Alain Rey, famous linguist and figure in the “Le Robert” dictionary, is dead
Linguist and lexicographer Alain Rey.
Le Robert editions
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4 min
Alain Rey, famous linguist and tutelary figure of the Le Robert dictionary, died in Paris on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday at the age of 92, announced his wife and Le Robert editions.
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His life's work was entitled
The Historical Dictionary of the French Language,
published in 1992 and
recently released
in an expanded version.
It's a one-of-a-kind synthesis, almost a novel, where you can learn where the words come from, their history, their origins, the values they underpin.
Defender of the evolution of the language
"
French is not France
" liked to say Alain Rey.
It is much more, there is of course the influence of the Latin spoken of the Middle Ages, Celtic, German, but from the 16th century Europeans discovered other continents and colonized.
New peoples speak and write French and enrich a very living language.
Alain Rey: "The language has no passport"
Yvan Amar
Ardent defender of the evolution of the language, Alain Rey insisted on the interbreeding, the creolization of the language constantly nourished by new contributions, he was interested in regional languages with slang, in the feminization of the names of trades.
Long hair and white mustache, he was a popular scholar whose chronicles were enjoyed on radio and television.
He became known to the general public by animating a daily column devoted to words in the morning edition of the newspapers of France Inter between 1993 and 2006.
Young graduate in literature, he had collaborated alongside Paul Robert in the development of a new “
alphabetical and analogical
”
dictionary
of the French language.
Le Grand Robert
in six volumes was published in 1964, followed three years later by Le
Petit Robert
, before many other variations.
Winner of numerous prizes, Alain Rey was the author of some thirty books on language he had taught in the United States and at the Sorbonne.
►Also listen: Dance of words - Alain Rey: The 200 funny words that have changed our lives for 50 years
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Alain Rey in pocket format
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