"E-mail" banned in France

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Humus

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Well, it's not as dramatic as the headline may imply, but I found this extremely silly.

From a Swedish newpaper:
http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/it/story/0,2789,334940,00.html

Roughly translated:
"E-mail banned in France
Make sure you don't ask a Frenchman about his email address if you go to France. The word in namely banned.
The french culture ministry has decided that the word cannot be allowed to appear in any federal document or webpages. Instead it has been replaced with "courriel" which is a short form of the french term "courrier electronique".
Banning the work e-mail is the most recent of the latest bunch of actions aimed to stop english words from getting into the french language.

Why not just let the language develop naturally?
 
Well, the French have had a ministry to protect the 'purity' of the language for hundreds of years, haven't they?

I know they don't like such English bastardisations as "Le Weekend". Strange, really, as English is quite happy to take on words from other languages, including many from French!
 
Mariner said:
I know they don't like such English bastardisations as "Le Weekend". Strange, really, as English is quite happy to take on words from other languages, including many from French!
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Well, a certain duke crossing the Channel back in 1066 had a little something to do with that.
 
Well, a certain duke crossing the Channel back in 1066 had a little something to do with that.
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Well, not really. Certainly the 'ancient' French there is integrated directly into modern English to an extent, although for hundreds of years after the invasion, the nobility spoke this French almost exclusively. The common man didn't speak any of this language and, indeed, often spoke Anglo-Saxon dialects almost incomprehensible to others who lived just a short distance away - 30 miles or so.

The point I was trying to make was that every year, new words are added to the major English dictionaries, many of which come from other languages. The French, with their passion for keeping their language 'Pure' do not have these gains.

I remember hearing an item of the radio about this kind of thing. A Professor of Languages indicated that a modern Englishman would have difficulties in conversing with an Englishman from 300 years ago due to differences in speech, dialect etc. but a modern Frenchman would be able to converse much more easily with his 300 year old counterpart! This is almost entirely due to the strict control over the language held by the French government for hundreds of years.
 
Mariner said:
Well, not really. Certainly the 'ancient' French there is integrated directly into modern English to an extent, although for hundreds of years after the invasion, the nobility spoke this French almost exclusively.
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I think most historians would argue that having the ruling class of an entire nation speak a different language for 100s of years is going to see trickle-down effect into the commoners' spoken language.

I can't understand most modern Scotsmen unless they speak very slowly (which most seem rather loathe to do <g>).
 
You're not kidding about different dialects of English. Our company deals with telephone orders from customers throughout the world, yet we often have more difficulty understanding British people speaking English than those from overseas who speak it as a second language!

I can recommend a book, "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson as an interesting, yet not too heavy read about the English language.
 
I don't think that anybody will fine you for calling email "email" in the privacy of your own home, or on the street, but, according to a french co-worker, you will be fined for using it in a "public arena".

Like at a speech, on TV, in advertising, etc.
 
Mariner said:
I can recommend a book, "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson as an interesting, yet not too heavy read about the English language.
Click to expand...

That book is considered to be full of factual errors. One of these days I'm going to buy the full 20-volume set of the OED's 2nd ed.
 
John Reynolds said:
Almost as silly as renaming french fries to freedom fries.
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Well, that's silly too, especially since it's actually a belgian invention and "french" has nothing with France to do but comes from the process of frenching which means cutting it into thin slices. On the topic of french fries, I found this kinda amusing :)

Anyway, I don't see what they are trying to achieve with this language control. It's like working actively to preserve the largest communication barrier in the world (different languages that is), instead of just letting things go and with the increasing technical communcation abilities like Internet etc. just let things automatically solve itself as languages converge. In 200 years my native language will most likely be dead, and I'm fine with that. I actually look forward to the day, though I'm not going to see it myself.
 
Though I am strongly against "English" imperialism....that is not the way to protect your language! And I don;t think french or for that matter any national language is going to dissappear bec'se of English.
 
Deepak said:
Though I am strongly against "English" imperialism....that is not the way to protect your language! And I don;t think french or for that matter any national language is going to dissappear bec'se of English.
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im curious if there is a language that is made up of more foreign words than english? So, im not really sure how english is an empirilistic language. Its not like we knock down your door and force you to use english words.

later,
edit: Its not like we even force our own citizens to speak english. :)
 
Bit surprised here as the Academie Francaise was the one to adopt 'weekend' and spelling by sound of some words (i.e. accepting diff spellings of the same word as long as the word spoken sounded the same) into the french language. Maybe this is a bit of a backlash of sorts from those who didnt want that or GF2 related... Hope it doesnt last.

Language are works in progress and die when the cultures than back them become too orthodox. Certainly there are many dialects of french throughout the world such as in Haiti and the old african and asian colonies and here in Canada there are at least 3... each with its own idiosyncrasies... The academie and the french gov are just doing a disservice to the language and culture here...
 
Nothing new, CD-Rom is actually Cederom (with accents on the e's). No one listens to the Academy anyway, its been a big joke for years now.
 
well a fortnight ago i was in sweden (stockholm) where lots of people claim they parlay english. tosh! i gabbed with one fella on the pavement and did he speak english , nope , american . hehehehe .

normans spoke "old-french" and the anglo-saxons will have been speaking old-english . both quite different from the modern versions. though lets face it the normans were just pesky vikings .


i dunno , i quite like what the acadamie tries to do, kinda respect the idea .
-dave-
 
davefb said:
i dunno , i quite like what the acadamie tries to do, kinda respect the idea.
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I think it's nothing but counterproductive. Putting effort into ensuring that we even in the distance future will still have problems communicating with each other. We do have something similar here in Sweden, though that commitee doesn't try to dictate how the language is supposed to develop. Instead they rather observe and document. In some cases they provide alternate spelling of new words, like spelling "mail" as "mejl" to look more Swedish, which is silly enough IMO, but at least they don't invent new words to fill in the gaps or try to push foreign words out of the language. The closer Swedish get to English the better, the easier we will communicate on an international level.
 
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