Have you ever thrown a camel? Camels are large and heavy animals, so it would be hard to do so. But in the French-speaking Democratic Republic of the Congo, "to throw a camel" is a way of saying "to make a spelling mistake". In the past, a phrase like that was not accepted by the French government as an official French term. But recently, the French Ministry of Culture worked on a new kind of dictionary that accepts the idea that many people in other countries and regions speak the language. The language has changed over time and is different in places like Ivory Coast in West Africa or Quebec in Canada, compared to how it is in Paris.
The new online French dictionary includes new French words from around the world. It was released (发布) on March 18 — just in time for International Francophonie Day on March 20. After its release, it is updated (更新) on a regular basis. It now contains about 600,000 terms. The French Culture Minister says the dictionary is not just for France's 67 million citizens, but for the 300 million French speakers worldwide.
Supporters say the new dictionary is more democratic (大众化的) than earlier French dictionaries that only showed the way highly educated French people spoke. Official dictionaries produced by the French Academy in Paris were first published hundreds of years ago and are regularly updated. The online dictionary, however, has a new part you cannot find in a book. If you live in Senegal, for example, you can search the dictionary, and it will give you the meaning of a word based on its use in that country.
"The French no longer have a monopoly (独占) on French," a French magazine that supports the dictionary wrote recently. "And that is good news".
