They also publish a dictionary but it’s more highbrow and takes years to be updated from one version to the next. The highly influential Académie Francaise, created in 1634 by none other than Cardinal Richelieu, functions to ensure the French language is “pure and comprehensible to all.” In essence they are a sort of language police department. It’s an observation of French society in its own way. Only a handful make the cut and words that go out of fashion are ruthlessly eliminated. There must be no technical jargon – the word must be democratically employed! And no words that are a fad and likely to disappear as rapidly as they appeared. New – official – French words each yearĮach year word fans await the details of new words to be included in the Petit Larousse Illustré. In it’s modern form, it’s still in use today as the Petit Larousse, albeit it with more words than the original. In 1863 he published the first of 15 volumes of an encyclopaedic dictionary. Disillusioned with archaic and rigid teaching methods he teamed up with another teacher, Augustin Boyer, and started publishing teaching manuals and progressive textbooks for children. Larousse was founded by Pierre Athanase Larousse (1817-1875), the son of a blacksmith who became a teacher. The annual new word quota for their dictionary is looked forward to, and their publications influence every facet of French life from cook books to encyclopaedias, teaching and games. Larousse is to France what the Oxford Dictionary is to the UK and much more.
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