Vocabulary List for Inquiry Chart Texts

“Who Speaks the Purest French?” (innerFrench)

● il s’agit = it’s about
● lenteur = slowness
● vitesse = speed
● un berceau = a cradle
● éloigné(e) = distant
● un concurrent = competitor
● un patois = une langue régionale (a regional language)
● l’Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts = an extensive piece of reform legislation
signed into law by Francis I of France on August 10, 1539; many of the articles
marked a move towards an expanded, unified and centralized state and the
clauses on the use of French marked a major step towards the linguistic and
ideological unification of France at a time of growing national sentiment and
identity
● l’Académie Française = the principal French council for matters pertaining to
the French language
● enseigner = to teach
● les jacobins = members of a democratic club established in Paris in 1789. The
Jacobins were the most radical and ruthless of the political groups formed in the
wake of the French Revolution, and in association with Robespierre they
instituted the Terror of 1793–1794.
● la province = partout en France en dehors de Paris (everywhere in France
besides Paris)
● une volonté = a desire
● laïque = secular (something without religious or spiritual basis)
● neutre = neutral
● centralisé = centralized (controlled by a single authority or managed in one
place)
● la glottophobie = Linguistic discrimination (unfair treatment which is based on
use of language and characteristics of speech, including first language, accent,
size of vocabulary, modality, and syntax)
○ modality = a particular mode in which something exists or is experienced
or expressed
○ syntax = the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed
sentences in a language
● donner à quelque chose ses lettres de noblesse (ex.) = to give a certain value
to something
“French MP seeks ban on ‘glottophobia’ after Mélanchon mocks journalist’s
accent” - Tweet and proposition posted by Laetitia Avia (France 24)
● subir = to undergo
● un(e) banlieusard(e) = a commuter
● le raillerie = mockery
● énumérer = listed
● réprimé = repressed
● une altérité = an otherness
● une enquête = an investigation

“Accents : Avoir l’accent ch’ti, est-ce un handicap?” (La Voix du Nord)

● une babache = an idiot
● léger = slight
● recueillir = to collect
● se moquer = to mock
● déclencher = to trigger, to set off
● adoucir = to soften
● embaucher = to hire
● égal = equal
● appartenance = belonging
● un boulot = a job