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Chet Cournoyer's avatar

The Quebec Office for the French Language takes the approach of suggesting terms of French origin to replace English terms that people use every day. If their suggested term sticks, it becomes the standard, and if not, they acknowledge that people use the English term and accept it. It seems like a good balance between being descriptivist and proscriptivist, or at least the best workable balance.

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Dugan Nash's avatar

I never before thought about how artificial are the connections between symbols and sounds. In formal logic and mathematico-computer-y approaches to natural language you absolutely never get this approach, that I've seen at least. Even rigid adherence to standardised grammar and spelling turns out to be "technique", more legacy of the 20th century masquerading as natural law. Thought provoking piece, thanks.

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