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@Linguist_CIOL OCTOBER/NOVEMBER The Linguist 19 le tracking should make way for géolocalisation, traçage or reconstitution de parcours. Why did it take so long? "The process includes many stages and involves a number of experts – in this particular case, doctors and officials from various relevant bodies," says Etienne Quillot, who is in charge of terminology at CEFL. Defining gender However, it was defining the gender of the virus that proved to be the ultimate test for French newsrooms. The World Health Organization (WHO) announced in February that coronavirus would henceforth be called Covid-19 but it failed to specify on its French website whether that word would be feminine or masculine. Media outlets called it le Covid-19, the word 'virus' being masculine, and so did social media users. But the Académie française ruled in May that la Covid-19 was preferable, as 'Covid' stands for 'Corona Virus Disease' and is, therefore, une maladie, i.e. feminine. The Royal Spanish Academy issued similar guidance for the same grammatical reasons. The Académie added that it wished the virus had been given a Latin name – Corona Virus Morbus (morbus meaning 'disease') – making the acronym 'Covim-19'. This would have prevented the issue in French as the 'm' would have been taken to stand for maladie. Weeks after the Académie's ruling, most French media outlets were still using the masculine. Le Monde has been using la Covid-19 increasingly, but saying la maladie Covid-19 on first mention. Over in Canada, where French and English are the two official languages, the Office quebecois de la langue francaise had already recommended the use of the feminine. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has favoured la Covid-19, as have Radio Canada, Le Journal de Montréal and Québec Science. Like the WHO, UN agencies such as Unicef and UN Environment have been using the feminine form, as has the IMF (International Monetary Fund). If you search the European Union language database, IATE, it will throw up la COVID-19. At the EU "this is an issue that has been very controversial," says Ingrid Swinnen, of the terminology team at the EU Council. "The trouble is that we heard both le and la a lot, and the masculine form especially in the media, and I was quite guilty of this myself," she says on the phone from Brussels. "For some time both were used, but after the Académie française took an official stance, the francophone community in EU offices agreed to go with its recommendation." EU linguists are not bound by any national language body rulings, she says, but they tend to follow them. "In the midst of a crisis such as the coronavirus pandemic, terminology takes precedence over everything else." Language evolution The pandemic has thrown up another unexpected language conundrum: the French have taken to saying Prenez soin de vous. Even President Macron used the expression in a TV address in April. Could it be a French calque of 'take care of yourself', another manifestation of the spread of Anglo-Saxon cultural hegemony? "I don't think it comes from the English," lexicologist Jean Pruvost told me on the phone from Paris. The first written mention of the expression dates back to 1480, when it was used in the earliest surviving literary text in French, the Chanson de Roland. According to Pruvost, this old phrase has reappeared suddenly during the lockdown in France. Perhaps it is a case of an old phrase being reinvented, he says, with the French creating a calque from the English as a form of address. So will dictionaries list Covid-19 as masculine or feminine? It could be both, as with après-midi, but he believes that in 10 or 20 years' time lexicographers will list Covid-19 either as a feminine word in theory that is used in the masculine form, or as a masculine word that is supposed to be feminine. At the end of the day, he says, "the language will decide". LE CARE Healthcare professionals treat a Covid patient in the ICU, which was translated by the media as unités de soins intensifs despite the existing French term réa