French L

Now and then I come across something interesting written in
French that I would like to share with an English audience - hence translate -
but I can't. Such a one below, about the new Le Robert etymological French
dictionnary.

A few excerpts, anyway. It is an interview with Alain Rey, who led the revision.

https://www.lefigaro.fr/langue-francaise/actu-des-mots/alain-rey-la-langue-francaise-ne-s-appauvrit-pas-au-contraire-20191103

source: Le Figaro

author: Alice Develey et Claire Conruyt 

translation: GoogleTranslate/doxa-louise

He is a kind of archeologist of the language. Alain Rey, father of Le Petit Robert , dusting off words, seeking to understand their origins and their history. This quest for meaning took the form of a historical dictionary of the French language (The Robert). It publishes this year its augmented version. He speaks to Le Figaro of his writing and explains why the French language, although tormented by Anglicisms and a certain laziness on the part of  its speakers, has not yet said its last word.
...

Words have a meaning and a story. Is that why French brings out so many passions?

This passion for French comes from the fact that this language was imposed late in France. At the beginning of the war of 1914, in the trenches, all the officers spoke French but only 40% of the soldiers did. They spoke Breton, Basque, Lorraine, Picard, Occitan ... To know French became a necessity if one was to survive,  understand  orders. So the Great War was a spontaneous school of the French language, even if there had been work done before, that  of the compulsory secular school.
Perhaps it is this relatively recent past that explains that for many French people, it is a language of prestige, foreign, which must be mastered. By 1930, the French basically know how to read and write. Any intervention on the language then becomes more visible, therefore more difficult to accomplish. Spelling can be easily reformed when a population cannot read or write. Which Lenin did in Russia in 1922-1923, and Norwegians did at the end of the nineteenth century. The French language did not follow this pattern. It is an expanding language, with variants.
...

The problem is not to use Anglicisms but to do so exclusively?

Absolutely. Using words that come from California causes a phenomenon: the brain accumulates them at the expense of other words. However, we observe that some young people are now using terms from the times of their grandparents. Thus, they reactualize them and prevent the disappearance of a whole vocabulary. I think of the admirable phrase of Amadou Hampâté Bâ : "An old man who dies is a library that burns." This is very true. Language is built everywhere.
...