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Who decides what French is
France has an institution for the language itself. The Académie française, founded in 1635, keeps a dictionary and issues opinions on usage; its rulings carry no legal force but real weight, and official terminology commissions coin French replacements for imported words — courriel for email, mot-dièse for hashtag — with uneven success. The habit this produces is personal as much as national: French speakers will correct your French, sometimes mid-sentence, and it is meant as help rather than criticism. Taking the correction and repeating the phrase back is the expected reply, and the fastest way to learn.