Skip to main content

New French words in Le Robert

 This information is from The Connexion, a newspaper we subscribe to and which I’d recommend for English first language users living in France.

French teachers may enjoy them.

I got Chat GPT to summarise.

Around 150 new words will appear in the 2027 edition of Le Petit Robert, reflecting how the French language continues to evolve alongside social, technological and cultural trends.

According to Le Robert, the dictionary now contains 300,000 words and meanings, 150,000 synonyms and antonyms, 75,000 etymologies and 35,000 literary quotations. Editors decide whether a term deserves inclusion based on three factors: how frequently it is used, how widely it appears in media and public discourse, and whether it remains relevant over time rather than being a short-lived trend.

Many of the newly added words highlight changes in modern society, online culture, food and technology. New culinary entries include aquafaba, the liquid from cooked chickpeas often used as an egg substitute, as well as bibimbap and onigiri, reflecting the growing popularity of Asian cuisine in France.

Digital culture and social media also influence the dictionary. Terms such as prompter — giving instructions to generative AI — and découvrabilité, meaning how easily online content can be found, demonstrate the impact of technology on everyday language. Other additions, including instavidéaste and matrixer, come directly from internet culture and modern media references.

The updated edition also includes words linked to social issues and online behaviour, such as incel, manosphère and pornodivulgation, while expressions like assertivité and aide à mourir reflect evolving conversations around psychology and healthcare.

English continues to shape modern French vocabulary as well. Anglicisms such as fast fashion, banger and crush have become widely used among French speakers despite the existence of French alternatives. According to Le Robert editorial director Géraldine Moinard, some English terms have become impossible to avoid because of their widespread use online and in popular culture.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zaz - Si jamais j'oublie

My wife and I often listen to Radio Paradise, a listener-supported, ad-free radio station from California. They've been playing this song by Zaz recently. I like it and maybe your students would too. I shouldn't really  reproduce the lyrics here for copyright reasons, but I am going to translate them (with the help of another video). You could copy and paste this translation and set it for classwork (not homework, I suggest, since students could just go and find the lyrics online). The song was released in 2015 and gotr to number 11 in the French charts - only number 11! Here we go: Remind me of the day and the year Remind me of the weather And if I've forgotten, you can shake me And if I want to take myself away Lock me up and throw away the key With pricks of memory Tell me what my name is If I ever forget the nights I spent, the guitars, the cries Remind me who I am, why I am alive If I ever forget, if I ever take to my heels If one day I run away Remind me who I am, wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Longman's Audio-Visual French

I'm sitting here with my copies of Cours Illustré de Français Book 1 and Longman's Audio-Visual French Stage A1 . I have previously mentioned the former, published in 1966, with its use of pictures to exemplify grammar and vocabulary. In his preface Mark Gilbert says: "The pictures are not... a mere decoration but provide further foundation for the language work at this early stage." He talks of "fluency" and "flexibility": "In oral work it is advisable to persist with the practice of a particular pattern until the pupils can use it fluently and flexibly. Flexibility means, for example, the ability to switch from one person of the verb to another..." Ah! Now, the Longman offering, written by S. Moore and A.L. Antrobus, published in 1973, just seven years later, has a great deal in common with Gilbert's course. We now have three colours (green, black and white) rather than mere black and white. The layout is arguably more attrac...
26 comments
Read more

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a langua...
Post a Comment
Read more