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Les femmes cheffes d'entreprise en Languedoc-Roussillon en 2010

En Languedoc-Roussillon comme dans toute région de France, il est moins fréquent de rencontrer une femme cheffe d'entreprise qu'un homme. Ces dernières représentent près de 5 % des femmes en emploi alors que c'est le cas de 12 % des hommes.

For the linguists, here's an interesting word (taken from the INSEE stats site) which I have personally never heard of.....un chef, yes but une cheffe is new to me. Anybody else come across this word?

Google Translate translates "chef" to "head" but "cheffe" to "Head" so perhaps female heads are considered to be more important!

Russell.

Kate wrote:

Les femmes cheffes d'entreprise en Languedoc-Roussillon en 2010

En Languedoc-Roussillon comme dans toute région de France, il est moins fréquent de rencontrer une femme cheffe d'entreprise qu'un homme. Ces dernières représentent près de 5 % des femmes en emploi alors que c'est le cas de 12 % des hommes.

Wages
For the linguists, here's an interesting word (taken from the INSEE stats site) which I have personally never heard of.....un chef, yes but une cheffe is new to me. Anybody else come across this word?

If you google a bit further, you will find that there are rules for forming a feminine of any grammatically-masculine name for an occupation etc. It seems to have been officially promoted for a while now, but how far they are used outside official contexts evidently varies very widely. As has been said on Facebook, the trend has been imported from other francophone countries, but not always the actual terms (eg "auteure" in France and Quebec, "autrice" in Switzerland).

There is more eg here

http://laplumeapoil.com/2013/04/30/aute ... ou-cheffe/

And here

http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/dglf ... maire.html

In an attempt to redress the balance a bit, some French nouns are always feminine, even if denoting a male person, notably

la victime
la personne

I'm sure there are others. Some research for you Martyn et al

http://www.anglophone-direct.com/Madame ... -just-miss?

Surely it's the case that french like most other languages is continually evolving. As far as I know there is no official french language, the closest being that defined by l'Académie Française who don't appear to acknowledge the word Cheffe.

In a lot of cases, if enough people say something wrong often enough then it becomes right and gets assimilated into the language.

I always cringe at American dictionaries that treat chaise lounge (sic) as being correct.

This is a sneak preview from the Did you Know section of the summer P-O Life, which I'm supposed to be working on now, instead of messing about on the forum, FB, playing cards, chatting to any passing flesh and blood (dog, bird, worm......)

Just found it fascinating. Seems that the good ol' Académie Française is softening just a tiny bit, as they are behind, or at least involved, in this.

Mémé’s the word
Three new words which may eventually end up in the French dictionary were given the most 'likes' in a Facebook survey.
Escargoter, coming from the good old French snail and meaning ‘to take one's time’, won the 'oldies' vote whilst the junior vote went to se mémériser, coming from mémé (granny) and meaning ‘to wear clothes that are too old fashioned for one's age’. The third was tôtif, meaning early, as an opposite to tardif, meaning late.
Others that sound like fun, but didn't make it into the top three are bussoter, (to wait for the bus), and lalaliser, (to sing la, la, la when you don’t know the words!)

Allan wrote:Surely it's the case that french like most other languages is continually evolving. As far as I know there is no official french language, the closest being that defined by l'Académie Française who don't appear to acknowledge the word Cheffe.

In a lot of cases, if enough people say something wrong often enough then it becomes right and gets assimilated into the language.

I always cringe at American dictionaries that treat chaise lounge (sic) as being correct.

I think dictionary editors are too fly nowadays to use words like "correct" or "wrong". Which is as it should be even (especially) when usages grate on old farts like me.

Going back to feminine titles, I have rediscovered this official report from 1999, sponsored by Jospin - a surprisingly easy read

http://www.presse-francophone.org/apfa/ ... minisa.pdf