{"id":9753,"date":"2021-05-10T18:10:39","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T18:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=9753"},"modified":"2021-05-11T09:33:45","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T09:33:45","slug":"le-petit-robert-covid-is-masculine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=9753","title":{"rendered":"Le Petit Robert: covid is masculine"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\"ImageFrancoinfo reports<\/a> that Le Petit Robert<\/a>, a popular single-volume French dictionary, reckons that “usage is law” and considers that the word “covid<\/em>” is used as a masculine noun in the majority of French-speaking countries.<\/p>\r\n

In its 2022 edition, Le Petit Robert, one of the two major commercial dictionaries in France (the other being Larousse. Ed.<\/em>), reckons the word “covid<\/em>” is written with a lower case first letter and is also masculine.<\/p>\r\n

To designate the viral disease which has spread throughout the world, Robert distinguishes the generic term “covid<\/em>“, as in the example “suspected covid<\/em>“, and the specific one of “Covid-19” with a capital letter. Robert’s definition of “covid” is: “Infectious and contagious disease caused by a coronavirus”.<\/p>\r\n

Its competitor Larousse consistently uses a capital first letter, i.e. “COVID-19<\/em>” or “Covid-19<\/em>“.<\/p>\r\n

Doubts about gender<\/h6>\r\n

Covid-19 is an acronym created in English by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)<\/a> and adopted by the World Health Organisation (WHO)<\/a> in February 2020. It means 2019 coronavirus disease.<\/p>\r\n

Its gender has been the subject of doubts in French. For Le Petit Robert, it is “masculine or feminine<\/em>“, but more often masculine, whereas for Larousse, it is “feminine or masculine<\/em>“: more correct as feminine, but masculine for many speakers.<\/p>\r\n

When introducing its 2022 edition of the dictionary, Le Petit Robert reckons that “it is usage that dictates the law. If the feminine is adopted in French-speaking Canada, the masculine is currently used by the majority in France where the opinion of the Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise<\/a> (the principal French council for matters pertaining to the French language. Ed.<\/em>) has been late in coming, whilst the masculine was already well established”.<\/p>\r\n

Rush of words linked to the pandemic<\/h6>\r\n

Le Petit Robert has added several words linked to the pandemic, some of which are very current in today’s language, such as “d\u00e9confinement<\/em>” (end(ing) or lifting of lockdown), and rarer ones such as “a\u00e9rosolisation<\/em>” (“airborne diffusion of fine particles by aerosol”).<\/p>\r\n

French is not the only language to have experienced a surge of neologisms linked to the pandemic. German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports<\/a> that 1,200 new German terms have been inspired by this global health crisis.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Francoinfo reports that Le Petit Robert, a popular single-volume French dictionary, reckons that “usage is law” and considers that the word “covid” is used as a masculine noun in the majority of French-speaking countries. In its 2022 edition, Le Petit Robert, one of the two major commercial dictionaries in France (the other being Larousse. Ed.), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32],"tags":[22,33],"class_list":["post-9753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-translation-and-language-related-matters","category-media","tag-language","tag-media-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9753"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9771,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9753\/revisions\/9771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}