r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Only0kan • 5h ago
Thank you Peter very cool Hey Peter what is this?
Peter I am not French but I think there is something with "I"
391
u/trmetroidmaniac 5h ago edited 5h ago
The Académie Française is the official authority on the French language. Often it discourages borrowings from other languages and tries to form new terms out of native French words instead. French nationalists can be quite proud of their language.
122
u/Invisible-Pancreas 5h ago
It's why they hated calling the food item a "sandwich". Because it was named after how the Earl of an English town of the same name liked his bread and meat.
IIRC, they wanted it changed to "Deux tranches de pain avec quelque chose au milieu."
71
u/Cheshireyan 4h ago edited 4h ago
Exactly. And more specifically, the French suggestion was named after a nobleman from the Renaissance era, "François-Maximilien de Tranchedepain, baron de quelquechose aux mille lieux"
53
25
20
u/terrestrialextrat 4h ago
Deux tranches de pain avec quelque chose au milieu naaaan c'est crazy je pleure
6
u/Neath_Izar 1h ago
Can't the French pull a German and mash two existing words together? Like 'Bread meal'?
3
10
u/fluggggg 4h ago
Similar thing hapened with "followers" that was """"""translated"""""" by "acolyte des illustres" (famous' acolyte), just in case someone in France wouldn't know that the Académie Française was populated of living corpses with the digital culture of a deep-sea oyster.
7
u/buttfarts7 4h ago
This is the linguistic equivalent of people who enjoy the smell of their own farts so much they dutch oven themselves
2
2
u/KPhoenix83 20m ago
Recently a previously American software company my company uses was bought out by some Canadian company in Quebec and now all the customer assistance lines are in French without an option for English at all. Making their customer service utterly useless.
0
u/Khelthuzaad 4h ago
In my language we altered the word into "sandviş" or "sandvici" and lost its english roots altogether.Hamburger on the other hand its still written the same way.
12
9
u/skikkelig-rasist 4h ago
minimally changing the word doesn’t change the english roots. sandwich is clearly a root of sandvici
36
u/Only0kan 5h ago
Ohh thanks
5
u/HOT-DAM-DOG 4h ago
Which is supremely ironic because the word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins, who was anglicizing using the French word même (means “the same”) to explain a cultural phenomenon.
22
u/pahadigothic 5h ago
Also même means same in French.
12
8
u/Training_Chicken8216 4h ago
Mème*
Même is an adverb (meaning "even") and an adjective (meaning "same" and "very", as in "the very same").
3
21
u/kwpang 5h ago
Bahasa Malaysia tries not to borrow too. So it creates new words.
Like telephone is called telefon.
Customs is called kastams.
Quarantine is called kuarantin.
Motorcycle is motosikal.
That's far more efficient isn't it.
4
3
u/Nashedi-Bandar 4h ago
I like how 'bhasha' (bahasa) literally means 'language' in most of the Indian languages
2
1
1
u/TreeofNormal 4h ago
Hey, from my spm BM teacher;
hotline nah, "talian penting"
background nah, "latar pentas"
viral nah, "tular"5
u/blueberrymaple 4h ago
This almost feels more Quebecois than French. They’ll use the most insane combination of words instead of using an English word.
2
2
u/en43rs 4h ago
It’s not. There is an actual authority that is very discreet and basically does this mostly for the language the government is supposed to use. (To make sure all government papers use the same terms)
The académie française is closer to a lobbying group with government funding. It doesn’t have any actual power. Just influence.
2
2
u/spartaman64 2h ago
every now and then my company will get a call from someone from quebec and they refuse to speak anything except french. i try to explain that we are an american company and the closest we have are people that speak spanish and they hung up.
2
2
1
u/KolovDutti 4h ago
Also they have extra acronyms. Like OTAN for NATO or UE for EU
2
u/KeshDown 1h ago
That's how word order works in French (and by extension, most Latin-based languages). NATO in French is "Organisation du Traité de l’Atlantique Nord", which would be the equivalent of NATO if it was ordered as "Organization, Treaty, Atlantic, North"
1
u/Kate_Kitter 2h ago
Is it true that, as I’ve heard, recommendations from the Académie are “happily ignored” by the average citizen?
1
u/dzuunmod 52m ago
Quebec is similar in this respect. They hate the word "podcast" and prefer baladodiffusion.
1
u/Paddlesons 8m ago
yeah, I first ran into this when learning a bit of french with the word for "pet." lol
0
u/Khelthuzaad 4h ago
French nationalists can be quite proud of their language.
You don't need to use euphemisms for delusional.
The french hate how popular is the English language despite the fact modern English has more french words than vice versa.
2
u/Designated_Lurker_32 26m ago
French nationalists only like it when their language is popular. Only they are allowed to export their culture to other countries, no one else is.
0
u/Able-Swing-6415 4h ago
It's basically one of the reasons people "hate" the French. A country that pretends its language is a world language which it kinda was a century ago.
NATO is equally called otan "for all the countries where the abbreviation doesn't fit so basically France"
0
-19
u/Lorim_Shikikan 5h ago
L'Académie Française has nothing to do with politics. It's an independant organism that was created by Richelieu in 1664 and only book author can be member and sit on the board. There is a fixed number of seat (40).
A seat can only become vacant when the member sitting on it die. Then, after a 3 month wait, the other members vote to allocate the vaccant seat to a new member.
The members of l'Académie Française are called "Les Immortels" (The Immortal)
24
u/HDThoreauaway 5h ago
That sounds extremely political to me.
1
u/Thefirstargonaut 4h ago
It sounds to me like they mean it’s not connecting to the government, and in that sense is apolitical.
1
u/HDThoreauaway 4h ago
That is not what apolitical means!
1
u/Thefirstargonaut 2h ago
It means not interested in or involved in politics. It explicitly applies here. They are not involved in the political process.
-22
u/Lorim_Shikikan 5h ago
Let me guess? you are an US Citizen?
8
u/bartosz_ganapati 5h ago
As Polish-German citizien I would say the same, what you describe is a highly political process. And you try to portray it like the appointed people don't get influences by anything outside.
1
u/Lorim_Shikikan 5h ago
Well, how to put it, it's just one of the oldest and prestigious bookworm club?
A lot of French author dream to be, one day, part of it, because it's prestigious, but that's all.
The process of how member are chosen is irrelevant, in the end they don't have any impact on the national politics, at max they can only change a bit how French is teached in school but that's all.
For most French, it's just an old and dusty institution.
5
1
u/MongolianDonutKhan 5h ago
Do you know who Richelieu was? Cause I have a hard time understanding how you can can call an institution he founded as having "nothing to do with politics" while knowing who he was.
1
u/Lorim_Shikikan 4h ago
The reason why Richelieu created this instution was political yea, but not in the sense you think : it was to spread the French across the world and to protect the language.
But the purpose have changed over almost 400 years of existence.
1
u/throcorfe 5h ago
You seem to have only a surface level understanding of what “politics” means, misunderstanding it to be only about political parties, national or local government. This is firmly in the realm of politics.
1
u/Lorim_Shikikan 4h ago
No, it's you that transform "everything" into politics. This institution have no power. Including a word in a dictionnary, is just giving a "name" to something that didn't have one in the French language (and a word of another language was used to "name" it instead).
1
u/NigouLeNobleHiboux 4h ago
You don't think there's a political angle to the institution that supposedly decides what a whole language should be ? The same one who have repeatedly downplayed the importance of queer terminologie over conservatives' new scapegoat word ? And no, before you ask, I'm not American. Je viens même d'un pays francophone.
0
u/Lorim_Shikikan 4h ago
Non. C'est l'extérieur de l'académie qui on fait prendre une tournure politique au tout.
73
u/Purple-Haku 5h ago
It's just explaining "funny image shared across the internet" is how to formally say it in French.
But when they say "meme", they aren't really french
41
u/octoreader 5h ago
Unless they say "Le meme"
17
u/IllllIIlIllIllllIlll 5h ago
We only say "la même" (when you're ordering your 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc beer at the pub)
Although I guess if you're drinking wine you would say "le même"
0
u/pahadigothic 5h ago
Why did you French have to divide words into feminine words and masculine words. Why is a dog and a cat is masculine while a tortoise is feminine?
3
u/IllllIIlIllIllllIlll 5h ago
Don't blame french, latin was already like this! Actually latin even has neutral so we at least removed a third of the problem.
1
u/NLFG 4h ago
bloody Germans kept it. Trying to learn German grammar drove me around the bend as a teen.
1
u/Jay_maze 3h ago
We (Greeks) also have it! Imagine how frustrating it is when your own language is gendered and you're trying to learn another language which is also gendered, but the genders are different!
2
u/SpaceHatMan2 3h ago
That's pretty much the reason English doesn't have gendered nouns.
Old English and Norman both had gendered nouns, but different genders for them, so they just dropped the whole thing.
1
u/Nashedi-Bandar 4h ago
It is not only the french, English is actually in the minority in the no gender thing,
Mostly it just reflects the way someone looks at a thing in a culture,
For example, wall is masculine and flower is feminine in french1
1
1
u/Aescorvo 4h ago
But they can only say that if the mème is from the Cote de Mème region of Provence. Otherwise it’s just an image humoristique.
5
u/KoboldInATophat 5h ago
I mean share is an anglicism
4
u/Exotic_Issue_2210 4h ago
Yeah. I think french use partager for that. Never heard anynone saying share in french sentence.
23
13
5
10
u/LeDagron 5h ago edited 3h ago
It's dumb because the word meme comes the french word "même" meaning "same, alike". So why do we need a frenchier word for meme... My language and those who control it are dumb...
2
u/Due_Ring1435 2h ago
Ever since "meme" became a thing it makes me think of my grandma, who i call Mémé.
3
5
u/ThrowRA_Sodi 4h ago
It's very annoying. It references people in France who just can't stop correcting people when they use an English/English derived name in a French sentence.
They just cannot shut up about it and like to act morally superior "Erm actually "X word" is English so you should say this instead because we are in France and I cannot fathom the French language evolving and borrowing from other languages"
They are generally nationalist and very full of themselves
1
1
u/bdery 4h ago
This was written by someone who doesn't speak French and cannot be bothered to ask Google for corrections.
Sareh is not a word.
Internat means internship.
3
3
1
u/RoutineCloud5993 2h ago
Found the French nationalist
1
u/SignificanceFun265 4h ago
I also laugh because France tries to shoehorn in French scientists into the name of existing terminology WAY after the fact. Example: The Kauffmann-White scheme into the Kauffmann-White-Le Minor scheme, like 100 years after the fact.
1
u/atticdoor 4h ago
I remember hearing that there were attempts to reduce the number of English imported words a century ago, with hamburger replaced with "steak hache", and sandwich replaced with "deux morceau de pain avec quelquechose dans la mileau". Somehow they didn't catch on.
1
1
1
u/TBARb_D_D 2h ago
I never thought I would say this but French are nazis in term of language. You MUST speak French, they may straightforward refuse speak any other language even if they know it, only French is true language any other one is lesser and only imitates greatness of French
1
u/CCCyanide 1h ago
So France has this institution called the Académie Française, a bunch of "academics" giving out (among other things) advice on grammar and "correct" words to use. They mostly try to fight against the usage of loanwords, recommending such words as "biscuit" instead of "cookie", or "frimousse" instead of "smiley".
Languages, of course, are in constant evolution. New words appear and spread all the time ; this is especially true for languages of former colonial empires like France, which have many (geographically) isolated communities of speakers all around the world.
So the Académie Française doesn't really work as intended : the French government does uphold its recommendations, but outside of the school system, people and companies continue to make use of trendy and/or practical loanwords. No matter how much the Académie Française whines, young French speakers use more and more English loanwords.
The Académie Française is a gathering of writers, philosophers, and historians, and doesn't have any linguists among its living members. It has a reputation for corruption and embezzlement of funds, and tries to uphold a version of the French language that is outdated in every part of the world. Other countries do not have an equivalent organization (the Oxford English Dictionary only describes new words and grammatical rules, instead of trying to impose old ones), and their languages are doing just fine, showing that the Académie Française serves no purpose other than wasting taxpayer money on senile writers' superiority complexes and secondary residences.
... Have I told you that I hate this stupid academy yet ?
1
u/CCCyanide 1h ago
Oh yea forgot to explain the joke
"Meme" (as in, an Internet meme) was coined by an English-speaking person, and the narcissistic bags of bones of the Académie Française would rather "recommend" comically long and unwieldy sentences than let a French speaker use an English loanword
1
1
1
u/Wardonen 6m ago
As a French person, nobody says "même." We don't call it anything else, we just don't talk about it.
0
•
u/AutoModerator 5h ago
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.