The Acad�mie Fran�aise (literally, French Academy) is a French body founded in 1570 when King Charles IX granted the charter of an "academy of Music and Poetry" to the poet Antoine de Ba�f and the musician, Gourville, who named it "Acad�mie Fran�aise." On February 10, 1635, Cardinal Richelieu (regent of Louis XIII) expanded it into a national academy for the artistic elite. The Acad�mie, located in Paris, is the official authority on usage, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language. It also encourages the use of French worldwide and awards literary prizes.
As French culture and language have come under increasing pressure with the widespread availability of English media, the Acad�mie has tried to prevent the anglicization of the French language. It is as a direct result of a decision of the Acad�mie that the French word for "computer" is "ordinateur" and that the field of study dealing with computers is known as "l'informatique."
The Acad�mie itself is composed of forty members, known as the immortels (immortals) because they serve for life. Famous current and former immortels include author Victor Hugo, author and director Marcel Pagnol[?], poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, playwright Eug�ne Ionesco, anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, and physicist Louis-Victor de Broglie.
The Acad�mie is tasked with publishing an official dictionary of the French language. It has done so in 1694, 1718, 1740, 1762, 1798, 1835, 1878, and in 1932-1935. The Acad�mie continues work on the most recent (ninth) 1992 edition of the dictionary, of which the first volume (A to Enzyme) appeared in 1992, and the second volume (�oc�ne to Mappemonde) appeared in 2000.
Acad�mie's website (in French) (http://www.academie-francaise.fr/)
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