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French Government Bans Term 'E-Mail'
Licensed2Hack writes "'Goodbye "e-mail," the French government says, and hello "courriel" -- the term that linguistically sensitive France is now using to refer to electronic mail in official documents.' .
Curriel? 'Hey Pierre, curriel me those sales figures.' Just sounds wrong!" Especially if you don't actually speak french ;)
we would now be calling it 'freedom mail'. while I think the french culture police are a bit over the top, the same can be said for a lot of people on capitol hill.
The Culture Ministry has announced a ban on the use of "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents, publications or Web sites, the latest step to stem an incursion of English words into the French lexicon.
Frenchs can say 'Email', 'Courriel' or any thing else.
If the people can say what they want what's the problem?
It's ok for the government to say what ever they want if they dont force any one to write it the same way.
'Hey Pierre, curriel me those sales figures.' Just sounds wrong!
Of course it sounds wrong... especially since the rest of it would probably sound more like:
Hé Pierre, curriel je que ces ventes figure!
You know, since they're in France, and everything.
"I think it's perfectly legitimate for a language to have new words for new technologies/items and use words proper to the language rather than import words from other languages. That's what it is to be living language."
No, its not normal. Normally, lanaguages evolve by their speakers, not by a government based commission.
Still more proof that french culture is dead.
Sorry Troll, I study Japanese... Nothing could be further from the truth.
1. The awkward spellings that you mention are Japanese translations of foreign words. written in a seperate script(katakana). It "is" the Japanese way to say the words.
2. So you want the Japanese to have to pass laws to preserve their linguistic identity when they already do it out of sure pride.
3. Why on earth would you want thousands of new words added to a langauge that have no special meaning to it. Talk about confusion. By keeping the words the same, yet Japanese, Learning betweent English and Japanese is sped up.
Before you go off and say someone doesn't do this or that... Know what you are talking about. The Japanese dedicate more time practicing and perfecting there language in such a uniformed way. It is naive and ignorant to judge the language when you know nothing about it.
Does Slashdot support Japanese? ??????
For the last six years I have been living two miles from Quebec and one thing I notice is that from the french people's POV, no matter what country you are from, either your "one of us" (French) or "one of them" (non-French).
For the last 51 years I have been living in the USA and one thing I notice is that from the American people's POV, no matter what country you are from, either your "one of us" (American) or "one of them" (non-American).
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist
Please, get a clue
/ad-min'/ n. Short for `administrator'; reference
/usr/share/trans/de-en :: administrator
$ grep Admin
Administrator {m}
Netzwerkadministrator means 'network administrator'. If you don't count the blank it's -1 letters. Congraturalations!
Hah, good, this is what I like to hear.
It's not the fact that some people in France what to keep their language pure that bother's me (good for them, but good luck making it actually happen). What bothers me is when some govermnet agency decides to come in and start regulating this kind of thing (even if it isn't a law yet, it's only a matter of time if people don't fight back).
When the government is telling you how you should speak, well, you've got a lot more serious problems then what to call an Email.
English is probably more open to importing words from other languages because England was invaded several times in the middle ages(Normans, Vikings), and is populated with people originally from an area in northern Germany. Thus, English gets its Germanic roots, and large numbers of words from(or through) French and more German(Vikings spoke... something. Norse variant of German is as far as I got on short notice).
This story is just goofy, though. "Mail" comes into English from French. "Courrier" came into French from Italian.(Electronic and variants come directly from Latin)
Languages survive through the adoption of new words, whether they be homegrown or imported. Attaching more value for one method over the other is just silly.
(More info on borrowed words in English. French and Norse invasions mentioned a few paragraphs from the bottom of the page.)
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
I speak with some experience on this subject having grown up in the South of Ireland where almost all school children are forced to learn the virtually extinct language "Gaelic" from the ages of 4 to 18, spending similar amounts of time on it as they do with Maths or English. The result? Most people hate the language because they resent having it forced down their throats.
Unless they are in a work of Orwellian fiction - governments have no business telling their populations what words they can and cannot use.
To Americans arrogance is something they only recognize in others.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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Nothing wrong with wanting french terms for french people.
Are you kidding ? We love the French accent :-) sometimes they use some words we could find funny, but that's it.
Mind you, a french-speaking country in the love-hated europe's continent...
Hehehe :P (Desole roard, mais je la trouvais bonne)
Sincerely, we personnally think it's important for a person who comes to Quebec to speak french (and it's the majority of french quebecers who thinks that), as much as it is important for a person to speak english if he wants something in USA or spanish in Spain (or Russian in Russia, etc etc etc).
If you don't, then there is a chance that the person will understand and answer in english, but (depending on places) it is unlikely since most people don't learn english (and don't want).
But that's changing in places like Quebec and some places where the population is growing "fast". Montreal is the exception though, being the only parts where you may talk in french in a McDo and get answered in english then talk back in french and the person WILL answer in english. Funny :) But most people there are bilingual.
Unversity minority? Naaah... again, you have to go to montreal to get the view.
But hey!, try to find a spanish university in USA ;)
Of Code And Men
Comming from a land that has spent the last few hundred years scrapping with the French, I feel simply calling them arrogant is quite restrained :-)
Apparently you did not read the article:
"The Culture Ministry has announced a ban on the use of "e-mail" in all government ministries, documents, publications or Web sites, the latest step to stem an incursion of English words into the French lexicon. "
Or perhaps, in French, 'le ban' is translated as, "it would be nice if you didn't do this"...
This is simply another example of French arrogance, believing their language to be superior to other languages to the point that they fear its adultering by using (gasp) an English word!
Probably something to do with English being mostly made up of foreign words
That is not a weakness of English, tho', but one of its greatest strengths - it can freely adapt to whatever use is required for it. That's why English is the universal language of commerce - the de facto lingua franca - you can just learn it and speak it and if you make something up and it's useful enough, everyone else will start using your new vocabulary too. No other language is as practical and useful in the real world as English.
I am guessing the Gauls were very upset about the Romans imposing their culture on their people and land...
Wait, they wouldn't have been "gifted" with "French" culture had it not been for the Romans.
American culture wouldn't proliferate if people weren't interested in it. People want to see American movies and watch American TV - if they didn't, the rules of the market would push it out of circulation.
But then again, there is a large population of North Americans who want to be in America (hence America's major immigration problem on it's southern border).
Maybe you should go and preach to them that they should stay in their country and be happy with their culture?
e. Faust
English grammar is very similar to German. Its different enough to be a totally different language with its own grammar rules, but its pretty easy to see how English is derived from German (if you speak both; note I do not speak fluent German (getting close!)). Both languages share thousands of words and a fairly similar technical vocabulary. Most languages borrow some words, some languages more than others. In the American southwest, you can see English acquiring terms and words from Mexican Spanish, and most people here think nothing of using a Spanish word or two in their daily speech. All languages borrow words, but the reason English and Japanese borrow so much is because of their environment. Think: The English fought many wars with the French, and dealt with them more than the German states. The French had an emperor before the English really had a need for a term for "emperor." The Latin word for emperor "Caesar," the German "Kaiser," and the Russian "Tsar." The French word was Emperur (or something similar, I speak no French). Since we were dealing with the French more than the Germans or Russians, we acquired their word for emperor. I'm not a linguist, this is just how I see the word being acquired.
Its simply an evolution of language. I bet that a vast majority of other languages in the world will begin taking more English words (the Germans have no problems with using English words...). Once English and the English-speaking nations begin to decline (Don't laugh. Even the Roman empire fell after the Pax Romana ended.), another country will attain power and their language will become the lingua franca of the world. Other languages will adopt words from that language, and the cycle continues.
THe French just don't realize that eliminating English words from your language really stagnates growth of theirlanguage.
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
I can't believe it. First there's a big news on slashdot about the french government using a word instead of another for documents and publications. (Ok, this is a slow news day and maybe this could be interesting for people living in France.) But then, instead of people complaining this news is utterly irrelevant, there's tons of post saying how the French are arrogant, gay (?), morons... WTF? Is slashdot "News for Nerds" or "News for Uneducated Frustrated Racists"?
CmdrTaco should be moderated -1 : Off Topic!
When you're looking down from a position of linguistic dominance, it's very easy to ridicule other culture's attempts to preserve their identity. Language is the cornerstone of most cultural identities - right down to the accent that identifies which village you come from.
And language is more than merely a tool for communicating. It influences the way you think. For example, not all languages have the same number of words for basic colours. (English had no word for "orange" until the middle ages. It was considered a shade of yellow). Neurological studies have shown that without the word for a colour, your brain doesn't even recognise that shade as being different from whatever other shade the language assimilates it to. (So in a language where red and green are the same word, the entire population is red-green colorblind). [If you wonder how different societies can end up with different words for colours, imagine you spend your life in the arctic. Differences in shades of white will be far more important to you than telling red from yellow.]
Also, before laughing at the French, Americans should look at their own history. Following independence, there was a deliberate attempt to cement the new American identity by differentiating the language from "British" English. A certain Mr Webster took this to heart and drew up a dictionary where he deliberately created differences from accepted English spellings (there was no such thing as truly standard spelling in those days). And that's how the US ended up with color, thru and -ize.
So should the French government be trying to protect the French language? Well let's just say that it's not as crazy as it sounds.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Try reading any statement from the current administration, that should be enough examples to keep you busy until Christmas.
Well I'm the doctor and I say you're dead, so shut up and take it like a man!
Except, in this case, the country is Canada, and its official languages are both French and English. Quebec has decided to promote one over the other. However, any Canadian should have the right to speak only English.
To follow your analogy, this would be like New Mexico deciding that you can't go to an English school, but to a Spanish one.
Umm, isn't the english term "system administrator" or "network administrator"; which is the same length?
Granted, many german words are longer(e.g. "basisrecheneinheit" for "butterfly") but complaining that a translated word is longer than your abbreviation of it is quite silly. That's like complaining that the german word for "FYI" is "Fur ihre informationen".