The French Academy has decided: we will have to talk about the “Covid-19”

Guardian sourcouseuse of the good use of the French language, the French Academy recommends to use the word “Covid-19” in the feminine rather than in the masculine whereas even the majority usage in France is to use this term appeared with l epidemic of male coronavirus.

Read also: LIVE - Deconfinement: "You have to go and get" dropouts, says Jean-Michel Blanquer

Storm in a glass of water? The Academicians are certainly in their role in recalling a simple grammar rule: for an acronym it is the genre of the main word that counts. Thus one says and writes “the” SNCF because it is the acronym of the “National company of the railways” and the article agrees with the kind of the word “company”.

The difficulty with Covid is that it is an acronym of foreign origin. Covid is the abbreviation of the English term "Coronavirus disease" which translates to "Coronavirus disease". “Illness” being a feminine word the rule should therefore be to use the feminine when using the term Covid.

After all, we speak of "the" CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) to designate the American intelligence agency. In French, "agence" is a feminine word.

In Quebec, a French-speaking stronghold in North America, the word Covid is used in the feminine. But, another of the fundamental rules of a language is its current usage. "Use makes the law" have the habit of saying linguists. In the case of the word Covid, it is clear that the masculine has established itself in the media, but not only.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, the government has spoken of the Covid in the masculine, the Pasteur Institute also. "Why the frequent use of the male Covid 19?" , wonders the French Academy.

“Because, before this acronym spread, we mainly talked about the coronavirus, a group which owes its gender (...) to the masculine name virus. Then, by metonymy, we gave the disease the kind of pathogen that causes it, ” she says.

In the same way, the Academy hardly tastes the expression "not very happy" , according to it, of "social distancing" , a transcription of the English "social distancing". "Distancing" , explains the Academy, means in its primary sense "the refusal to mix with other social classes" . "We suppose, however, that this is not the meaning we want to give today to this name," quipped the Academy.

"Perhaps we could have talked about respecting safety distances, physical distance or setting up safety distances ," suggests the Academy.

We are waiting for the Academy to now focus on the word "deconfinement" ... absent from all dictionaries.