over the country is not what the AF thinks it should be like.

The value of such bodies are more about setting a 'standard' which can be consulted and used for many purposes. If e.g. official documents are to be drawn up, or indeed language principles set for teaching the given language, there needs to be a sort of standard. Everyone knows that the standards are a sort of 'official version' that everyone gets familiar with for shared messages.

The question of whether they are 'correct' seems controversial. I think they are 'correct', but that the vernaculars are 'language as used'. Though to imagine these everyday versions of a language are not informed by the 'correct' versions is a mistake. Formal national curriculum education has been going on too long for this to have no effect. I am a great fan of dialects, I grew up speaking one with curious conjugations, like 'wentin' to mean 'going'. This itself used an obvious conjugation and just put it in the wrong place. There's a sort of angry response to this sort of thing, that you're accusing people of being stupid. Not stupid, just not educated.

I once discussed (online) some uses of local English conjugations in the U.S., which if compared to the standard 'correct grammar are incorrect. Such as: 'if I'd went there...' Where gone would be expected rather than went. It also occurs in England. It's uneducated usage and these get ingrained in vernaculars. Problem is you can't communicate on a large scale and be accurate if everyone's particular usages are deemed 'correct'. So a standard doesn't abolish vernaculars and dialects they are the core standard as a conceived set of rules. They're also derived from speech, not imagined into existence then forced upon everyone. It should be a clue that people recognise official grammar when they see it.

[galaxyrocker]

I think they're mostly irrelevant except in writing. Though, for Irish, what one does exist...I'd almost say it does more harm as they're in charge of coinings and are often horrible at it. Directly translating/calquing from English without seeming to have a great understanding of traditional Irish words and or word forming patterns (.i. they mostly compound, which hasn't been productive in centuries outside of set pre-/suffixes, instead of using the genitive). Not to mention the standard is often used by learners and horribly uneducated people to bash the dialects and native Irish, though that's more a sociolinguistics thing (people are taught poorly about what a dialect is, assume they all have one, assume they speak the standard when they're non-native and learned a poor imitation of it, etc etc) than the academy fault itself. But overall, I don't think it's helped Irish.

[DaveAgain]

I remember a programme about the Quebec-French language body, one of the things they did was liase with the French/Walloons etc when adopting new words to attempt to agree on a common one.

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Mr Sarkozy used to talk about a possible "Meditterean Union", I did wonder if Romance language bodies would be able to harmonise spellings/grammar across a language family.

[Querneus]

I don't think the association of Spanish academies has much influence at large in practice, beyond standardizing spelling.

Editors at publishing houses and some other strange individual speakers may respect some of its opinions on morphological and syntactic things like the preterite forms of satisfacer (yo satisfice, not yo satisfací), the preterite forms of traducir (ellos tradujeron, not tradujieron nor traducieron), whether "rehusar" can be a "pronominal verb" (according to them, it isn't, but in practice many native speakers say e.g. "me rehuso a hacer eso"), or whether "arriba de" and "encima de" and similar pairs should be strongly distinguished (according to them, they should be). But I at least wouldn't bat an eye at seeing any of these things e.g. in a formal email from a corporation sent out to an external entity. In practice very few native speakers ever attempt something like reading the entire Diccionario panhispánico de dudas and absorb it... assuming they even know it exists!

I can't choose any of the three options in the poll because I don't think any of them applies. Language academies across the languages that have them mostly just don't matter. And the association of Spanish academies is in fact one of the most influential...

[zenmonkey]

None of the above.

A place to shove old cultural icons. Usually men, that contributed to language. Pay them some cash while they fart around with a dictionary that may or may not see the day.
Meanwhile languages flourish, grow and change.
And the real political power of language reform is carried out elsewhere.

[luke]

Language academies across the languages that have them mostly just don't matter.

Hm. That's what Cainntear said in the first place.

Is it just American that doesn't have a Language Academy, or is it English too?

I'm still hoping we get some more comments and votes.

I'm thinking the quality of the language revisions matters. The Spanish seemed to have been very smart in writing reforms.

Will be curious if someone familiar with German thinks recent reforms were smart, or not.

Myself, when a peer writes "tho" for "though" and I know they aren't misspelling it from ignorance, but rather an attempt at innovation, they lose me.

And let's not mention the chasm that's grown between the enlightened who know that a sentence ends with two spaces and the others who imagine spaces are in short supply and they are helping to save the planet by conserving spaces.

[SpanishInput]

Hi! I just wanted to add that the Spanish RAE/ASALE is nowadays not too consistent when it comes to their descriptive/prescriptive mix. For example, in the new Gramática, in the volume about phonetics and phonology, they almost never say "This should be like this". They pretty much limit themselves to describing what's out there and showing Praat sonograms. Only in a few places the book dares to say "This is like this and not like that", or "This always happens". It definitely seems to be a book written by committee that tries to please everyone. However, if you check out their Diccionario panhispánico de dudas, they can be quite prescriptivist, even when it comes to pronunciation.

But yeah, of course I think the RAE has been key in our language not ending up split in several pieces. Especially when it comes to spelling. Spanish has near 100% uniform spelling, with very few exceptions such as video/vídeo. Also, the RAE seems to be always in the lookout for ways to make our language more efficient. For example, the most recent orthography got rid of some accent marks that were deemed unnecessary. Every time I'm writing and I have a doubt about proper usage, I check with the RAE/ASALE and with Fundeú.

Edit: I actually have another invaluable resource which I turn to whenever I have a doubt: My database of Netflix subtitles. This way I can quickly check if the thing I'm trying to say is just an ecuatorianismo or is something used worldwide. I've actually already gotten rid of some words/usage from my vocabulary that turned out to be just local usage, and not universal. For example, nowadays I never say carro, because that's just a regional word, while auto is understood worldwide. Same with guineo. I dropped it in favor of banana. Same with funda to refer to plastic bags. Now I say bolsa. I also ask other native speakers on Reddit and check WordReference when in doubt of how universal a term/expression is.

[DaveAgain]

Is it just American that doesn't have a Language Academy, or is it English too?

English as a whole. I think the US gov't backed some spelling reforms, which is why americans spell some words incorrectly!

[Dragon27]

English as a whole. I think the US gov't backed some spelling reforms, which is why americans spell some words incorrectly!

Why not the other way around? Some American ways of spelling things (like the -ize endings) are older than the modern British ones.
Modern spelling wasn't decreed by some kind of governmental spelling reform (although there were some individuals who could be called "spelling reformers"). It's kind of like the Bible canon (multiple canons), that has developed on its own, through consensus of the religious figures, not decreed by the Nicaea council, like some people mistakenly believe. There are some authoritative figures that have influenced the standard spelling practices in different countries (like Samuel Johnson for the British and Noah Webster for the Americans) and popularized certain ways of spelling, but even today different organizations and publishers use different spelling policies even inside the same country.