The Academie Francaise, officially-proclaimed guardian of the French language has spoken, and there will be henceforth no confusion—it hopes.
The authoritative ladies and gentlemen, pictured above, have ruled that although the underlying class of virus—coronavirus—is to be treated in French as a masculine noun, the disease it cause, Covid-19, is to be considered feminine. The Academie has found it disturbing that news media and popular speakers have been treating it as masculine.
The ruling, which mirrors that of the Office Quebecois de la Langue Francaise and the Spanish Academy. All three base their distinction on a rule that says that an acronym (COrona VIrus Disease-19) takes the gender of the root word. In this case, that’s ‘disease,’ and its French equivalent, ‘maladie’ is feminine.
In case you were worried.
