[suddenlybananas]

>Had they allowed their language to accept English loan words, chances are that French could still be the language it once was.

The Académie française has exactly 0 to do with the fact that French is used less as a lingua franca.

[throwaway2037]

    > the fact that French is used less as a lingua franca

I think you are over-interpreting this point. Japanese has far fewer speakers globally compared to French. And yes, Japanese imports a huge number of foreign words -- akin to modern English. Ironically, mainland China practically has an alergic reaction to loanwords and creates natives terms for everything. Even weirder, Taiwan and Korea are somewhere in between. None of these places speak anything close to a "lingua franca" and have wildly different language cultures around loanwords.