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Culture History Politics French

The Fight for Purity: Inside the Académie Française and the Quest to Protect the French Language

Estimated read time 6 min read

For nearly 400 years, the forty “immortals” of the Académie Française have stood as the official guardians of the French language. But in a modern world dominated by English loanwords and digital slang, their quest for linguistic purity has become a fascinating and contentious battle. This is the story of their fight to protect French from “le franglais” and the enduring debate over whether a language can—or should—be controlled.

Categories
History Politics Etymology Philosophy

A Word to Name the Unspeakable: Raphael Lemkin and the Creation of “Genocide”

Estimated read time 5 min read

Discover the powerful story of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust and created a new word to name the unspeakable. By combining the Greek root *genos* (race/tribe) with the Latin suffix *-cide* (killing), he forged “genocide,” a term that would fundamentally shape international law and our ability to confront humanity’s darkest acts.