France to ban the term "e-mail"?

L

Legion

Regular
This is kind of humorous:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...030718/ap_on_fe_st/france_out_with__e_mail__1

"Protecting the language is normal, but e-mail's so assimilated now that no one thinks of it as American," she said. "Courriel would just be a new word to launch."
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Just got to have that american hate sentiment in there to make it sounds genuinely French. Can't have anyone thinking its American. Dear God no! that would mean we the french didn't invent the internet, email, computers, cars, microwaves, tvs, etc. We just might have to admit our cultural has been positively affected by other nations!
 
Legion said:
Just got to have that american hate sentiment in there to make it sounds genuinely French. Can't have anyone thinking its American. Dear God no! that would mean we the french didn't invent the internet, email, computers, cars, microwaves, tvs, etc. We just might have to admit our cultural has been positively affected by other nations!
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Come now! It is perfectly natural for languages to assimilate foreign words but it's also perfectly natural for them to construct new ones. You should hear some of the clumsy and pathetic suggestions that were past along Swedish media as a replacement for e-mail... Courill actually sounds kind of nice, snappy, rolls off the tounge easily and is a good combination of two properties that exemplifies e l e c t r o n i c mail..... :rolleyes:

Not bad at all IMO.
 
Come now! It is perfectly natural for languages to assimilate foreign words but it's also perfectly natural for them to construct new ones.
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Did you read the comment i pointed out? The woman makes it sounds as though a valid reason for changing then name may be do to it sounding american.

It is also perfectly natural to leave IT THE HELL ALONE.

You should hear some of the clumsy and pathetic suggestions that were past along Swedish media as a replacement for e-mail...
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I suppose finnish would be just as bad.

Courill actually sounds kind of nice, snappy, rolls off the tounge easily and is a good combination of two properties that exemplifies e l e c t r o n i c mail..... :rolleyes:
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Email does to.

Not bad at all IMO.
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Never ask an eastern european about his feeling concerning language :LOL: :rolleyes:

But to BAN the use of the word in government? To suggest changing the word to hide is origin? Seems rather petty to me.
 
I also stopped learning french in school after realizing how little the language is used. I wish my school would have had some Asian language options. Or I should have choosen spanish. :)

later,
 
I have no boeuf with the French, but this is a little silly.

They had better get rid of all those ghastly Germanic and Basque words too. :rolleyes:

MuFu.
 
English is successful because we have no problems assimilating and using foreign words, even if they are awkard. Gung Ho, Futon, Rendezvous, Tomigochi, Blitz, etc

If the french had invented email, I'd have no problem using the French word.
 
MuFu said:
I have no boeuf with the French, but this is a little silly.

They had better get rid of all those ghastly Germanic and Basque words too. :rolleyes:

MuFu.
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why would they? they aren't american.
 
DemoCoder said:
English is successful because we have no problems assimilating and using foreign words, even if they are awkard. Gung Ho, Futon, Rendezvous, Tomigochi, Blitz, etc

If the french had invented email, I'd have no problem using the French word.
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menage a trois :LOL:
 
Legion said:
Never ask an eastern european about his feeling concerning language :LOL: :rolleyes:

But to BAN the use of the word in government? To suggest changing the word to hide is origin? Seems rather petty to me.
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Who's eastern european? Anyway it seems people are overly sensitive regarding anything that mentions the F-word in any situation.

This is a political suggestion/decision, is there really anyone who believes this has been decided upon suddenly and as a reaction to anything rather than a drawn out process, years in the making, spending loads of taxpayers money on such a tiny thing? :p Just standard policy most likely, why be upset about it?
 
Who's eastern european? Anyway it seems people are overly sensitive regarding anything that mentions the F-word in any situation.
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that word has its roots in german.

This is a political suggestion/decision, is there really anyone who believes this has been decided upon suddenly and as a reaction to anything rather than a drawn out process, years in the making, spending loads of taxpayers money on such a tiny thing? :p Just standard policy most likely, why be upset about it?
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How insightful!
 
Well, english is roughly 40% french, 40% germanic, and 20% celtic... our language was built around borrowing from others :)

Anyways, the French have had a language ministry for eons now, this is nothing new (inventing new words).
 
As a french canadian Im pretty dissapointed. I had read a few years ago that the academie was not only encouraging english word adoption like 'weekend' which is officially a french term now but also other non french words and even accepting spelling according to sound. Thus leaving the reader to see the meaning in the context of the phrase.

Tho this comes 6 months + on the heel of freedom toast I guess I shouldnt have expected any better from some french than I did from those americans who indulged in the more public forms of hate mongering.
 
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