Modernizing and enriching the French language
To remain alive, a language must be able to express the modern world in all its diversity and complexity. The French language is alive and well, far from being frozen in daily practice, it evolves as French society changes. It is even abundant in the scientific and technical fields where, faced with the temptation of borrowing foreign languages, vigilance is indispensable to accompany the creation of French terms.
1972 – 2022: 50 years of French scientific and technical vocabulary enrichment policy
This year we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the interdepartmental mechanism whose mission is “to promote the enrichment of the French language, to develop its use, particularly in economic life, scientific work and technical and legal activities”, and the sixty years of political will: In 1962, General de Gaulle already required the substitution in the military vocabulary of all terms borrowed from English by French terms.
This collective enterprise, largely based on the volunteer work of several hundred successive specialists from the business, research and university sectors, has made it possible to endow the French language with several thousand terms, a number of which now belong to the common language as database, carpooling or infox.
The 10 terms of the year 2022
- Theopen access, instead of open access, which allows more people to consult research.
- Themalicious alert, instead of swatting, because even emergency and rescue services can be targets of ill-intentioned people.
- Theflagship application, instead of killer app: an innovation whose influence is immediate.
- The station wagon, instead of breakdance or breaking, a dance that will receive its first Olympic titles in Paris in 2024.
- Thequantum containment, because this area of research opens unexpected doors.
- The competitive video game, instead of e-sport: Today, the video game moves from the room to the international championships.
- The unicorn, instead of unicorn, because the financial value of a business can sometimes be a dream.
- The car-sharing or car sharing in solo, to be able to carpool whenever possible.
- The approach uonly health or global health, instead of one health, because it becomes difficult to ignore the close links between human, animal and plant health.
- The turning point, instead of game change, the term of an era that is not short of radical changes in all areas.
